The Phone Call

2023 in Review. August 2d. The phone rang at 6:30 AM her time, exactly two weeks after we’d tenderly kissed goodbye and I’d driven away at midnight, a fortnight filled with my phone calls not being taken because she was wiped, busy, buzzed, would call me later. “Are you sitting down?” the familiar voice asked.

For three minutes I wordlessly listened to how blessed she was to have known me and how kind and generous I was. How devoted and considerate I’d been when I’d taken care of her after her terrible bike accident when no family member had had the time nor inclination to come visit her during her two days in the hospital or during those first awful ten days of recovery at home, with her displaced front teeth splinted shut to save them, stitches in her eyebrow and from her lip to her nose to close gaping lacerations, her voice barely discernible from a blow to her larynx, contusions all over her body and her head wracked with pain from a concussion.

 She continued on about how smart and what a good writer I was, and how much she’d learned from me. I could tell she was reading from a list of bullet points she’d written down beforehand, a lawyer’s trick I’d taught her to do before she undertook any important phone call so she could unerringly stay on point and not be swayed from her main purpose. And she was unswerving in where she was going, everything was in the past tense.

 She was wrapping it up. But we were so different! Although we got along so fabulously and had always had such a great time together, now that she was established in her new life so far away, and a long distance relationship was so tenuous no matter how temporary it was, and given how opposite our outlooks and personalities were—her voice gave off a tiny little sob, a manipulative trick in her bag of feminine wiles that I knew well from having heard its use before to create an instant of sympathy and empathy for herself during a highly wrought moment—“We should each go our own separate ways now.”

She paused—it was my turn. I hesitated for a second as thirteen wonderful, blessed months raced in a jumble through my mind. I loved her deeply, and she had said many months earlier, while crying at the realization, that she loved me, but now she obviously wanted nothing further to do with me, I had somehow become a leper to her. In a sudden, three minute termination interview over the phone I had just been discharged.

 I remembered how she had definitely kept me sealed off in July from any of her friends back here that she visited when she came back for a week to see her dental specialist, although many of them had seen us as a couple before she’d moved away in February. I drove a thousand miles gallivanting all over with her that week, but I never met even one friend of hers except her friend in Charlotte for two minutes in the driveway in the dark while we unloaded her bags before I drove away to return home, because it had been made clear that there was no room for me in her friend's expansive house that night or by her side during the next two days’ activities either.

And except for her sister, whom I had contacted on the afternoon of her accident in September of 2022 to say that she was in the ER, I don’t think anyone else in her family knew that I existed or that we were in a “serious relationship” all those months, to use her own words to her sister. Or maybe they did, or perhaps they found out from her sister when my presence didn’t fade away after she had fully recovered and effected her move out west, and they were aghast that she was still in a “serious relationship” with a white, East Coast liberal who fervently believed in choice, sensible gun control, and that women or gay persons could serve as pastors or priests every bit as well as heterosexual or sacerdotally celibate men, stances which I had perceived over time to be anathema in whole or in part to some or most of her immediate family members her age.

I thought with an aching heart of the common grief we had shared those many months of close togetherness over our estranged children, a son and a daughter for her and three boys for me, as a result of our separate, bitter divorces and the pernicious influences exerted thereby upon each set of tender children by other, abusive adults (Parental Alienation Syndrome, or "PAS," is a form of abuse--towards children). Now a descent back into that yawning, lonely void, alone again without a friendly voice to share my sorrow with any more, was my immediate and probable long term or lifelong prospect once again.

 "Goodbye,” I said. A tiny voice came back, “Bye.” The connection was severed.

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Father's Day 2020

Now that the Father's Day weekend is here, this is a message for my youngest child. I'm sorry I haven't seen nor communicated with you in over thirteen years (not since you wrote and asked me to provide full tuition payment for four years of college and all university fees--hey, you're welcome Danny!) and you haven't communicated with any Lamberton in over seventeen years. You have, from the furthest reaches of your now-adult character, chosen to forsake your father and cast aside half of your blood relatives but I want you to know that I love you as any father would love a son. I trust you are alive (your mother inhumanely refuses to pass on any information whatsoever to me about you or your brothers), I hope you are well, and I wish you a happy and healthy life. You, being the youngest (not even a teenager yet back then) and therefore the most vulnerable child during our multi-year quarter-million dollar divorce, was the tender youth those minions of hers used and abused (PAS is a form of child abuse) for suggestively recalled "repressed memories" and all that Western garbage that goes on in American divorce proceedings and I was unable to protect you from this soulless abuse by those cold-hearted, completely mercenary adults and I am very sorry.

