Veteran's Day 2020

 On Veteran's Day earlier this month I went to see my main street corner man, Trevor, who holds down the intersection of Route 29 and I-66 while wearing a sign declaring himself a combat vet and asking God to bless America. I hadn't seen him in months because I don't hardly ever go by there anymore since since the pandemic began, I only go to Merrifield sometimes in the other direction from my house, which has a Home Depot, and to the grocery store a couple of miles away. He had been sitting on some intel for me for months he said when he saw me. Sharon, the mother of my three estranged children, a heartless covert narcissist (in my opinion) who turned all three boys against me by using the form of child abuse (in some people's opinion including mine) known as PAS, had been in a red car driving by weeks earlier.

Sharon, who has stonily refused to tell me anything about any of my children (even whether they're all still alive--this is a very abnormal woman), is the only link I have with any of my children, since in the consuming hatred she harbors in her flinty soul towards me she influenced our children not to communicate with a single relative on my side of the family for over 15 years. Now that's abnormal! She used to live two miles from me, a block away from Trevor's intersection, and she used to use her phony concerned Christian blather on him whenever she walked by him with her most recent husband Jim.  A couple of years ago she moved away for parts unknown, thus severing my only link to my children.  

Trevor knows cars as well as people.  Whenever I drive by, even if I'm three lanes over, he'll shout out to me, "Hey, lawyer man!"  He knows Jim drives a Jeep.  He knows Sharon drives a red convertible Mustang. The car he saw her in was red but not a Mustang nor a convertible nor a Jeep.  But he said it had North Carolina tags.  Thanks Trevor!

Then since it was almost noon and a federal holiday, I went over to Westover and went into the Lost Dog pizzeria and looked around but didn't see anyone I recognized so I left and hung out outside for awhile watching the comings and goings at the restaurant, which has limited seating inside as well as takeout.  It felt like I used to feel every holiday when I went to Sharon's residence until the youngest one turned 18 to execute upon my plain vanilla visitation, but she never cooperated with the court order; the house was always dark, the phone was never answered and no children ever came out.  For a few months initially when the children were learning under her tutelage how to become scofflaws and that court orders meant nothing (there wasn't enough money in my world to go running to court to get a hearing 6 weeks later every time this happened), the kids would come out in their stockinged feet, even in cold weather, to brightly recite, "Mom sent us out ready to go but we don't want to go with you so we're not."  And then they would skip back into her house, close the door and that was my visitation for those two weeks.  After a period of time they even abandoned that charade.  You see, research shows that children would rather keep the parent happy with whom they spend the most amount of time (she had them 83% of the time to my 17% of the time under the visitation order) and who puts the most amount of stress upon them through manipulation, oftentimes unrelenting in the case of an alienating parent, to the point where they abandon or start to hate the other parent to keep the grotesque manipulator happy.  

Anyway, I went home from the Lost Dog this Veteran's Day and cooked myself a frozen Stouffers Pizza on French Bread for lunch.  The holiday season is coming up fast so I'm starting to get sad again.  Then the three children, now all adults in their 30s, all have birthdays in January or February.  The middle child, whose birthday is next, registered to vote in Seattle a few years back, as I discovered poking around on the internet, the only child who ever moved any distance away from her.  I thought he might be trying to break her unnatural influence upon him as he started to fully mature in adulthood.  Since she's now in North Carolina, I wonder if he'll move back east and maybe follow her there.

Johnny, I Hardly Know You

My sweet middle boy, John Henry Lamberton, or Johnny, at age 1 1/2 on Nantucket at a photo shoot paid for by his grandmother, my mother. This boy, a victim as a tender minor of the form of child abuse known as Parental Alienation Syndrome perpetrated by his mother and her mercenary coterie of "professionals" here in NoVa during the Divorce, has not communicated with me in 14 years or any Lamberton in 18 years, a classic hallmark of PAS. He has a birthday this month; Johnny, if you are alive and well (your mother stonily refused to answer those questions about your condition put to her by me when I last saw her in a public venue about four years ago), know that on your birthday I'll be at the Lost Dog in Westover for lunch, come and we'll start our lifetime going forward, a boy (now adult) and his dad, one day at a time.

Columbus Day, er, Indigenous People Day 2019

Earlier this month on the Columbus Day holiday I went for lunch during the noon hour to the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, as was formerly my wont for many years on all holidays and special days when I was around, ever since my youngest child turned 18.  It was crowded when I arrived and I went around the establishment but I didn't see anyone I recognized.  I took a seat at the bar, which was wide open, where I could see anyone entering or leaving the premises, but during the ensuing hour I still didn't see anyone I recognized.

