Goodbye to the Empty Chair

For six years I appeared every other Friday, and on the eve of all Federal holidays, at 6 p.m. at the curb of the house occupied by the mother of my three minor children to execute on the plain vanilla visitation order decreed by the Arlington County court as part of its ruling in the divorce decree brought by Sharon Rogers (now Sharon Lightbourne) against me, and called the house on my cell phone.  (As a practical matter, you cannot go on the porch to knock on the door lest you expose yourself to spurious charges of beating in a rage on the door and a specious arrest.)  For the last four years the phone was never answered and not a person came out as my ex-wife, in addition to not fully cooperating with the visitation order as required by law and by family values, taught my adolescent children to be scofflaws in their own right.

Once my youngest child graduated from high school (I was told that he did), I appeared for the next 12 years at the Lost Dog Cafe, a local restaurant in Westover in Arlington, Virginia, to have lunch at noon on almost every birthday of my children and almost every Federal Holiday, constantly issuing public invitations to come to start a rapprochement with any or all of them via this blog, my facebook page and in letters and cards (all unanswered, none returned to sender) sent to Sharon's address, as she wouldn't tell me where any of them lived.  Always I dined with the Empty Chair during that hour, except for the time a "Jane Doe" appeared to ask my advice on how to deal with the local LCSW who was irrevocably ruining her and her husband's relationship with her step-daughter (his daughter) by aiding in the odious application of PAS by the girl's mother, just as this same man-hating "professional" helped immeasurably to irrevocably ruin, in my opinion, my relationships with my three children via her despicably abetting my ex-wife's pernicious application of PAS, which is seen by some (myself included) as a form of child abuse .

Last month my youngest child entered his thirties and on that day I went one last time to the Lost Dog.  I enjoyed a Dominion Ale (a root beer) and a Kujo Pie, made up of fresh marinara sauce, artichoke hearts and garlic chicken pieces.

At the end of the noon hour I bid a final adieu to the faithful Empty Chair and left, not intending to return to the establishment on any regular schedule anymore.  I wish my three sons (all undoubtedly fully mature adults now, at least physically) the best.