How Many

I called a friend today, a former running buddy who got married and moved out of DC; he asked me how things were going. I said, "Everything sucks." 

I was losing money in my retirement fund, down 45% this year alone despite this month which was the most robust in 30 years, I ate my Thanksgiving dinner alone (oh, doesn't that warm your heart Sharon!) and the holiday season was upon us which keeps me depressed from Veterans Day till March. You see, I have 3 children, all now in their early thirties, who threw me over and ceased all communication with me or any Lamberton due to the divorce two decades ago thanks to her insidious, invidious utilization of PAS back then when they were tender children and my three children all have their birthdays in January or February.

This makes me sad every holiday season. So my friend, a very smart man, embarked upon an enlightening discussion thinly disguised as a quest to find the winter of my discontent and he asked me to list three things that were good in my life now.

I was hard pressed to say what made me feel uplifted currently but I finally settled upon the very important and blessed situations that a) I have enough food to eat (no food insecurity); b) I have enough liquids stored to drink for several months if necessary; and c) all of my five siblings are alive (which is more than I know about my three children). We simultaneously decided that I wished I knew more about the welfare of my real family (my kids) during this lugubrious season; and I decided further that it would be decent or human to know not if I have any grandchildren, but how many I have, and how they are.

Dirty tricks

Divorce Dirty Tricks 101, as practiced by an expert:

Send the children out for their every-other weekend visitation without their daily prescription medication, so the father will have to utilize his lawyer at $300/hour to schedule a hearing two months later to resolve the issue of the mother not providing him with adequate, or any, prescribed pills for the children, making sure to write a letter on the last visitation Friday before the hearing which describes how she has (just) provided him with said medication (after a month and a half of not doing so) so that he can cancel the hearing which has cost him thousands already.

When under a duty to let the father know where the children are at all times, by either communication in person or by phone or in necessary circumstances, by written communication, mail a letter while leaving town after school on Friday, describing where the children will be during a three-day holiday weekend, using a nearby pre-scouted mailbox that the Post Office picks up from at 11a.m. on M-F but not on weekends or holidays, so that the children can see how cooperative she is but which written communication will get to him the following Wednesday at the earliest, days after the children are already back in town.

When the father calls on his cell phone (never answer his calls of course) and leaves a voice-mail asking if the mother would bring to him the spare key she has to the jointly owned pickup he uses (while she is exclusively using the far-more comfortable family van) because he has accidentally locked his key in the vehicle while miles from home, put the children in the car so they can see how cooperative and kind she is and leave the key in his mailbox but don't tell him it is there, so he can find it days later after considerable expenditure in time and money to get a second key already.

When the mother's lawyer tells the father's lawyer how she doesn't have enough money at hand to provide for the children for the following week, and he gratuitously brings over two $500 money orders and leaves them inside a padded envelope taped to her top porch stair so she is sure to see it when she returns home (as well as leaving her a VM), and as he sees the envelope flapping in the wind, he puts a skipping stone inside the envelope to weigh it down so it won't blow away, spend the next year of litigation writing in practically every motion how the father has menacingly sent her rocks in the mail.

Send the children out in their stockinged feet and shirtsleeves for their court-ordered visitation when their father arrives on a cold winter Friday afternoon to announce by a well-practiced refrain that "Mom sent us out ready to go with you but we don't want to, so we're not coming," whereupon they scamper, like skipping, jolly little elves, back into her house and shut the door.

Don't tell the father about a gasoline and matches episode in a park involving one of the children while under her care, and, I suppose, the police, and when the father lights a couple of hand-held sparklers in the driveway with said child on the Fourth of July, have her unscrupulous-at-best divorce lawyer William Reichhardt of Fairfax bring this sparkler "incident" to the attention of the court at a subsequent hearing as an example of how unfit as a parent the father is in light of the prior incendiary issue in the park (unknown to him till that moment in the courtroom).

Send the children to several undisclosed psychologists (which is contrary to the prevailing custody order), at least one of whom was subsequently disciplined or maybe disbarred for general incompetence, until one finally had to report to the GAL that one of the children, in my opinion the child most vulnerable and put-upon for these suggestive get-dirt-on-dad attempts, had expressed violent ideation against himself, his father, or both if he had to go on visitation pursuant to the plain-vanilla court-ordered schedule.  This abuse of this susceptible tender child breaks my heart even now.

Withdraw a child who is a special ed student from his public high school during the summer and send him to an out-of-state boarding school that fall which the father only learns about when he arrives in September at the public school for a long-scheduled IEP meeting which, unbeknownst to him till that moment, has long been cancelled by the school as no longer being necessary.

Shall I go on?  Even a decade and a half later, my heart practically seizes up at these rending memories, and there are several even worse examples of despicable, unconscionable adult behavior in my opinion that went into brainwashing these now-adult children who haven't spoken to their father or any member of his bloodline in over a decade. 

But congratulations on achieving full retirement age, Sharon!  (BTW, how are our kids?  And their kids?)

What Are You Doing?

"What are you doing here?" The mother of the man's children called out from the elevated pathway on the lawn above in the gathering gloom of dusk to ask why he was there.