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.

A belated birthday wish

The mother of my children had a birthday while I was in Europe, she is far closer to 70 now than 60.  I hope she's happy with her new husband, she's not the type of person who feels complete unless she has a person she can subtly and totally control; I am far happier without her although I grieve over the de facto loss of my three children, now mature adults, whom she totally turned against me as tender children during the divorce in my opinion with her insidious and invidious ways of control.

They are the true victims, as studies show that the children of a parent who introduced hatred against the other parent into their hearts grow up depressed, lacking confidence and unable to form emotional bonds, even with their own children.  I haven't received much information about my children since their early teen or pre-teen years when she secretly initiated the divorce by taking them out of state on false pretenses and started their total inclusion in her camp by subtly imploring them, while she was in control, to be in solidarity all together with her against their father who was according to her of an overbearing or dissolute character.

Unfortunately from what little I do know, now one seems to be a grifter, one a drifter and one a hanger-on.  And they had such potential, absent, in my opinion, her ruinous, self-centered influence in having them sue me as children during the pendency of the divorce.

I am afraid of one, who was manipulated to threaten me during the divorce, have received virtually zero information about and upon another for over a decade, and know the third is doing his best to subtly manipulate me, in his best impersonation of her, by doing things like visiting adults he knew growing up in the immediate neighborhood but not me in the sure knowledge that this potentially hurtful activity will get back to me later in idle conversations with neighbors.  I hope your special day was truly special, as befits you, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne.

Last holiday chance

It's President's Day federal holiday today, so at noon I'll be taking lunch at The Lost Dog Cafe in Westover as is my wont on holidays and birthdays in the hopes that St. Nick will soon be there.  Of course I mean my three sons JJ&D, not Chris Kringle, who haven't communicated with me or any family member on my side since before the divorce wars were finally final last decade when my legacy and estate became a dried-out husk after years of litigation which included the three of them suing me as tender minors under the directions of their mother--an anti-public policy reprehensible stance which got "their" case, labelled a "harassment petition" by the judge and "unjustified" by the appellant court, tossed and she was assessed almost $50,000 in sanctions and costs.

Ah, divorce.  How can someone who formerly professed to love you and who bore your children turn on the other parent so underhandedly and work so viciously and long to diabolically murder the childhoods of your precious offspring by deliberately inserting them so intimately in the seemingly endless divorce litigation and its forever aftermath?

I hope to see one or more of the boys at lunch, or all of them plus Laura too, the only spouse I know about (stemming from a neighbor's vague comment plus a search on the good ol' Internet), because this is the last holiday I'm going to tilt at the windmill of possible rapprochement after a decade of dining with the empty chair.  This winter the last of the lads will turn thirty and after that I'll dispense with providing a set and customary place where on special days we can meet in a known public venue to start getting on with the first day of the rest of our lives.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a real and pernicious form of child abuse, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne.  Shame on anyone who even tangentially participates in it, including Victor, Meg, Bill, Joe and all the psychologists their mother took them to, both known and unknown to me, too numerous to list here.

I hardly knew ye, Johnny... . Good luck to you!

My middle child has a birthday this month.  Happy Birthday, Johnny.

The last time I saw Johnny was when he was about sixteen.  Now he's in his thirties.

The child-parent estrangement phenomenon, prevalent almost exclusively in the West, is called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), where one parent, most often the woman, abuses a child by overbearing his or her will as a tender-minded minor, in effect brainwashing him or her against the other parent, and it typically comes to the forefront during a divorce where the manipulating parent suborns the will of a young child for her own short-term benefit (although the effects can, as in the case of Johnny, last decades or forever), abetted by her superior custodial grant of time alone with the child thanks to our mother-knows-best inclined domestic law courts (in my case, I had Johnny and his sibling 19% of the time versus 81% of the time granted to their mother).  My divorce from Sharon Rogers Lightbourne was a doozy, lasting about half a decade and costing me at least a quarter-million dollars, my entire legacy (the litigation stopped only when there was no longer any money her unholy battery of divorce lawyers could rip and tear from my eviscerated estate) and although I still mourn the extrajudicial loss of my three children to this, in my opinion, to this covert narcissist, I don't rue one bit getting free of this woman who is, in my opinion, a totally self-centered, deviously manipulative and deceptively controlling adult female who preys upon innocent children along with her coterie of paid mercenary "professionals" to ruin their lives in pursuit of her selfish goals.

