Hey Danny

Later this month my youngest child, Danny, will have a birthday.  He'll be entering his fourth decade, certainly a fully mature adult now in terms of physical and brain development, although psychologically he might be far short of that as a result of the stunting mental debility his mother forced upon him and his two older brothers when all three were tender minors during the long divorce, when she and her two family-wrecking divorce lawyers thrust these three children smack into the middle of the litigation maelstorm by filing an "unconscionable" subsidiary lawsuit in their names, later labeled a "harassment petition" by the court when it sanctioned her and threw it out.  (A good linebacker and an excellent fullback, he claimed during the divorce that I "crushed [his] spirit" because I didn't celebrate a TD he scored well enough and so he would never play football again; do you think those were his words, or the phrasing of his mother's and his oldest brother's counselor, the deeply conflicted and court-barred Meg Sullivan, LCSW?)

This is termed Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), the overbearing of a not-fully-developed childish mind via emotional pressure applied to minors to induce them to reject permanently the other parent by a short-sighted needy parent, often as in this case with the help of a large coterie of so-called professionals who engage in quackery and hang out at the courthouse seeking paid work.  It is often termed child abuse, and it is alive and well, though largely hidden, in the American domestic law system perpetrated by the governing rubric of "best interests of the child" in our "mother knows best" biased courts wherein the woman's word is always taken at face value and the man's word is always suspect until finally, as in my case after years of litigation costing me a quarter million dollars (I couldn't get out of the endless litigation), the woman badly overplays her hand and gets sanctioned or assessed costs.  (We generally had fun on our court-ordered visitation but then I would be accused of bringing him home on time but "too tired" to finish his homework, or doing what I wanted to do instead of what they wanted to do, or letting him burn off a sparkler while supervised in the driveway on July 4th when didn't I know that months earlier he'd had a pyromaniac incident in an Arlington park with a friend?--No, because his mother never told me--and we'd be off on another expensive, time-consuming round of hearings over whether I was a properly fit parent; eventually I ran out of money, the children stopped coming in violation of the court visitation order, and that was that.)

I haven't laid eyes on Danny in a decade and a half, nor heard from him since the summer he was eighteen, when he sent me a letter (which endearingly or sneeringly, depending upon your point of view, began with "Dear Peter") asking me to provide for full payment of his college tuition and fees, which I did.  I haven't heard from him or his two older brothers since, I don't even know for certain if he graduated although I know that eight semesters of college were paid for by the funds I provided; I certainly wasn't invited to his graduation, or his wedding which I heard about long afterwards from a  person in town who I ran into.  (Such a lovely couple, I'm sure it was a lovely wedding, welcome to the family, Laura, I wish you two long and happy lives, and congratulations on your many notable job advancements.)

I have always made myself available to these three boys, and now the time is at hand to bow to the sad permanency of the horrible infliction of the scourge of PAS upon my three sons by, in my opinion, their covert-narcistic mother; once Jimmy, Johnny and Danny become Jim, John and Dan after this month, since they will all be over thirty by then.  Danny, (and Jim, John and Laura), for the last time I will be at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover (Arlington, VA) at noon for lunch on your birthday, please come join me.  (Jim Lightboune's not your dad, I am.)

Presidents Day 2019

Yesterday being a holiday, I went at noon to the Lost Dog Cafe to dine, as is my custom.  I ordered the spinach bacon feta pie, which also contained mozzarella cheese and basil.

As usual, my companion the Empty Chair silently took in everything I had to say, displaying in its structure an inherent strength within.  This contemplation on my part led me to wonder about the strength of character of adults who casually break blood bonds and human norms of decency in rejecting an entire family line and casting aside the full dictate of the 5th Commandment.

The pizza was delicious and there was more than enough to accommodate anyone who might happen by.  No one did, so leaving behind a part of my meal as a good-luck omen for the next time, I left.

