I have so much to update on here, about my dad, my sister, etc. etc. But now I have no time, because in 2 days we are leaving for a month in Playa! So, I promise I’ll update on the serious stuff as soon as I return, if I haven’t already depressed you enough.

 In the meantime, you can follow us along on our month in Playa by reading my trip report blog I created and hope to update often while there.

Thanks for keeping tuned it, guys! You all are wonderful people, you know that?

Okay, I know I have some updating to do here, but I am runnign out and super-uber-busy, and I just wanted to update on one quick item…

 I got a tattoo!

 I thought I’d post pic, and the meaning, and I’ll post some more about it later. Am I nuts or what? A tattoo! at 37!!!! Foolish? I dunno.

Okay, so the meaning of it all:

It’s a compass.
At WEST we have “Beloved Daughter” and “Compassionate, Kindhearted”.
At EAST we have “Beloved Son” and “Comic, Funny, Humorous”. (I picked my children’s most stand-out personal qualities)
At SOUTH we have “Husband”.
At NORTH we have “Forgiveness” and “Love”.

The four letters below North basically describe a person who is a fighter who has great strength to overcome and persevere despite many setbacks throughout their life.

I designed it myself. It has a lot of meaning to me. See, my life has been anything but easy from about day 1, and I’ve had a lot of despair, loss, suffering, and such. But through all that my children and my husband helped me “find my way” to where I am now, along with their love and with my own forgiveness of others and others’ forgiveness of me. For that reason, they ARE my compass. And whenever I find myself travelling off the path or getting…”lost”…they always help me back to find my way again.

Wow, this is some heavy shit.

So I log in to Facebook the other day, and there’s this message there for me. From my DAD. It just says, “Either you know me or you don’t……”  That’s it. I check out his profile, and he looks so old.

Some background perhaps??

My dad didn’t have the best upbringing, alcoholic, abusive, absentee parents. He made all the wrong choices as a youth and young adult and by the time I was born he was already waist deep into the crime syndicate. He stole my mom away from my sister’s father.

When I was very young, my father was involved with major organized crime. By the time I was 3 he had 19 convictions under his belt for drugs, theft, extortion, attempted murder, assault, possession of stolen property, break and enter, robbery, possession of a weapon, prison breach, forcible confinement, and armed robbery. Nice, huh?

You can imagine what home life was like for me at that age. It certainly wasn’t the Cleaver’s. When I was close to 5, my father went to Calgary with some other people, they robbed a bank, he shot and killed a police officer in the process, and they took hostages and holed up in a house for a few days. While holed up with the hostages, they did a bunch of drugs, and him and one other guy both passed out for a long time. The other guy died there of a drug overdose, my father did not die, but he lost his arm due to passing out for so long with the tournequet still tied around his arm.

My father went to jail for life for this crime. I wrote him back and forth once I was old enough. When I was 12 I met him for the first time. I would continue to visit him periodically over the years. He married while in prison, and his wife was a very nice woman, actually. But to me, he still seemed very imature, and always still looking for a quick way to earn a big buck, even from prison. He always had a scheme.

My father was released from prison after 18 years under the faint-hope clause, and we had some contact. Soon afterward Kelsey was born, and shortly after that we had a falling out. I then broke off all contact with my father, and decided that I would no longer persue a relationship with him.

It may seem cold to some people, but you have to understand something: he wasn’t a father figure to me. He was someone who caused me a lot of grief in my life (I’ve only told a very summarized story of his involvement in my life here and some of the impact he had) and caused a lot of pain for my mom which translated to a lot of hurt and residual pain transferred to us. When I was 9 his story was told twice on The Fifth Estate (kind of like 60 Minutes) and all my friends’ parents saw it, all my teachers, etc. That brought a lot of embarassment to me, and I even had friends that were no longer allowed to come over to my house anymore. So basically, this is a person with whom I had no father-daughter type of relationship or bond with.

At the time I had Kelsey, I was also going through something very profound. I was making a shift in my life, a movement into a place where I was going to raise my child differently, where I was going to shelter my child from anything close to what I saw or experienced growing up. So part of that was to try to distance myself from some of what I saw as influences in that direction.

So here I see this message from my Dad, and I wonder what to do. If it had been before my mother’s death, I most certainly would not have answered him at all. Without question. But everything has changed for me now. I understand and have the pleasure of knowing the feeling of crushing guilt, and I know that I must move in a different direction now to avoid making choices in my life for which I may suffer later. 

I decided that at the very least, my father deserved to know that my mother had died. And while I was telling myself that I would just start off with telling him just this for now, I think I knew in my heart that I was going to let him in. So I answered him with this:

“Hi Dad.”

And from what I understand, he cried (or maybe he just said he did).  I told him about my mom, and he was very upset. And he began to apologize to me for basically my whole life. Yeesh! This is not what I wanted. I don’t want apologies. I don’t know what I want, really.

So that’s where it stands. We have spoken a few times via email. He lives a few hours away from me. He is very happy to have me back in his life. He wants to see me in person or speak to me by phone, but I just don’t feel ready yet. I don’t know when I will, I don’t know what time frame this will go at. I just know that I don’t want to wake up one day and feel more guilt about never forgiving him or giving him a chance. Perhaps he has changed…perhaps he has grown up. I think I owe him at least a chance.  I’ve decided not to tell the kids about him yet, until I’m sure everything is going well. He is their only grandparent, and I suppose they deserve to know him. But I also think it is my duty to make sure that he is an appropriate role model before I allow him to become a part of their lives. Right now my kids just think that I have not seen my father since I was a child. So it will be a very big step to sit them down and tell them about him, although I won’t tell them about his background because they don’t need to know all that at this point in their lives.

And I spent the past few days crying…..because maybe I still have a parent now, a parent that actually cares about me, someone who can be proud of me, maybe offer me advice, tell me nice things. I hope for me this is not just about grasping at straws, wanting to be loved by a parent so badly that I let him back in. I think this worry is why I am going to have to take it slow.

 Maybe this is my mom’s birthday gift to me…..maybe she’s watching down on me, and she has seen to making this happen. Who knows?

Happy Birthday to me, I get a Dad.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

I always had such a hell of a time picking out a card for you. All the cards always said things like, “I’m so grateful to have had you there for me growing up.” or “To a very special mom who taught me all the right things through my life” or “Thanks so much for being a shoulder I could always lean on”…….you get the picture.

I always had to search to find one that was kind of generic for you, mom. Did you notice? I made sure it still expressed to you my love. Despite the fact that you may not have been there for me over the years, or taught me all the right things, or been a shoulder I could lean on. I still loved you, and I still wanted you to know that. I think you did.

This year I really noticed all the Mother’s Day card displays. They were so brightly pink and purple, I don’t remember them ever being so bright before.  I thought about stopping and buying you a card, and then it just seemed so silly. You don’t have a grave marker, after all. I mean, some of you is in a little wooden Mother-Daughter box on my hearth, and some of you is still in a manila envelope here in my office while I decide what to do with you. So where would I put the card? I could have put it on the hearth beside you, but would everyone have thought it weird?

So I bought you some flowers instead. I know you loved flowers. You loved lillies most of all, and orchids. I couldn’t find any orchids, but I found some lillies. You used to love when I would have flowers delivered to you. So I delivered them to you on the hearth. 

Mom, I’ve decided that tomorrow I will take a walk down to the beach with the kids, and we will take you with us. I don’t think you’d want to be in a manila envelope forever. You loved the ocean more than anything in the world; so we’ll take you there to your favorite place. I think it will be a good day to let you go.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I miss you more than anything.