And this is a message for my middle child. I'm sorry I haven't seen nor spoken with you in over fourteen years (not since you wrote and asked me to provide full tuition payment for four years of college and all university fees--hey, you're welcome Johnny!) and you haven't communicated with any Lamberton in over seventeen years. You have, from the bottom of your character, chosen to forsake your father and throw over half of your blood relatives but I want you to know that I love you as any father would love a son. I trust you are alive (your mother heartlessly refuses to pass on any information whatsoever to me about you or your brothers), I hope you are well, and I wish you a happy and healthy life.

My dad passed on 34 years ago, when I was 34. I was there at that moment, glad that at least my oldest child had been held in his strong arms as a recent newborn even as his grandfather was wasting away, near death, with cancer. Now that child of mine, the only child of mine to have seen his Lamberton grandad, is the same age as I was when I lost my dad, here is a message for my oldest child. I'm sorry I haven't seen nor spoken with you in over thirteen years and you haven't communicated with any Lamberton in over seventeen years. You have, from the depths of your character, chosen to forsake your father and throw over half of your blood relatives but I want you to know that I love you as any father would love a son. I trust you are alive (your mother stonily refuses to pass on any news to me about you or your siblings), I hope you are well, and I wish you a happy and healthy life.

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?

Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22.  Happy Father's Day, dad. I still miss you every day!

A Memorial Day for my children to ponder

This post on the day before Memorial Day 2020, the year that wasn't, is for my kids, JJ&D, the "lads," as the fatuous charlatan Dr. Victor Elion (a manipulating and preeningly vain courthouse psychologist in Fairfax), in my opinion, used to call the three minor boys (now fully adult men if they all are still with us, which I wouldn't know since I haven't seen nor heard from any of them in 15 years), the divorce you know.  They all love their mother so, as well they should although in my opinion she is a manipulating covert narcissist; they should have some fealty towards their father too who wiped their bottoms and coached them all in soccer for all those years, it's biblical you know, you could look it up.

There are four pictures (your Grandad my dad) on this Memorial Day weekend of Lambertons (your uncle Jack), our relatives and blood kin, mine and yours, who did their duty (your great-uncle Harry) honorably that you could download (your great-grandfather Lamberton) from the US Navy Log in DC to study and learn from.  For Jimmy, the oldest, now Jim Bradley Rogers, who shocked me when I asked him in 2001 just after 9-11 what he would do if the war of ideologies we were suddenly thrust into spiraled out of control and he answered "Nothing," saying, "That's what we have a professional army for."

For Johnny, the most sober and earnest of the three, who liked playing with little plastic soldiers as I did when I was a child, and who filled me with pride when he came over and took away dozens of my military books from my bookshelf to read, just before he fell prey as a tender boy to the subtle but malicious and vicious adult manipulation of those who traffic in PAS, Parental Alienation Syndrome, a form of child abuse.  He once shouldered his toy wooden rifle in a snowstorm as a pre-adolescent and patrolled our sidewalk at shoulder arms for a half hour, marching back and forth, doing his duty as he saw it as a growing, responsible boy; well my lad, duty includes familial love towards both parents, be it distant or close and loving, because blood is or should be to the fully mature person a paramount passion.

And to Danny, the most abused of the three by those PAS traffickers who sought through grotesque manipulation the pursuit and self-satisfying achievement of gaining their own ends in the divorce wars because he was the youngest and most vulnerable, I'm sorry I couldn't protect you from those who sought to endlessly interrogate you suggestively (unbeknownst to me since I only had you pursuant to plain vanilla visitation 17% of the time) so they could come to court to triumphantly testilie in sonorous voices as to the incredible repressed memories of yours they had fantastically uncovered with their pointed, suggestive questioning, because as a matter of public policy, children can't testify against their parents.  It hurt to read in your on-line wedding book a few years back that you had proposed to your wife at your "father's" house on the Outer Banks; that guy who owns or was willed that house ain't your father and he never wiped your bottom, coached you in soccer or went to bat for you against the school boards in countless Special Ed hearings, nor provided the full funding for your eight semesters at VCU (you're welcome!), I did.

My Dad

Earlier this month my dad had his birthday. He would have been 95. He died too young at age 61. 