"I’m here to pick up my minor children for our court-ordered visitation, because it’s 6 P.M. on the day before a holiday. Please send them out ready to go with me."

The man had approached his former house after parking his car up the block, cell phone in hand in preparation to stopping on the public sidewalk and calling the house to leave a message saying that he was outside to begin his visitation with his children, who lived there with their mother.  On every other weekend and before every holiday for years now no one had ever answered his calls, returned his messages or sent any children out. 

In the divorce wars, although children are loved they are not in fact priceless.  There isn't enough money in the world, nor time in eternity, for an alienated parent to keep running to court to effectively deal with a scofflaw, dissembling and manipulative counterpart.

Always, the house was dark. This time it was too, but two adults, the mother and a strange man, were coming out of the house as the father walked up on the public sidewalk.

When he saw the father, the man shrank back towards the house.  The mother stopped on the walkway above and said, "They're not here."

"Why not?" the father asked. "The visitation order is quite clear so there must have been some emergency circumstance which you didn’t communicate to me beforehand as required which prevented them from being here ready to go with me on visitation."

"I’m not going to discuss this with you," the woman said. That was her standard answer whenever the father attempted to speak with her about her extra-judicial interference with his relationship with his children.

The woman turned imperiously to the man standing behind her and snapped, "Let’s go."  He sprang to her side and they swept down the stairs towards the father.

The father retreated off a few feet into the street so there could be no subsequent claim that he had" intimidated" them.  He stood in the parking lane about fifteen feet behind a parked jeep.

"Get in," the mother ordered the man.  He climbed the driver’s side of the jeep as she entered on the passenger's side.

The father stood still as the engine came to life, so as not to "startle" them.  Suddenly the back-up lights came on and the car powered in reverse rapidly towards him.

He stood rooted in place by fear as the vehicle backed up swiftly at him.  At the last instant the jeep was thrown into drive, and with a jerk it careened into the traffic lane and roared away.

As he watched the taillights dwindle and wink out down the street, the father speculated on whose idea it was to bluff running over him.  He decided that it must have been a failure to follow through on a command instead.

Letter to the Pre-Paid College Tuition Board

I purchased three pre-paid college tuition plans in the mid-90s for my three sons.  Two of the plans have been used up.  The last communication I had from the two affected sons was when each one wrote immediately following his graduation from high school to ask me to activate the plan for his benefit, which I did.  Each plan pays 100% of the tuition and fees for all four years at any state school.  (It would have been nice if they would have invited me to their graduations but hey, these boys were raised by their mother to apparently be just like her.)

My oldest son has not communicated with me since the day Peyton Manning was named Super Bowl MVP.  My plan for which he is beneficiary sits unused.  I have been told that pursuant to IRS rules, these tax-preferential plans have a 10-year shelf life and this plan will be voided next year, absent extraordinary circumstances.  I have notified the Virginia Plan Board that the extraordinary circumstances for my plan are a court order, as noted in the letter below.  The board scoffs at a mere county-court order.  So it goes.  Below is the letter I mailed to the Virginia Board today.

March 17, 2013

Virginia 529 College Savings Plan
9001 Arboretum Parkway
Richmond, VA 23236

Dear VA527 Program Benefits,

I am in receipt of a form letter from you dated 3/5/13, referencing the plan I own which has "James B. Lamberton" as Beneficiary. The Beneficiary of this plan that I own is my oldest child.

In it you state that according to your records for account number [***], "the beneficiary listed above may soon begin preparing to attend college." You also enclosed an Intent to Enroll Form, which you state that I "and the beneficiary will be required to sign and return to [you] by May 20, 2013 in order to initiate the use of" my contract benefits. As I am in possession of no information whatsoever that my plan’s beneficiary "may soon begin preparing to attend college," I will not be signing and returning the stated form to you at this time.

Please be advised that pursuant to the "Final Decree Of Divorce A Vinculo Matrimoni Equitable Distribution And Permanent Support" ("ED Order") issued by the Circuit Court of Arlington in Sharon R. Lamberton v. Peter W. Lamberton, Chancery No. 01-311 on 11/1/02 (A COPY OF WHICH IS ENCLOSED FOR YOUR NOTIFICATION):

Husband is found to be the owner of three fully paid for Virginia Pre-Paid Tuition Plans (VPP), being one for the education of each of the parties’ three children, and insofar as their disposition may remain under his control, he is ordered to maintain them in their present state pending the possible use of these funds by the children for the acquisition of a college education pursuant to the terms of the Plans.

You are hereby notified that pursuant to the above authority, you must maintain indefinitely the VPP Plan which I own of which James B. Lamberton is the Beneficiary, until he chooses to use its benefits.
As I have had no communication from my oldest son James in over six years despite my best efforts to contact him, and am in possession of no reliable information about his current intentions regarding the use of my Plan’s benefits, anything less than personal knowledge on my part that my Plan will be used pursuant to its terms by the proper person will be insufficient for me to sign and return an Intent to Enroll Form to you by any date.

You are on notice that you may not terminate the Plan nor change it in any aspect. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Peter W. Lamberton
[address]

'Tis The Season

Christmas time is upon us.  For a person like me without children, it's a depressing time.

