I was walking through Eglinton Square mall today; it's a small mall, close to where I live, that I walk through occasionally. I say "hi" to Jack, the computer kiosk vendor. I pick up my library reserves and drop off last week's audiobooks I listened to whilst walking. This time, Alan Greenspan's (2007) "The Age of Turbulence." I walked into the Coles Bookstore (yes, they still exist!). I had on my mind to find my daughter a Spongebob Squarepants item
of paraphernalia--of any sort--just because. Just because we watched it together, over the phone, last Thursday.
I found this bookmark, with the inscription "Shh! I'm trying to read!" I recognized it immediately as the exact same bookmark my mother had bought for me when I was kait0r's age, about 25 years ago. Except the one my mother got me had a red tassle; this one had a black one, with some beads. I immediately snapped it up and explained to the cashier that I had owned the exact same bookmark some 25 years before, and that although I had been looking for something Spongebob since the Hallmark Store, I just had to get her this, lest I feel pressured into getting yet another piece of Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus memorabilia.
As I walked around the mall with my purchase, I realized that this wasn't fair. The visitation and telephone call arrangement that her mother has been fasitidious about (and even within that agreement, she has, on several occasions, forgotten to answer the phone during a scheduled call, or showed up late to pick up my daughter, without calling ahead--and since I'm now driving about two hours each way to visit her, in a foreign town without her cellular phone number, it's quite an inconvenience to try to find my ex and my young daughter when we meet at large venues, such as malls; sometimes I have to have them paged a few times before they remember to come meet).
The night before a scheduled flight in November, 2009, I had to Seattle, to attend a Walden University PhD residency, I was talking with my daughter on the phone. She intimated to me that she did wish we talked more, but that whenever she brought it up, she got "wiggles" in her tummy because it made her mother mad to bring it up. Nevermind that the current vistitation and access agreements were made years ago, before I moved to Toronto specifically to be closer to my daughter, and increase the frequency that I would get to spend days with her. Of course, at the time the court order was agreed upon, I lived about nine hours each direction to visit her; the court system the way it is, if I requested more visitation--and due to Canadian winters--for example in Winter 2007-2008, the GTA received over 50cm of snow one day--and then 50+cm again the next day! But if I had requested more access and was unable to make it to all of them, in the court's eyes, I had asked for too much and I could lose some of those visitation rights. I specifically moved to Toronto to be close enough to visit much more frequently--certainly once a week wouldn't have been an absurd ask. Yet my ex wife insists on fastidiously sticking to the one-a-month arrangement we arranged during our divorce years earlier. In fact, I was the one that had to initiate that because she had begun to play those games where none of the times I suggested, for months at a time, were acceptable times to pick up my daughter, or even spend time with her at home.
I have the strength and respect that I will not undermine my ex wife's authority when kait0r is with me; for example, she was not allowed to see Alice (2010), and she is not allowed to have pop at home. When we go out, the same rules apply. She cannot come to me to circumvent a normal rule. But I know that I do not have the psychological strength to keep that kind of integrity when she becomes a rebellious teen and comes to me when she can't get what she wants from her mother.
When Kaitlain was just born, I used to spend more time, in fact, with her than her mother. Whilst her mother would nap or watch television in the months after Kait0r was born, I would often take her with me to run errands or buy groceries. It was literally like having a part of me ripped away that night that her mother took her away without so much as a note indicating where she was going. My lawyer at the time advised that removing our child without an agreement constituted kidnapping, and I had to go through a length emergency court motion that my ex-wife never forgave me for; I had repeatedly emphasized that I did not want to appear hostile, but that my lawyer advised me that if I did not respond legally to that kidnapping, I would appear to have acquiesced and given up all my rights.
I want only the strength to do what is right, and to spend the time with my daughter that I feel we both deserve.
Labels: kait0r kaitlain daughter visitation divorce