My oldest son, who is in his thirties, has a birthday next, and I think I'll try something different on that day.  At noon on that day I'll be in the bustling Italian Store across the street and up the block from the Lost Dog, ordering its New York style pizza to consume at one of the booths or counters inside the store.

Perhaps one or more of my estranged sons, or the one daughter-in-law I know about (I've never met her), will display common human kindness and join me.  After that my youngest son has a birthday, wherein he will enter his thirties, and after more than a decade spent always being available for them, I'll stop trying to hold the door open for them to overcome their adolescent-induced anger at me from the divorce, abetted mightily by their mother's manipulation of them at the time and since then.

Hope Springs Eternal

My youngest son Danny played football, and other sports, before I crushed his spirit as an 11-year old by not praising him sufficiently when he scored a touchdown once.  That's what he told me as a 12-year old, after he'd been on a series of secret visits to a psychologist or psychologists in the pay of his mother when she was busy extrajudicially burying my fatherhood during the lengthy and financially crushing divorce wars.

He would never play sports again, this tender adolescent solemnly told me.  Besides being a pile of crap (what young boy talks like this? That's an agenda-driven repressed memories "expert" talking through the mouth of a vulnerable child), that is too bad because he was a good football player.

He was fast enough, although not as fast as my oldest boy, and cerebral enough, although not as good a student of the game as my middle child.  But he seemed to combine the most excellent traits of the other children in a superior blend of athleticism and execution and he could excel on the field of play.

I well remember him breaking off a 40-yard touchdown run as a fullback, kicking a PAT to seal a win, and knocking a halfback out of bounds on the one-yard line on a power sweep running away from his OLB position to preserve a precarious lead in the game's last minute of play.  Your birthday is coming up, Dan, and I hope to see you then for lunch at the Lost Dog.

Happy Presidents Day

I remember as a school boy in New York, we used to get Lincoln's Birthday off as well as Washington's Birthday, both in February.  Down south they celebrated Washington's Birthday but not Lincoln's, marking a holiday a month earlier as Lee-Jackson Day instead, as in Bobby and Stonewall.

This all got sorted out by marking the greatness of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday on or near his birthday, substituting it for the south's worship of their revered CSA heroes and Lincoln's exaltation in the north and renaming Washington's Birthday as Presidents Day.  Today is that very holiday and at noon, as is my custom on holidays, I'll be dining at the local gourmet pizzeria.

Two of my sons have birthdays this month also, and I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe at noon on those days too.  Perhaps one or more of them will come dine with me any of these days, my treat; I hope so because I miss them and love them as any father would love his sons.

Jimmy I last saw or heard from over a decade ago.  Danny I haven't seen nor heard from in about a decade.

It's getting time...

… to sum up the year gone by.  It's been a momentous year.  (Courtesy of David Brewster.)

Momentous for me personally because I retired.  Momentous politically, nationally and internationally because Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  (Arrgh!)

I had a bad feeling about that one, and still do.  Check out my post of October 6th while I was working for Hillary Clinton, who had a 99% chance of winning, and I couldn't stop having a nagging deja vu feeling.  (A picture of diversity that America, a nation of immigrants, rejected on November 8th.)

On the home front, I learned last summer that my youngest son got married a year earlier.  Welcome to the family, Laura.  (Laura is the one on the left.)

What I think

I felt that something wasn't right last week when I received a sudden and unexpected friend request on Facebook from a girl named Laura J. Lamberton, who I think is the wife of my estranged youngest son, Danny.  It had been nine years of radio silence for me from 27 year-old Danny, whom I last heard from when he was 18 when he wrote me a breezy missive asking me to provide full funding for four years of college tuition and fees, which I did.

Indeed, I didn't even know until a neighbor mentioned it to me this summer that Danny got married last year.  Welcome to the family, Laura, and congratulations on your wedding.