Actually I have three sons, ages 26, 24 and 23, and I presume they are well although their Mother refuses to share any information with me about their well being or even their addresses (she's a first grade school teacher in my town).  None of my now-adult children has communicated with me for over half a decade, or with any Lamberton for almost a decade.

Cutting off one side of the family is a classic hallmark of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which some people (but not me!) contend is a form child abuse perpetrated by the primary custodial parent using the power inuring to the chief caregiver to insidiously overbear the will of emotionally vulnerable children.  In my case, the standard final decree which was issued following the custody trial (joint custody & visitation every other weekend) gave me 16% of the total time with my children, which within a year had been subverted extra-judicially to zero percent of the time by the invidious actions of the coterie of "professionals" aligned with (paid for by) the Mother (their sick influence whipped one of my children into such a frenzy that he expressed violent ideation against me and himself--shame on all you "professionals").

But don't take my word about these divorce wars, read for yourself the findings of the Virginia Appellate Court upholding almost $50,000 in costs and sanctions being assessed against the Mother for her actions (pages 5-6 are especially revealing).  And have a Merry Christmas with your families, you all.

Dear Jimmy

My youngest child recently had a birthday that took him beyond his twenty-first year. Now it is time for my children to contact me, if they ever care to, rather than for me to always be fruitlessly reaching out to them on every major holiday. They know where I live. (Their Mother refuses to give me their addresses, or indeed, any information at all about them.)

I last heard from any of them in 2007. I last saw any of them in 2006. That's PAS in the West.

Losing your children is devastating. The only thing that has allowed me to move on after years of personal devastation is a growing Christian belief. I attend church now frequently and reflect upon the inscrutable nature of faith.

I forgive them all, even the scumbag divorce lawyers who, in my opinion, preyed upon children and were the enablers of this family-wrecking.

Last month my oldest child had a birthday and I published the following fare-thee-well to him on FB. Those posts, limited to 220 characters, are necessarily short.

I remember Jimmy Lamberton dribbling down the pitch with two minutes to go in a scoreless championship game while being jostled by a midfielder, juking around a sweeper and scoring upon the previously unbeaten goalie. It was a beautiful run. He had just joined the McLean Sting, a select soccer team, which thus won the tourney. Happy birthday Jimmy Rogers and have a good and prosperous life. I'm going to miss you but I was blessed to be your father.

Love Dad.

Congratulations, Johnny.

Sunday is Father's Day. For me, holidays always suck because I have three children, who I love and have fully provided for from birth through full payment of their college tuition and fees, and not a one of them has talked to me in seven years.

They all walked out of my life permanently in a show of support for their Mother when she actively made them her close allies in our interminable nuclear divorce litigation. It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome ("PAS"), it's a form of child abuse, it's devastating to everyone involved and it happens when the alienating parent, usually the primary caregiver, instills an us-against-him feeling in the immature minor children.

I think my middle child graduated from college in Richmond this month, because the annual summary I get from the Virginia pre-paid tuition plan that I own for their benefit showed that on January 1st he had used up 3 1/2 years of his four years of eligibility. As with his high school graduation, I wasn't invited to this ceremony.

Why would you inform the person who purchased the plan that paid for 100% of your college tuition and fees (no college loans, yay!) of your graduation? This is a special graduate; I am imagining him now, walking across the stage, receiving his degree, flipping the tassel, tossing his mortar board into the air . . . .

Isn't Education More Important than Getting Even?

Education has always been important to my family. My father and brother went to Yale. My uncle went to Princeton, and I have sisters who went to Columbia, NYU and Carleton. I went to UVA.

Unfortunately, I lost all ability to exert any parental guidance over any of my three children due to parental alienation syndrome or PAS (which some people term as child abuse) during my interminable divorce. None of my children has visited me, or communicated with a single relative of mine, since 2003. The last communication of any sort I had with any of them was in 2007.

Occasionally I pick up scraps of information about them from casual conversations during chance encounters with nodding acquaintances. More intel came in the mail this month. The Virginia Pre-paid College Tuition Plan sent me its yearly summaries. I own three fully-paid plans with them as the beneficiaries.

One child, who went to the premier technological public high school in the country, has all four years left on his plan. He eschewed going to college. This is a shame, and I hope all those divorce lawyers and "professionals" that my ex-wife used to foster his total alienation from my family are proud. They all at least have educational degrees which enable them to lucratively indulge in, in my opinion, childhood-destroying and future-wrecking quackery.

One child, who went to a highly-regarded public high school in the area, has almost fully used up the plan I purchased which pays for all of his tuition and fees. He is apparently on track to graduate from a state university in June. I wish him well, and if he lets me know when and where his graduation will be, I'll be proud to come.

One child, who was sent off by his Mother to an out-of-state boarding school run by her cousin, has half of his plan's eligibility left. This must mean that he dropped out of college in September. Too bad! Yet another young casualty of the divorce wars!

A sighting.

I am a father, you know. Of three sons in their twenties, all childhood victims of Parental Alienation Syndrome. None of them has communicated with me or any relative of mine for years.

