How Divorce Can Change Relationships"

Divorce is a difficult thing to endure. A very difficult thing. Certainly, it does not need to be any harder to deal with but the animosity it generates it is impossible to quell--for the heart and mind, I mean. The change divorce creates is brutal.
The worst part about it is the negativity it can create for all the guilty and innocent people involved. Relationships are horribly affected for the short term and, in some cases, for the rest of one's life.
Some of the worst news ever heard by a parent would involve their children being hurt. It would not be inaccurate to state that every parent, rather, every GOOD parent, goes to extremes to ensure that their offspring is shielded as much as possible from the bad things this life offers at every corner.

Sadly, we cannot logically protect them from life as easily as we can the Boogey Man. But, of course, we always try. That's what makes us good parents.

Mommies & Daddies make up all kinds of magic spells to rid the bottom of the beds from every scary monster conjured up by young minds.

No matter what was the cause, the worst thing I ever saw were tears coming from the eyes of my daughters. It broke my heart all over again to know that I was the reason each of them cried.

Maybe the hypersensitive button in me is reading too much into a recent disagreement we had involving their pictures I took of them when their mom & I were still married and we were just another American family just getting along. The proverbial picket fence came crashing down when I filed for divorce based on her infidelity.

So much for picket fences. It didn't keep another guy from thinking my grass was greener than his. I should've put up a picket WALL.

The effect of divorce was on my daughters and me. For more then 13 years my children and I have had a fractured relationship. Though I paid my child support there was always something missing--me. I was treated more like an uncle than their daddy. This reversal of fortunes simply pulverized my heart. So, strangely enough, the only bond with my babies came in the form of these disputed pictures which I guard like our government guards the gold at Ft. Knox.

My youngest girl, 22, gave birth in mid-January to her first child and my first grandchild. Several weeks ago she asked me via text if she could have the pictures in order to make copies of them. When she was done, she would return them. She wanted a quick and positive reply and I was only half accommodating with the request.

Did I say these pix are guarded like gold at Ft. Knox?

Well, good news travels fast apparently. My middle daughter, 24, is expecting her first baby in November of this year. So she texts me about the pix, wanting to pick the up to have them scanned then she will return them to me. There's a bunch of pix in that bin so with my impending move out of the city there was no way to determine when I would get them back--if ever.

Ft. Knox, remember?!

My decision to keep them close to me is very unpopular. Yes, it is selfish. Based on how my daughters have treated me the last few years maybe this is apropos. I don't know. I just know it feels bad because they are hurt they cannot have these pieces of their early childhood. They are very close to their mom and stepdad. It bothers me that they pass my house in order to go spend time with them with not as much as a "hello" to me or my significant other. They have the "todays and tomorrows" of my daughters while all I have is their yesterdays.
That's what these pictures represent to me. It reminds me when my babies looked at me as the most important man in their little lives. It was when they truly and purely loved me.

Now do you understand why I guard them as I do?

The only time we will actually see them is Christmas Day or Eve, depending on schedules, save for an occasional dinner within the year.

I don't like this part of my life right now. To top things off, my oldest girl, 26, recently sent me a barrage of scathing texts telling me, in their collective views, I am not to contact them ever again & they are fine with me not being in their lives. She even wrote that it took her a long time to realize it but she "has an amazing dad who loves her very much" and it isn't me. She would badmouth this guy when she would come visit me to pick up her check.

Go figure.

This comes from a daughter I've helped with a monthly check for a few years to help her with bills and such. Friends would tell me she's just using me. I ignored their words. She's my baby girl and I was going to do all possible to help her.

Did I mention all this was done on Father's Day?
And I still love and miss my babies.

Go figure.