Columbus Day, or I guess some people insist it's Indigenous People Day now, has been a sad day for me for almost two decades. When my quarter-million-dollar four-years-of-litigation divorce was just getting started, I was at an extreme (or fatal as it turned out) disadvantage because my wife and mother of my three children, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne, had taken the children out of the house on a holiday ruse to her parents compound in Cleveland, filed a stealth divorce petition, and refused to bring them back to Arlington unless I vacated the house, which I did so they could come back home and return to school. Of course, I was then accused in court subsequently of "abandoning" the family. Welcome to the divorce wars, where you'll meet the White Queen soon enough.
In the meantime, Sharon busily started instilling in these three tender minors an us-against-him mentality and a we-have-to-stay-strong-and-stick-together mantra, which took flourishing root in their immature minds as this insidious and relentlessly motivated manipulator, driven by what I believe to be her covert narcissistic personality, overbore their wills by withholding and then giving back her love in a cold calculation, centered upon herself as the victim here and immersing them up to their armpits in the exciting litigation. (We're suing dad! For mom!). Do a little research on covert narcissism, drop the term into a google search and it will make your hair stand on end, and this disorder is viewed by many as exceedingly manipulative and destructive, for which about the only ameliorating action one can take when closely associated with such a person is to literally flee him or her before he or she ruins your life by adversely affecting all your loved ones. Although I received visitation in court that gave me about 22% of the time with the children, the approximately 78% of their other time was filled with rigorous debriefings by her of every minute of our time together, many secret trips to many different psychologists, complex plans devised by her for them to execute in case I got "mad," secret cell phones they brought over and hid that I didn't know about, her disregard for sending over the children's medication with them (thus their claim that I was a poor parent for not keeping them on their prescription schedule which I didn't even know about), and all kinds of other malicious mischief. Meanwhile she allied herself with family-wrecking courthouse "professionals" who busily tore the family unit apart in complicity with the serial-suer attitude she brought to bear upon their father, sharing draft court pleadings with these pre or barely pubescent children contrary to settled public policy.
Eighteen years ago this month I took the children to Columbus on the Columbus Day weekend to visit their aunt and uncle (an OSU professor) and their three cousins (all boys roughly the same age as my three sons). We had a wonderful time. We wandered around the Ohio State campus, conducted a fun experiment in their uncle's lab under his supervision, went sightseeing around this state capital, and the boys romped, played and watched movies. Then I brought my charges back to their mother's house on time. The next morning my lawyer called and told me that she had called up the court-appointed "psychologist," Victor Elion, the night before to complain that I had brought the youngest boy home "tired" and beseech him what she should do about the lad's homework. (She had not communicated to me that he had any homework, and my son had said he didn't have any homework when I asked him if he had any. It was, dear reader, a set-up.)
The charlatan Ph'D appointee, who hung around the courthouse to get work, suspended my visitation sua sponte and ex-parte, without even a hearing. Suspiciously to me, this charlatan had billed a four-hour session with Sharon earlier on the day I left with the children for a trip to Colorado during the summertime.
The first hearing I was able to schedule, at which my visitation was restored, was over two months later and I spent a lonely ten weeks without seeing or even speaking to my children (they never answered their phone, which had caller ID, when I called), or even knowing where they went for Thanksgiving. My fatherhood was effectively over as by then, it is my opinion that the children had been brainwashed by Sharon and her coterie of what I consider to be childhood wreckers in a stark example of PAS, abetted by our slow and unresponsive domestic law system. Although I received full joint legal custody of the children, patricide had been completed already, and the children soon stopped coming for court-ordered visitation (discovering how easy it is to be a scofflaw following their mother's example, in my opinion). I haven't seen nor even spoken with any of my children (now all adults) in over a dozen years.
These dolorous recollections flooded through my mind as I sat alone in the Lost Dog Cafe earlier this month. I ordered the New York Giant sandwich, a delicious contraption of hot pastrami, creamy coleslaw and melted cheese, and a draft. I enjoyed it in quiet solitude, reflecting upon the countless hours of changing diapers, attending parent-teacher meetings, preparing for special-ed appeals, taking them to doctor visits, nursing sick children, hurrying them to ERs when they had standard childhood accidents, coaching them and earning coaching licenses for their and their teammates' betterment, taking vacations with them, spending time building leggo ships and helping them with homework, driving them to school when they were late for the bus, planning for their financial futures (each of the three children already had a Roth IRA set up by me, funded with money earned by "lawn mowing" for neighbors that coincidentally matched their annual allowances); all these childhood memories dissipating in an obscene orgy of bogus recriminations hurled at me in public court hearings, kow-towing to phony or agenda-driven "professionals" like Victor or Meg who were in effect controlling (ruining, in my opinion) their childhoods now, absorbing $15,000 legal bills each month plus enduring a fiduciary lawsuit from my very own children (yeah, these minors brought the suit, sure).
Sharon was sanctioned and assessed costs of almost $50,000 ultimately for her "harassment petition." That in no measure made up for having her scummy divorce lawyers, Bill and Joe, stand between me and my children during this time in their development, resulting ultimately in a thoroughly destroyed family unit at any level, an extra-judicially killed parenthood and three children having their childhoods murdered by those adult "professionals;" it would make angels cry and makes me weary and heartsick to even think about.
I miss my children. The last time I spoke to my wife, when I encountered her on a public street, I asked her about each child: Is he alive? Is he well? Is he married? Does he have children? Where does he live? Her non-answer to these questions that any normal parent would answer for the other reflected her granite heart. Stony silence.
At the Lost Dog my memories vanished in a swirl of regret and wonder at the inscrutability of life. I finished my meal, leaving a part of my sandwich and draft behind as a talisman for if I ever come back there in a rapprochement attempt again, paid, and left.
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