I occasionally pick up snatches of information about them from chance run-ins with local nodding acquaintances. For years I coached my sons' house soccer teams, so sometimes I run into the parents of former players of mine. I always ask about their son, and occasionally get a tidbit of information back, gleaned from a chance encounter they had with one of my children. I call these sightings.

I had a sighting last night. At the grocery store, a parent related a recent brief encounter with my oldest child. As I politely listened I was screaming inside, He's alive!

You see, unlike most parents, I don't live in dread of receiving a call that always seems to come in the middle of the night. Rather, I live in fear of never receiving such a call, that someday I'll be speaking with a casual acquaintance and hear the words, I'm so sorry!

Their Mother, a local elementary school teacher busy imparting values to impressionable young children, refuses to provide me with any information about our children, including their addresses. I send their holiday cards back to my house and toss them in a box.

It's hell not knowing whether your children are even alive, knowing you'll never know about any occurrence affecting them until far after the event and then only by chance. Only in America.

An open letter to my son Dan.

Dear Dan,

Hey, let’s get together for lunch at the Lost Dog Café in Westover at noon this Labor Day! I haven’t heard from you in over two years, or seen you in over six years, so it’s about time for us to catch up!

I used to have an address for you, the house in Arlington where you resided with your Mother ever since she filed for divorce from me in 2001. I always mailed letters and made phone calls to you at that house, although for years they have all gone unreturned and unanswered.

Last fall she sold the house and disconnected the phone. When I asked your Mother for your new address, she refused to give it to me. So to invite you out to a restaurant on Labor Day, as I have done on every major holiday and birthday for years, I have to resort to this open letter on the Internet.

I am sorry that the Court had cause to find that you three minor boys were involved in the divorce "up to [your] armpits." After saying he had a pretty good idea of how that happened, the Judge worried that you and your two brothers, all minors, were going to suffer great emotional distress and permanent harm if you were not removed from the litigation.

Unfortunately, four months later you three boys removed your little life savings from the bank and "retained" (at $425 an hour!) divorce lawyer Joseph A. Condo of McLean, VA to sue me for a supposed fiduciary breach. Since you were too tender in years to be on court papers, your Mother stood in for you as "next friend."

I haven’t spent a meaningful moment with any of you since "your" case was thrown out as a "harassment petition" and your Mother was sanctioned almost $10,000 in this "attempt to interfere with [my] relationship with [my] children."

That was in 2003, and the litigation finally died down in 2005 after the resulting appeal, which Condo signed the pleadings for and argued along with divorce lawyer William B. Reichhardt of Fairfax, was found to be procedurally barred, without merit and/or unjustified and your Mother paid almost $40,000 of my costs as ordered.

I have family news to relate to you about all of the aunts and uncles and cousins etc. on my side of the family, none of whom has heard from you in over half a decade. Now that you’re an adult, please consider that some persons might view this type of severe (and unwarranted) attitude on your part as showing a lack of compassion, or even humanity.

So don’t be square, be there;
at the café, on Labor Day;
at twelve noon, see you soon!

Love, Dad.

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!

King of Pop

MJ is dead. What a tragedy. There was a strange guy, but what an artist!

I feel a special connection to his Thriller album because my first born was colicky. For ninety days Jimmy cried. Mysteriously on the ninety-first day he stopped crying and became a delightful baby. But this is a common tale among old wives.

The album Thriller had recently come out, with its long rendition of the suspense-laden, building story line of the single, Thriller. Vincent Price's voice-over in the song is masterful, exciting and very grabbing. Him laughing at the end is a perfect climax.

The boy's Mother, bless her for these parenting efforts, used to put the needle of the turntable on the Thriller track of the LP when Jimmy would cry and as the song slowly built to its shattering end, dance with the balling Jimmy in her arms. Mysteriously, or miraculously, Jimmy would soon stop crying, smile, start to coo and then laugh as Sharon moved around the room dancing while Michael's voice issued from the stereo speakers.

All too soon it would be over, Jimmy would look around, his chin would tremble, and his Mother would drop the needle on the well-worn beginning of the song's groove again and the joyous whirlwind would start all over again for Jimmy.

Those are some of the good memories I have of those two.

The Thriller album is, along with U2's The Joshua Tree, the only album created after 1980 that I regularly listen to. It's not on a par with the best, most influential album of all time, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, but it's close.

A Memorial Day 3K

It's been a long and eventful weekend, full of running.

Friday I did eight miles of hillwork. Next month I am running Leg 2 of the DeCelle Memorial Lake Tahoe Relay on a team assembled by my old running buddy, Bex. Described by her as the second toughest of the seven legs, Leg 2 is 8.4 miles long at over 6,000 feet elevation, with the last half being one long hill where the highway rises from lake level to climb 700 feet up a mountain pass.

Bex told all the team members to get busy working hills. Not Born to Run used to call Bex the L'il Dictator when she lived in DC, so I paid heed to Bex's admonishment.

