Here's the plan, Dan.

I posted on my FB that "I have invited Dan [my youngest child] to lunch on the Fourth at The Lost Dog Cafe in Westover [North Arlington], after the Jump Start Program. My treat. The last time I conversed with him in person was in March 2003 when he was 14. Miss him (and the other two)! That's our American courts in action, a system we want to give to the rest of the world."

That got a friend to send me heartfelt congratulations at my impending liaison. I am afraid my post misled at least her, and I am sorry for any misconceptions it engendered.

As is my wont on approaching holidays, ten days ago I sent Dan, who is not yet 21, a letter inviting him out to lunch on July Fourth, so we can catch up and I can fill him in on all the relatives on my side of the family. Not a one of them has heard a word from him or any of my children for over half a decade. Unbelievable as this is, this is just classic Parental Alienation Syndrome ("PAS") stuff. Some people believe that PAS is child abuse.

The only address I have for Dan (or any of my children) is the house his Mother sold shortly after she re-married last year and moved out of. She has since refused my two requests to her for their current addresses. All of their addresses are big secrets (this teacher uses her first grade class in Falls Church as her return address to me).

The house has been vacant since last fall and is being gutted, as I know from knocking on the door in order to ask for Dan on Thanksgiving, Christmas and his birthday. This long-vacant house is the only tenuous link I have to my children.

That's where I send their letters and holiday cards. That's what their Mother instructs me to do. The phone number, which wasn't answered for years anyway, was disconnected last fall.

I'd love it if Dan came, but he hasn't responded, as usual, and he has never showed up before. But I'll be there at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow in any case (unless he calls me off beforehand).

My 2c: If you ask me, though, my situation shows the total bankruptcy of the American domestic law system and its insidious, invidious effect upon our society. Family values it fosters not!