I consulted with a few friends and relatives about the friend request from Laura and they all said I should accept right away, that perhaps this was the first step in Danny reaching out to me.  I accepted, which I was inclined to do anyway because I have always been available for my children at any time (tragically I'm estranged from all three of them), and then I was unfriended by Laura within the hour, thus giving me only a momentary and diffused glimpse into Danny's world and then shutting me out again.

I wasn't surprised by this abrupt, frivolous action or made despondent by this tantalizing, almost taunting act of reaching out for a second and then slamming the door shut again with nary a word of explanation.  It's characteristic of what my children became when they were grossly manipulated as vulnerable children by grotesque adults during the divorce who were relentlessly pursuing their own hateful and spiteful agendas by using my children against me, in my opinion.

People Are Strange

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
the Doors.

I had stomach surgery last week, which anyone who reads my Facebook posts would know.  I am at home now healing nicely, thank you, expecting a complete recovery, but this gets bound up with the strangeness of my "contact" with the wife of my youngest son, Danny, who has been completely estranged from me (and all Lambertons) for a decade.

The happy couple got married a year ago, as I recently found out from a neighbor.  This information at least told me that my youngest child is alive and ostensibly doing well, information his mother stonily refused to provide to me in response to my direct questions to her on the subject when I happened to encounter her on a public street a year and a half ago (she lives two miles from me).

Last Thursday I accepted a bolt-from-the-blue friend request on Facebook from Laura J. Lamberton, the wife of Danny, and I added a personal greeting to my acceptance of her request, "Welcome to the family, Laura. Congratulations on your wedding."  I have never met the woman and know nothing about her beyond what I gleaned from perusing her FB site for a few minutes after I accepted her request.

Then I went out for a run in the midday August heat to sort out a mass of conflicting things such as my fears about the double hernia repair surgery I was undergoing the next morning, the fact that I was receiving solid information about my youngest child after so many years of darkness, and what it all meant.  By the time I returned, nine miles later and seven pounds lighter, I had been unfriended by Laura and shut out from any information about Danny again.

Was she just purposefully messing with my head on the day before I went in for surgery?  Streets are uneven when you're down.

And the point was, what, Laura?

You might know that I haven't heard from any child of mine in over seven years. This is due to the divorce, a bitter western divorce (google parental alienation syndrome, or PAS).

I recently found out from a neighbor and former friend of mine that my youngest son got married last year to "Laura."  In the past few years I have largely gotten over my natural desire of wanting to be involved with my three offspring, to whom I have always made myself accessible, but who have completely ignored all Lambertons for over a decade (these three boys, now men, didn't grow up with any Lamberton traits, they are all Rogers through and through).

Their mother and her coterie of "professionals," assassins of the childhoods of my children (you know who you are), overbore my children's wills as minors and turned the adolescents against me and all Lambertons.  It will all get sorted out eventually, I guess at Saint Peter's gate, but meanwhile research into the victims of the form of child abuse known as PAS shows that these children grow up lacking any strong emotional ties as adults and they are very insecure and prone to divorce themselves.

Last week I heard from Laura, Dan's wife, at least for an hour, when she sent me a friend request on Facebook out of the clear blue.  When I accepted it, she unfriended me within the hour.

Waiting for Godot

Where was I on the penultimate day of February during this leap year?  At my favorite pizzeria having lunch, as usual on any of my sons' birthdays.

No one showed of course.  It's a little ritual I have, because maybe one of them will show up someday.

This one, Danny, as I found out this month, is now married.  Good to know.

He coulda brought his wife, or his brothers, or any combination.  Welcome to the family, Laura.

A Throwback Thursday Post

I had posted that I recently found out that my youngest son, Danny, from whom I am sadly estranged, got married last year to Laura, whom I have never met.  Here is one of the last pictures I have of him, taken in 2002.

Here is a picture of him from around the turn of the century, a shifty fullback for a McLean football team, who could break off a long TD run.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Still Waiting

It's time to update my profile picture, which currently is from a HM I ran in September 2014 where I was elated to break two hours (actually, I broke 1:55).  The new one is from the noon hour on November 11, 2015 (obviously a holiday) where I'm having lunch as usual with an empty chair at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington, Virginia.