Saturday I did my club's Saturday Long Run. It was a hot day and the schedule called for 12 miles on the Mall. I only ran 10K, however. I made it to Capitol Hill and ran up that incline for hillwork, but then, enervated by the humidity, I went to my nearby office and worked for awhile before taking Metro to a two-hour meeting I had scheduled with other club officials for after the run.

Sunday morning I ran ten miles on the W&OD with a friend who was in town for the weekend. She was bemoaning a 3:29 marathon she ran last month, impacted by a hamstring injury, while I was bemoaning a 4:15 marathon I ran last month, impacted by a toe injury. That shows the disparity in our running abilities.

We had a nice time catching up, although I cringed when she commented , "Eight forty-five miles are just perfect for today." I was barely holding on at that pace as the miles rolled on by.

Since we ran west from Falls Church, we traversed two pedestrian bridges over the beltway highway network. People were lining the overpass railings, waving to the scores of motorcycle riders of Rolling Thunder as they passed by underneath in a steady thrum of deep-sounding engines, heading into the District for a Memorial weekend tribute to fallen and missing American service personnel, flags snapping and popping from the back of their machines.

At church service later that morning, the priest, who had been delayed in getting to the service by traffic tie-ups associated with the hundreds of motorcyclists, tied the phenomena of Rolling Thunder to the formation of the Christian Church. Once, each movement was outside of the culture, he said, and innovative although misunderstood or even feared. Then each became institutionalized, and no longer shaped or changed society, rather, society shaped and changed it. Each movement became an institution, a very different thing, with interests to protect rather than to promote. Dare to be different, he urged.

I like this Episcopal priest and closely listen to each of his sermons. In another time, my time, he would have been termed a hippie, maybe. That's the Episcopal Church I remember growing up with, a big tent with room for all. Afterwards during communion, I reflected upon the memory of my father and my mother, who passed in 1986 and 1999 respectively, and others.

I reflected upon upon the following letter, slightly edited for length, I sent last week to the last known address of my youngest son, Danny. He no longer lives there at his Mother's old address, a house which was sold this past autumn. My ex steadfastly refuses to give me the current address of any of our children. She "won" the divorce wars, see, because my children disdain me. I no longer try to communicate with my two other sons anymore, since they are both over 21 now and have ignored all of my communications for years.

May 2009

Dear Dan,

How are you? I am fine. I hope things are well with you. How is school?

I hope you were able to get something nice with that birthday check I sent to you. Is everything going well with the pre-paid college tuition plan that I own for your benefit? Are 100% of your tuition and fees getting paid by it? If not, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

I spent a quiet birthday last month, making supper at home and opening a couple of cards I received from your aunts. A friend gave me an Obama wristwatch for my birthday, which was kind of cute. It doesn’t make a good stopwatch, though, so it’s not good for running.

A week from now is Memorial Day. Remember when we ran in the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K race together a decade ago? That was fun. With all the soccer teammates of yours we ran by that morning, I could have conducted a team practice at the finish line.

I have run that Memorial Day 3K race for the last several years. I would love to run it with you again, this year. We could go out for breakfast afterwards at the Original Pancake House in Falls Church. We can meet on my front porch on Monday at 8:45 and go over to the start line from there. Bring your UnderArmour togs!

Please call me and let me know whether or not you’d like to do this, so I can make plans. I look forward to hearing from you.

I miss you! Gosh, it’s been over half a decade since I last saw you for more than a few seconds, and over two years since I last spoke with you. I haven’t heard from you in any fashion since the summer of 2007; I hope you’ve gotten all the Christmas/birthday/special-event cards and presents I have sent to you. I remember when that divorce lawyer in Fairfax [William Reichhardt], amazingly, was taking mail I sent to you and turning it into a court exhibit! I hope you get this, perhaps your mail is still being manipulated by others, even though you are no longer a child like you were then.

I’ll fill you in on all your cousins, aunts, etc. on my side of the family when you call. There isn't a single one of them who has heard from you in over half a decade! You can’t be mad at all of my blood-relatives, having accepted the trust fund that my mother scrimped to amass and set aside to be used for your benefit.

I am enclosing some snapshots, of Uncle Jack, your room, my best marathon, and last Christmas, to help you start catching up!

Anyway, no need to thank me for that birthday check. I’m glad you received it! I just look forward to speaking with you soon.

Love,

Dad.

8:45 on Monday morning came and went with an aching sameness. I went and ran the 3K race in 13:47. I scanned the collected diners at the Original Pancake House without recognizing any of them.

Then a friend called, who had just struck a deer on I-66 east of Ballston which had jumped over the fence lining the Metro tracks in the center median and into her path. She was lucky to be alive, much less unhurt.

The State Trooper on the scene had never seen a deer that close in on the busy highway before. I went to help my friend pick up the pieces and get her car to the dealership for repair. It looks totaled to me.

Happy Memorial day.

It Dropped Out of the Sky Spinning and Whirling

DC United is a powerhouse in MLS . The District soccer franchise owned the 90s, when Marco Etcheverry of Bolivia was United's best player. On 5/30/98 I wrote the following letter to Mr. Etcheverry:

"My son, Danny, plays U-9 soccer for both the FPYC Pumas (Select) and the Falls Church Tornado (House). Yesterday, you attended the Pumas practice and worked with his teammates for two hours. That was so nice of you.