The last time I had any communication from the lad was when he wrote to me upon his graduation from high school asking me to provide full funding for his four years of college tuition and all university fees, which I did, with nary a word of thanks afterwards.  I stumbled on-line across a 2016 voter registration listing for him in a Seattle precinct, so I am glad that he alone of my three sons was able to break free of his, in my opinion, destructively dominating mother and move as far away from her as possible, as she lives across the country from him on the East Coast with her second husband.

Children

I still try to keep up with my three children, all sons, none of whom I have communicated with in at least a decade, who in my opinion all became victims as minors during the nuclear divorce of a form of child abuse perpetrated by their mother and her coterie of agenda-driven "professionals" known as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS).  This phenomenon, a form of brainwashing in which caregivers to tender minds dependent upon those trusted persons overwhelm the childrens' will, manifested itself in the Lamberton case in the form of unjustified, unreasonable and unremitting extreme hatred towards me and everyone in my family.  (The noon hour on Christmas Day.)

One lives next door in Arlington, I think, or maybe in Baltimore, another got married two years ago and moved to Chicago to be able to hang on to his capable and ambitious wife, or maybe they've moved back to Richmond, and the third moved to the Left Coast I think, the only one able to escape the thrall of his mother.  I know nothing else about any of them, I doubt if I would recognize these children now grown into men if I walked past them on the street, and I don't even really know if they are well or even alive because their mother who lives two miles away from me (although her house is now for sale), and who is a covert narcissist in my opinion, stonily refuses to disclose to me a single thing about them or their welfare.  (Twelfth hour of November 11th.)

But on every Federal Holiday, actual day of celebration and birthday of theirs when I am in town I have lunch at noon at the same local restaurant in the neighborhood they grew up in, hoping someone someday will join me.  I have always dined, unfortunately, with the ever-present Empty Chair.  (The empty chair this Columbus Day.)

Hope springs eternal, and I love them and have forgiven them.  Maybe New Year's Day, eh boys?  (High noon on Labor Day.)

Columbus Days

It's Columbus Day tomorrow.  My neighbors are citizens from South America originally, and there is no mistaking their loathing for the Christopher Columbus holiday, for introducing dominant Europeans to the "New World."

I remember the Columbus Day holiday, during the first few months of my divorce in 2001, when I took my boys to Columbus, Ohio, to visit my sister.  When I came back, and returned the boys within my allotted time, the most vulnerable boy, our youngest, was coaxed by his manipulating covert narcissistic (in my opinion) mother into complaining that he came back "tired" and couldn't do his homework.

She called the court-appointed "meditator" that night and this charlatan psychologist, Victor Ellon of Fairfax, who billed a four-hour session with her (!) on the day I took my kids off for my summer month with them, issued a late-night letter to the court suspending my visitation until a hearing two months later.  This forever ruined my relationship with my three children, the prevalent Mother Knows Best attitude of courts effectively ending my fatherhood.

Danny, you totally manipulated young man, now married, I hope you are well and that your achieving wife keeps you.  Hello Johnny, the young man whom my ex-wife said was the most like me, and I remember when you came over to cull my military book collection, and I practically never heard from you again after you took those books home.  And Jimmy, living nearby, loathing me and skating personally, maybe I'll see you tomorrow at noon.

Happy Birthday!

It was a Friday evening, and I was there on the sidewalk outside her (our) house, adhering to the sidewalk rule (if you go onto the porch and knock on the door, the police are likely to come sirening down the street 2 minutes later in response to a specious 9-11 call that you're enraged and breaking down the door), awaiting any action to my call to voicemail announcing that I was here to pick up my children for visitation pursuant to a longstanding court order.  Out of the gloam, their mother, Sharon, came down the cement stairs from the house to the sidewalk, with her date trailing behind, as is customary with her menfolk.

"What are you doing here?"  "I'm here to pick up my children for weekend visitation, because this is my time to be with them pursuant to the court order governing this, and I expect them to be here ready to go with me."

"Well, I made them ready to go with you but they refused to come out so you can leave."  In my opinion, she lied (again) because the house behind her was totally dark.

"Come on," she ordered to the man hanging back behind her, "let's go."  He came down the stairs upon her command and got into the driver's seat of the vehicle at the curb as she climbed into the passenger side while I retreated (in order to not present a "menacing" appearance; if you get divorced, this crap will become standard fare soon enough if the woman plays the female victim card as Sharon fallaciously did, and for long while she got the advance to go card) to the asphalt fifteen feet behind this vehicle.