Someday maybe one of my three wayward sons will show up, who knows?  I am glad to have recently received news from a neighbor that my youngest son Danny, now 27, got married last year, apparently to Laura.

Not only is he alive, apparently he is well.  I wish them well.  (A picture of Dan, with Laura Madsen, that I pulled off his now de-activated FB page when he turned 18.)

A Wedding Wish

Dear Dan and Laura,

Congratulations on your wedding last year.  A neighbor told me you were married.  I'm sure you'll be very happy.  And Laura, welcome to the family.  Although I have never met you, I'm sure you'll be a wonderful wife to my youngest son.  Enjoy the cooking mat!  And Dan, good luck and I hope the shirt fits!  Since I don't know your address, I'll throw these items in the box of your stuff that I keep in the basement for now.

As ever,

Dad.

An Adam Henry?

I was running with a friend telling her my latest intel on my 3 estranged sons whom I haven't had nary a word from in almost a decade.  It turns out that the youngest one, now 27, got married over a year ago.

"You mean he got married and he didn't invite you to it or even inform you of it?" she asked.  This woman is as sharp as they come and as good a Christian as I know, but she is also a loving parent.

"What an asshole," she muttered.  She had just pronounced judgment on the boy's (now a man) actions and attitudes for the last decade and a half.

It was the first time this good friend had offered an unsympathetic outlook on any of my children.  I think her point was that this adult, regardless of how he had had his will maliciously overborne as a minor by adults during the divorce, was now a fully mature adult responsible for how he conducted himself and he had squandered a chance to effect a change in the hateful nature of the relationships in his life.

And Still More Happy Happy

Happy b'day, youngest son (pictured here with your loving Grandmother, who gave the money that allowed you to go to the Gow School, and was generous with me as well which enabled me to fully fund your college tuition and fees). I trust that you are alive (your Mother wouldn't tell me when I asked her in Nov.) and hope that you are well (she wouldn't tell me that either).

Ringing in the New Year

…with lunch at the Lost Dog at noon today.

Perhaps I'll see one or more of you there then.

Or perhaps, some other time then.

Taking Some Time

I'm off for much of December and so far I have stuck at home, running daily in Falls Church.  I'm available for coffee if anyone wants to catch up with me in person for a quarter of an hour, more or less.

Tomorrow morning (Thurs. Dec. 4th) from 9:30 a.m. until 9:45 a.m. I'll be at the Starbucks in Falls Church in the Falls Plaza (see photo) at 1218 West Broad Street (near the intersection of Route 7 and Birch Street).  I would love to have company!

Open Note to My Son

It's open season for federal benefits.  I'm glad we inched closer to the rest of the industrialized first-world league of nations and instituted Obamacare, deeply flawed as it is (can't wait to finally see the Repug's plan!), so our poor, unemployed, young and persons with pre-existing conditions can finally have some hope of treatment and not going bankrupt if they have the misfortune of becoming ill.

The ACA is a mishmash of portal glitches, expensive (for the rest of us) subsidies, high premiums or high co-pays, lost catastrophic plans and other frankenstein-creation problems and inequities but one thing is sure, not a single Republican hand went into implementing their very own plan from years earlier.  So don't blame them!  Their plan nowadays is apparently either go to the ER (expensive for the rest of us!) or Just Die (but don't participate in doctor-assisted euthanasia).

Back to the main point, open season for federal benefits, which runs through December 8th.  The federal health insurance plan is the gold standard in this country, single payor, the best mass plan bar none.  Obamacare could have been so easy, actually, we already have a single payer all-inclusive plan that works just fine that we could have used as a template and it's called Medicare.