You showed Danny how to put spin on his corner kicks. Today in a 0-0 game in the House League, Danny took a corner kick with only 8 minutes left. The ball came down at the near post, hit a Fullback on the shoulder, and spun wickedly into the goal. We won 1-0. My son said excitedly, "Marco Etcheverry taught me how to do that!"

Thank you for presenting such a great image of a professional athlete to these young soccer players.

Sincerely, the Tornado coach."

(Right: The elegant Marco Etcheverry. He gave back.)

At the season-ending team dinner, I presented to every team member a certificate I had created which noted a contribution that player had made to the team, and described the achievement in a sentence. For instance, B was "Winning Goal Keeper," R was "Mr. Everything," and G was "Mr. Versatile."

It is ironic for me to review this eleven years later because the Mothers of the last two boys, both fine young men who were selfless and critical to the success of our 3-4-1 team, came to the custody trial four years later in full support of Danny's Mother as she tried to judicially deprive me of my children. One of them testified that I was a sideline tyrant, who shamed the boys in front of everyone and caused them to cry. Her son was on the team for four years while she and her husband (an assistant coach) put up with this behavior, poor helpless things. The Court indicated what credibility it assigned to her testimony when it awarded me full joint legal custody.

At the dinner, the certificate I gave to Danny read, "Danny, Game Winning Scorer. 5-30-98. Took a corner kick and scored, unassisted, in a 1-0 win over the 4-1 Arlington Optimists."

I can still vividly remember Danny's ball, spinning wildly and making a whirring sound as it dropped out of the sky and landed on top of a defender's shoulder in front of the net. In the midst of the pushing and shoving melee of soccer players, the ball caromed wickedly off the boy's shoulder and slung straight into the goal like a pistol shot.

I missed Danny last month at the Elevation Burger in Falls Church at noon on his birthday. After I finished my cheeseburger, made from organically-raised, grass-fed, free-ranging cows, and waited around awhile, I ate his, so it wouldn't go to waste. It was delicious.

I hope Danny is well. Dating back to before he graduated from high school, his Mother has never told me a thing about him. She refuses to give me any of my children's addresses.

I worry that if any great happiness, or tragedy, ever befell (or has befallen) any of my children, no one would ever tell me, even though their Mother took every cent of on-time child support I ever paid, and more, and the children benefit from the full college tuition and fees which I provide for.

Maybe a nodding acquaintance will one day pass me in the street and say, "Congratulations," or most worrisome, "I'm sorry." How much of a shock would that be?

Johnny, I hardly know ye

An open letter to my middle child, whom I called Johnny.

12/24/08

Dear John,

I am sending this holiday note so it’ll arrive a little early (12/23). Enclosed is an article by Al Gore from Mother Jones magazine. I have entered a subscription to this important journal for you. I hope to take you, and Dan if he’d like to come, and Jim, out to lunch on Christmas Day. I’ll be at the Lost Dog Café in Westover at noon on Thurs. 12/25. I’d love it if you come.

I have taken [date] off from work, your 21st birthday, and I will take you out to lunch on that happy day too! On [date] at noon I’ll be at the Lost Dog Café in Westover. I hope to see you then, too.

I hope you are well.

Love Dad

[I sent this holiday greeting to the house two miles away where my children lived until recently, when it was sold and the only phone number that I had for them was disconnected. Their Mother has refused to give me their new address.

All of my then-minor children walked out of my life permanently in March of 2003, when the "fiduciary" suit "they" filed against me was thrown out of court as a "harassment" petition. The court found it to be "unconscionable" and "nothing more than keeping the divorce action alive by [wife] and her counsel [William B. Reichhardt of Fairfax], who are totally unsatisfied with the results of the equitable distribution hearing."

Ultimately she had to pay me almost $50,000 in sanctions and legal costs, while I lost my children forever. In contempt of all manly and fatherly logic and in mockery of our court system and the custody order, I haven’t seen John, or any of my children, for more than a few minutes in toto since then. Not a one of them has communicated a single word to a single relative of mine in the intervening half decade.

It is against Public Policy for minor children to be parties in a divorce action. My situation is validation of this sacred societal norm, which only a certain type of parent, and a select breed of divorce lawyers, would violate. The victims of this breach of trust are children.]

The way it was in 1978

My most memorable Thanksgiving? It was a long time and a lifetime ago.

Back then, Sharon wasn't yet an even "better" version of her Mother. Newly married, we were both working in the Boulder County Jail as Corrections Specialists (not deputies, which is what we were, or jailers or screws, which is what the "residents" called us), shortly after graduating from college. Boulder's jail was the first one certified by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) and its staff was young, enthusiastic and awash in liberalism.

We didn't want to hurt the feelings of these low-level criminals (we housed a few murderers, child molesters and rapists too). At the time I ran the medium security unit and Sharon was the intake processor. The townsfolk called the jail the Boulder County Hilton. Even the cops would alert their dispatchers that they were enroute with their prisoners to the "Hilton."