I practically always carry a camera.  It was out, and charged, ready to snap a picture.

The vehicle came to life; it had twelve or more feet in front of it to put it out into the traffic lane going forward, unobstructed.  I was a State Trooper for seven years and I pay attention to these sort of details.

The back-up lights came on the vehicle and it roared backwards.  I was transfixed in place with fear as the 2-ton metal monster closed the distance to me rapidly.

 Well, the man killing machine didn't back over me, and the frightfully close steel behemoth was thrust back into drive at the last moment and driven away.  Hey birthday boy, what happened in the cab at that moment, if that was you dating this covert narcissist (in my opinion) that night, did you actually choose your own course finally at the last split-second, or did you just chicken out in your (perhaps commanded) aggression?

The Frogman

It returned to my world on the day before Father's Day.  A fighting frogman, a black plastic warrior long buried in the mossy gravel of the driveway, hidden away for almost two decades.

My middle son, Johnny, whom I haven't spoken with nor heard from since 2004, used to play with plastic army men in the yard when he was little.  His mother used to say he was the most like me of my 3 sons; I used to play interminably with green (and tan) little plastic army men when I was little.

I ran into his mother, my ex, on a public sidewalk a couple of years ago and asked her if Johnny was alive, well, married, had children, and where he lived, because I don't know the answer to any of those 5 questions.  She stonily refused to answer even a single word, and I walked away having confirmed, in my mind, that she was the destructive covert narcissist I had come to discover her to be, in my opinion.

It's ironic that this soldier returned to the fold on the eve of Father's Day, to be placed on the shelf in Johnny's bedroom with 4 or 5 other toy soldiers who have come home in a similar fashion over the years.  Perhaps someday the prodigal son, his will having been overborne by his mother and her coterie of accomplices during the lengthy divorce when he was a vulnerable minor, in my opinion, will return to the fold also.

Wuthering Heights

I am currently reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  She died shortly after she wrote this classic, one year in fact, when she was barely 30.  As one reviewer stated, "She poured the secret thoughts of her tormented soul into her one prose creation."

Here's a paragraph I read that I paid close attention to.  The malevolent Heathcliff, speaking to the faithful servant Nellie, the story's main narrator, of the young, practically helpless "whelp" that he created, Heathcliff says of his own son:

"I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!  But that consideration is sufficient; he's as safe with me , and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own.  . . .  I do regret, however, that he so little deserves the trouble; if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride, and I'm bitterly disappointed with the whey faced whining wretch!"

A classic passage in a great novel about a disappointed father's reflections on a child of his.

I Got Intel Today

None of my three sons of has spoken to me in over seven years or to any Lamberton in over ten years, classic Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS).  She won't even tell me if they're well or even alive (can you see why I don't regret being divorced from her?).

Today I ran past our old house a few miles away and spoke with a former neighbor I spotted who told me she had heard that my oldest, now in his late 20s, has or had made a lot of money in on-line gambling.  Since he never went to college (I own a prepaid tuition plan with him as beneficiary which pays 100% of his tuition & fees, which the IRS has threatened to vacate this year for non-use due to its tax preferential treatment) I guess, if true, it's good he's "gainfully employed."

And with Obamacare, now he can get health insurance too.  Is this a great country or what?

It was a great run, going into Arlington through parks and past the two houses we used to live in.  And it's always beneficial to hear news, any news, about your children.

Schoolteachers

I watched a news report extolling the school teachers who were heroes in the Newtown massacre, who shielded their children as the insane killer stalked the halls of the school.  Some died, with living children under their bodies.

Heroes.  I know they're in heaven with the children taken from us that day, along with the brave principal and school administrator who tried to take out the armed crazed killer at the onset.

These women gave their last full measure for their youthful charges.  I weep for them, and the children killed.

My ex-wife is an elementary school teacher in my home town and I hope she would be so selfless and unselfish as befits her profession.  But having witnessed her actions in our nuclear divorce litigation, wherein she brought our three minor children into the front lines of the proceedings which so radicalized them that they haven't communicated with a single Lamberton in years, where she used these children in an unconscionable manner to merely advance her selfish and shortsighted purposes and ruined what should have been their happy childhoods and warped perhaps forever their adult associations, somehow I doubt it.

What are your principles?

I performed another useless act today, going at noon on Christmas day to a restaurant, having invited my three estranged sons by internet (I don't know their addresses, emails or phone numbers) to a lunch "date" I set up by this blog.  Their Mother, a first grade school teacher, refuses to give me any information about them (even whether they are well or not).