So youngest son Danny, since you are (the only child of mine) still under 26, if you want to have the best health insurance in the country and be included in my plan (you woud be dropped automatically when you turn 26 but you would have I think 60 days to pick up an Obamacare plan) contact me before December 8th.  I live in your childhood house and my work number hasn't changed in 24 years and my cell number is the same as when I spoke with you the last time you called me, and I will be happy to pay the extra premiums until your exclusion from my plan.  I hope you and your brothers are well.

Insurance. HEY DANNY

I read an interesting article on health insurance recently.  (Health insurance doesn't really work well for its intended pool, the sick or injured, if it's profit based, as in, apparently, only the USA.)   It said that the ACA (Obamacare) is a godsend for the over-50 divorced woman.

I know about that.  I have a relative over 50 with a pre-existing condition who was dropped from her then-hubbie's coverage when he divorced her for a trophy wife and, well, she might as well have adopted the GOP plan (Just Die).

But now she has insurance, and has used it.  An Obamacare success story, although she had travails in getting signed up and it was a good thing she doesn't work currently so she could spend hours at the keyboard and on the phone trying to get signed up.

Hooray for the good guys.  And hey, youngest son, I have the best insurance in America, much better than your Mother's, it's the Federal Government Worker's single payor gold standard insurance (which should be what Obamacare adopted) so if you want to get good health coverage in that window while you're still under age 26 contact me!  (I haven't spoken to this lad in a decade, the divorce you know,  wherein in my opinion his Mother acted reprehensibly and overbore the will of a susceptible minor child in her "care" and put him under her inferior health care plan during the interminable litigation so I wouldn't know when she was taking him to yet another mental health "professional" for the purposes, in my opinion, of potential "recovered memory" testimony in court.)

Free at last!

In a few days it'll be my youngest child's birthday.  He's in his mid-twenties and I haven't seen him since he was fourteen, even though I provided for payment of 100% of his college tuition and fees. 

I do know he went to an in-state school; otherwise I have no idea where or how he is, as his Mother, who works as a first-grade school teacher less than a mile away from my house (on my local "hill" running route), refuses to provide me with any information whatsoever about him.  Divorce in Western society, which tolerates and enables the purposeful overbearing of the will of children by the most wickedly scheming parent, is absolutely unbelievable.

On Danny's birthday I'll have dinner at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington, Virginia starting at 8 pm and I invite any of my sons to join me.  We could start catching up on the lost last decade. 

For Danny I'm bringing along a book I recently read, Night by Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  It's a chilling tale about a boy and his father, two Jews amidst the holocaust, each of whom is struggling to survive overwhelming societal forces.

"All around me, there was silence now, broken only by moaning.  In front of the block, the SS were giving orders.  An officer passed between the bunks.  My father was pleading:  'My son, water...I'm burning up...my insides...'
'Silence over there!' barked the officer.
'Eliezer,' continued my father.  'Water...'
The officer came closer and shouted to him to be silent.  But my father did not hear.  He continued to call me.  The officer wielded his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head. 
I didn't move.  I was afraid, my body was afraid of another blow, this time to my head.  My father groaned once more, I heard:  'Eliezer...'
I could see that he was still breathing--in gasps.  I didn't move."

The son's broken father was taken away that night, to the crematorium.

"No prayers were said over his tomb.  No candle lit in his memory.  His last word had been my name.  He had called out to me and I had not answered. 
I did not weep, and it pained me that I did not weep.  But I was out of tears.  And deep inside of me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like:  Free at last!..."

Have a happy birthday Danny, and I hope to see you then.

See you then

Relationships are so unfathomable.  We're so forgiving of casual acquaintances, yet so intolerant with intimate relatives.

Life is too short for this attitude.  Driving to New York last fall, I called my only brother, who lives or lived in Queens, only to discover through the impersonal nature of dialing bad numbers that his cell phone number now belongs to a stranger and his home phone number has been disconnected.

"No further information is available."  Nice knowing you, Jack.

My three sons haven't communicated with me in over half a decade.  At noon on Christmas day I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington, Virginia; let's all grab lunch together.