It was a high stress job. Some of these people were very dangerous. Most were needy for sure. We got it into our do-gooding heads that we could help out both the skeleton staff that day and the residents by cooking the Thanksgiving mid-day repast. So we signed up for that all-day duty.

What did I know about cooking turkeys? Not much but I called my Mom and mined her wisdom about oven temperatures and cooking times, weighing and rubbing the birds, and what to do with the giblets. (We made the gravy from scratch.) At 4 a.m. Sharon and I stumbled into the jail's kitchen and fired up the ovens. We got all the turkeys situated in their roasting pans amongst yards of aluminium foil and quartered onions, carrots and potatoes, and got the roux going for the gravy mix. We washed cranberries and made stuffing. We basted and basted, and even made breakfast for the residents along the way.

Around one o'clock, I started carving and Sharon and a few trusteys started serving. It was a glorious though riotous hour and a half. Three units (high, medium and minimum security) had to be trooped through the dining hall in waves for their holiday meal. We had to prepare and wrap several meals for the forlorn souls in intake. The trusteys had to eat too, and the diminished staff partook in the food on that day as well, if I remember correctly. The satisfied looks afterwards on the faces of many or most of these angry inmates (holidays in jail are very depressing) said it all to Sharon and I. What a team we were back then!

Then it was clean, clean and clean. Finally leaving behind fifty or sixty wrapped turkey sandwiches (or p&j sandwiches for the vegetarians) to be served for for dinner, we stumbled out at 5 p.m. exhausted but fulfilled after a thirteen-hour stint, the day dark again just as it had been when we entered the jail early that morning.

(You don't want to hear about my worst Thanksgiving--the first year of my divorce when Sharon Rogers took our kids out of town for almost a week without a word and left me to contemplate their empty house from the curb each day and wonder when, or if, they'd return.)

That's they way it was thirty years ago!

Just Say No.

My son's face was leaning into the open passenger window of my pickup. I was sitting in the driver's seat, my hands on the steering wheel, a pleasant smile plastered onto my face.

It was my court-scheduled visitation time. Her "harassment petition," wherein she had our three minor children file a "fiduciary" suit against me during the divorce litigation, had been thrown out the week before.

"Their" lawyer, Joseph Condo of McLean, and her lawyer, William Reichhardt of Fairfax, had conducted the hearing which had gotten their Mother sanctioned almost $10,000 for this "unconscionable" lawsuit. Those two lawyers also signed the briefs and argued the motions which got her assessed costs of almost $40,000 more for the "unjustified" appeal they filed. Little did I know it then, but no child of mine would ever again visit with me at my house, which was only two miles away. This was in early 2003. Do you suppose that's why it's against public policy to have children be parties in divorce litigation?

I couldn't get out of my car to talk to my son because that might be menacing to him since I'm bigger. Dad can't "touch" any child, utter a "hurtful" word, use any kind of "tone," give any kind of "look" or do anything that might "frighten" the children except grin and nod when his kids are alienated from him by the custodial parent in classic PAS. These are words that estranged children supposedly come up with when talking about the targeted parent.

I was a dumb, smiling and nodding fool now, just sitting in my car at the far curb across from her house, having just called for her to send my children out ready to go with me. I received no answer, but one child did come out, circle my car and thrust his head into the far window.

"Dad, do you remember me calling you last night?"

"Yes. Yes I do, son."

"Do you remember me telling you that I wasn't coming. Do you remember that?"

"I'm sorry son but just like I told you then, that's not your choice to make, or even mine. You need a paternal influence in your life just like you need a maternal influence, and wiser heads than mine have decided that we're going to have this time together. Let's start recovering our relationship this very day, and put the past behind us. Will you help me with this? I'll try to be the best Dad I can for you, starting right now. Please, get in and we'll work on it together." It was my stock answer. Sharon was nowhere in sight, as usual.

"Dad, dad, just answer me this one question, will you? Can you do that for me?" He leaned his head in real close to me.

"Sure, son."

"Uh, dad, tell me, what part of 'no' don't you understand?"

Yep, this old fool just drove away, still grinning, after receiving that insult from a child, smarting that his kid would dare to talk to any adult that way.

I saw the papers Dad.

"Mom showed me your draft visitation order, Dad. I saw that it called for me to be at your house every other Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I think it should only list every other Saturday. I'll come over more, but Mom said it's easier to get more time later than to try to visit less often once an order is in place. That's over 150 days, almost half the year. That's too much to commit to, because I might have stuff to do."

We were at a restaurant about a month after Sharon had taken our three children out of the house on a pretext, demanded that I leave before she would return with them and then filed for divorce. This was my second meal with my child since then. In a month, I could count the number of hours I had spent with him on one hand.

"Unfortunately you're a minor, son, and you're not allowed to set the schedule, or even supposed to see the draft pleadings being exchanged. It's not close to being half the time because it's only every other Friday evening to Sunday evening. And if you have places to go, I'll take you there. After all, I live only two miles away, in your boyhood home, and everyone will have their own bedrooms again."

"Well, she said since it affected me I should have a say in it. She said you'd be like this. Why won't you respect my wishes?"