Of course none of them showed.  PAS, a form of child abuse, lives and thrives in our Western world.

Here's my FB post from today: Sorry you couldn't make our lunch "date" today JJ&D. Merry Christmas. Would love to see you sure wouldn't want to be you.

I'm 60. I treasured my relationship with my Dad, who died when he was 61.

Happy Birthday Dad

Last month was my Dad's 86th birthday. He died a quarter century ago when when I was 34.

In the 20th century, Winston Churchill was the greatest person I knew about. In my life, my Dad was the greatest person I knew.

Lawrenceville standout, Peleliu veteran, Okinawa veteran, Carleton grad, Yale Law School grad, Cleary Gottlieb partner, civil rights activist, fairest man I ever knew (he made me believe the Rule of Law was attainable and would make all things possible, and that there were actually men who had no price), father, husband and heroic in death. He died in my presence, and all I could say as this transcendental occurrence transpired was "God bless you, Dad."

Maybe he went to prepare our place by the right side of the Lord in the House of my Father. I remember selfishly thinking at age 34 that the cushion between me and God had been removed.

He was 61. I'll be 60 within three months.

I came within 20 seconds of drowning two years ago and feel sorry for my three adult kids, who haven't communicated with me since before they were of the age of majority. This pretty commonplace Western tragedy is directly the work of their mother, who overbore their wills as adolescents during the divorce for her own purposes. Mother knows best, and American courts lap it up. She's a true feminist's nightmare.

If I hadn't made my peace with my Dad during those five months when he was terminally ill, I would not be a man. Did I say I was sorry for my three sons who are letting their opportunity to know their Dad slip away?

Anyway, James Wilson Lamberton, Minnesotan, son, brother, husband, father, soldier, scholar, wise man, lawyer, great man, American hero.

Ol' Man River

This month saw the birthday of my middle son, John H. Lamberton. Next month will see the birthdays of my oldest child, James B. Rogers, and my youngest child, Daniel W. Lamberton.

I invited Johnny, whom I haven't seen nor heard from in years (he and his brothers became estranged from me in a classic case of Parental Alienation Syndrome foisted upon them as children by, in my opinion, their mother, Sharon R. Lightbourne), to have dinner with me at a nearby restaurant on his birthday but he never showed. He's an adult now and lives with his choices, and personally I think it unseemly that he asked me to arrange for full payment of his college tuition and fees and unprincipled that he accepted every cent of the payments I provided for when he regards me as so odious.

I haven't seen nor heard from Jimmy in half a decade now, nor from Danny in almost four years, and nobody in my entire family has heard from any of them in eight or nine years. But parental love is so strong that it transcends individual grief and always seeks to succor familial victims of abuse (in my opinion PAS is child abuse). (Right: Jimmy, striker and sometime goalie for the McLean Sting, circa 1999.)

I use this forum out of necessity because their mother refuses to disclose their addresses to me; so Jimmy, please join me for lunch on your birthday at noon at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover, and Danny, please join me for dinner on your birthday at 8 pm at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover. We'll start out a day at a time as father and son(s) in living out the rest of our lives from there. (Left: Danny watches as Johnny reaches into a lobster tank at a restaurant in Maine, circa 1999.)

Dear Johnny

My middle child Johnny has graduated from college I think, at least he used up all four years of the pre-paid college tuition plan that I purchased for his benefit. For years, the annual statement from the plan administrator is the only scrap of information I've received about my three children after a contentious divorce a decade ago.

Sober, responsible, earnest Johnny most resembled me with his heartfelt nature, exhibiting a great concern for others (a trait in a child that is subject to gross manipulation by conniving adults) and displaying an interest in military history. As a boy, I used to conduct massive battles with little green army men in my bedroom; Johnny did the same in our yard when he was a child. Occasionally I'll come across a long-lost faded little plastic soldier in the yard and it breaks my heart as I think about Johnny.

He is an adult now and the choices he makes are his own now. I recently posted the following fare-thee-well to him on FB.

My middle son Johnny was most like me, his Mother observed. My favorite description of him came from his football coach at a year-end team banquet: "Johnny was always nearby whenever he wasn't in the game, and he had a question about every move I made and an answer for every question I asked." The first child of mine to act upon his desperate love for his Mother and end a relationship with me, I miss him. I love you Johnny, wish you a happy and prosperous life and was blessed to know you.

Love Dad.