This is one way PAS is perpetrated, wherein the custodial parent alienates the child from the targeted parent by convincing the adolescent that the other parent is too rigid or inflexible or controlling or domineering or uncaring (choose whatever word you'd like) to respect the desires of the child. The draft schedule, which never should have been shown to him, called for visitation every other weekend from 6 p.m. Friday to 8 p.m. on Sunday, 50 hours, which represents 14.9% of the 336 hours every two weeks.

This child nevermore stayed over at my house. His counselor, Meg Sullivan, LCSW, also counseled his Mother. I didn't know about this until after the divorce litigation began. It took over a year for a judge to order this grotesque conflict to cease.

During the divorce litigation, my son told people he was "afraid" to be in my presence, especially when he spoke with me because of my "tone." This isn't the way boys speak. (Another son, an All-Star football player, told people he would never play sports again because I had "crushed" his "spirit." As the story went, he told me that he had scored a touchdown and before I praised him, I'd asked if his team had won. Apparently, this had "crushed his spirit.")

During the custody trial, my minor children had faxed a letter to the Judge's chambers stating their custodial preferences. This isn't the way children act.

My son never went to college. He changed his name to her name on his 21st birthday. He hasn't communicated with any relative of mine in over half a decade. He lives in a basement bedroom in her vacant house, which is currently on the market.

PAS, a form of child abuse, is alive and thriving in this country.

The Seven Years War

A Jewish friend, being more religious than I, tells me that the old and new testaments are full of seven year epochs. Plagues, wars, that sort of thing.

Sharon took our three kids out of the house for "spring break" in 2001 and they never came back. Having plunged the children into the middle of our troubles, she filed for divorce. The "children" sued me in 2002, with Sharon as their "best friend" on the papers because one child was too young to be a party. That suit was tossed in 2003 and none of my children has communicated with me since. They live two miles away.

It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), where one parent, usually the custodial one, turns the children totally against the target parent. It's a form of brain washing, and also child abuse, too. A hallmark of it is that children sometimes become litigants too. I don't care whether you believe it exists or not because I know it does. Me and thousands of other American dads know this fact.

Anyway, this has been a momentous year personally for me. My running has sucked but my restoration from the depths of despair over having my children "taken" from me really started this year.

I have never woken up one morning with it all "better." When I was a young man I believed that life was two steps forward and one step back. Now I believe that life is complicated. Both beliefs fit. It's a work constantly in progress.

It started with my trip out west in February to see family. For a week I drove around the high country in raging snowstorms visiting relatives. Uncle Harry in Durango who fought at both Battles of the Philippine Sea. Aunt Betty in Parachute who worked in the defense plants. A sister in Santa Fe who is an attorney. Another person who, enraged at a post of mine, asked to never be mentioned in a post again. So bid adieu to that person forevermore. Sorry!

That solitary white-knuckle driving allowed me plenty of time to think in between bouts of terror on snow-slickened two-lane no-guardrails shelf mountain-pass roads. I came up with the notion of forgiveness. Perhaps I saw or was introduced to the presence of God. Who knows?

Forgiveness is a Christian tenet, from what I gather. I guess it exists in other religions too. It has helped.

I forgave those awful people who participated in stripping my children away from me. I forgave my children, who sought to demolish me in court and who religiously took my money without ever uttering a word to me. No calls, thank-you notes, return messages or cards on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Father's Day, my birthday, their birthday, graduation day, no day no way, nope, nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero.

But this is 2008, seven years later. Seven years of heartbreak and heartache, of feeling depressed and unworthy of even familial love, of struggling to make ends meet financially amidst lifetime alimony and crushing child-support obligations. Things have happened this year. I'm going on travel for work in a few hours but more later.

Life it is

Paul Newman is dead. I watched Cool Hand Luke at my all-male prep boarding school in the 60s, when he famously said, "Shakin' that bush, boss," and he ate the 50th egg. None of my friends to whom I put those moments knew what I was talkin' about. How out of touch am I?

How about, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," as Newman's character gets cut down by gunfire (this is years before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with their six-guns blazing charge into the gunfire of hundreds of South American soldiers--and fade away to the command of "Feugo! Fuego!" Freeze frame on Paul Newman & Robert Redford as we always want to remember them).

Can you hear the high-pitched voice of the southern prison warden as he brooks no dissent and has his sycophants shoot the dissident Luke down? Shortly after that I saw Easy Rider, and it confirmed for me the southern attitude towards diversity. Unbelievably, the south has controlled our presidential vote since 1964. I guess us northerners won the war and lost the peace.

Cool Hand Luke, who went to work on that southern chain gang for the misdemeanor of destroying some parking meters, is a hero of mine. I also remember Joy Harmon and her washin' that car. Yeah she put her heart and soul and everything in between into that sudsy scene. To a young boy watching, it seemed like the two sexes could and would get together and always prosper together. That's what love is, right? But now I think it's only blood that ultimately matters in relationships. We're all tribal.

It has been a momentous summer for me. (No, none of the three boys I supported at financial ruination throughout their adolescences has even a disdainful word for me, thanks to modern American (or western) domestic law, but a lot has happened.) Stay tuned.