He was the most important person in my life and he is still my moral compass. "What would dad have done?" is a question I ask myself often. Lawrenceville '41, Peleliu '44, Okinawa '45, Carleton '49, Yale Law '52, Cleary Gottlieb till '84, father of 6, husband to our mother for 42 years, grandad to 9 kids.

Then there was his civic work to make this world a better place. Board Member on the Staten Island Mental Health Counsel, President of the New York County Lawyers Association, President of the Carleton College Alumni Association. He dedicated two of his month-long vacations in consecutive years away from his family in the mid-60s working in the deep south to institute voter registration after the passage of the Civil Rights Voting Act, among other things. My mother was a stalwart angel, a partner to him, as she took care of six young children during those hot, steamy New York July days, seamlessly even while she was probably worried sick about his safety.

He taught me the lessons about the slippery slope, that the best is the enemy of the good, and that the law is merely the minimum of morality. He showed me through his manly but loving and sensitive manhood how we men should strive to proceed through a man's life as a man, both intellectual yet physical if presented as such.  I miss him still.

Happy Mothers Day...

...to my mom

... and to all mothers out there.

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 love my cousin... .

Yesterday I got a call from my cousin.  I knew she was undergoing retinal reattachment surgery that day, which, since I had undergone that very same surgery last month, I was keenly interested in and very aware of.  She told me her operation was over and she was at home resting.

She said her surgery had gone well and it hadn't hurt a bit.  I was so glad to hear this, not only for her sake but also because I am facing another bout of this same surgery myself.  My cousin knew of my bad experience with this same surgery in July, the first of my two emergency eye surgeries in a one week span.

When I reached out to her two days ago to wish her luck in her upcoming surgery, she alluded to her hope that her surgery would go better than mine.  I felt bad then that I had posted so readily about my "discomfort" from my initial surgery, which is apparently undergone often by old folks like me, mostly without notable pain or lack of success.

Mine wasn't so bad, I told her then on the eve of her surgery, and there were conditions present in my first operation that clearly were not present in hers that would undoubtedly make her experience much different from mine.  For instance, hers had been scheduled for a week already, whereas I was immediately slapped into the surgical ward within minutes of the initial consult with no time in which to reconcile the procedure internally, which left me anxious, and I didn't have any family present.  Additionally, I still don't trust the skill level of the anesthesiologist who was present that day.

Her son Jimmy had been there already to give her love and support, in stark contrast to my sons who apparently don't give a damn about anyone but themselves, and of course her husband Bill had been taking good care of her.  Certain friends of mine had wonderfully provided this support and love for me on a moment's notice, and others have called me to express their hope for my speedy recovery.

This sweetheart of a relative had reached out to me in the immediate aftermath of her surgery to assure me that her operation had been painless, as she knows that I am facing the same surgery, again, later this fall to get the oil out of my eye.  She knows intuitively that I have been facing this prospect with trepidation.  I love my cousin, so concerned about others even in the hour of her need.  Get better soon, Liz.

It's coming

I got up early yesterday on the Fourth and drove down to the Marine Corps Memorial as the sun was coming up.  The sky wasn't infused with colors as it sometimes is but the moon was still out and gave the valiant Marines and the Navy Corpsman something extraordinary to seem to be reaching for in their inspiring display of love, sacrifice and devotion for our country.

Our country is currently under dire threat from within, but it has faced prohibitive times before and prevailed, based upon the resilient American spirit exhibited so magnificently by these stalwart men permanently enshrined here.  The sun will break forth again following the dark night.

At Iwo Jima those seventy-three years ago, one of the most horrific battle in the annals of warfare, uncommon valor was a common virtue for these bold Americans.  Those young men, boys really, child-men, of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions never wavered in their commitment to our noble experiment nor shirked their duty to move forward inexorably despite the daunting odds stacked against them.

It might be hard to see now but a new dawn is coming.  Come November, you'll see, America will be great again.

Jim Rogers

Have a happy day. The article below indicates how you're doing in life, with some community college coursework, a crowdfunding stake, some video poker, a software job, being the office boy for an unscrupulous divorce lawyer. By the way, have you read the opinion on the internet where the sterling work of that guy got his buddy's client docked almost $50,000 for her unconscionable harassment petition? Your former name was listed first amongst the losing plaintiffs; of course, you being a mere minor then, you weren't assessed any costs. And speaking of your mother, are you still living with her?

Jimmy

I ran into a friend from my law school small section, whom I hadn't seen in years. He was the glue, along with one or two others who were slightly older, that bridged the divide between the less-than-worldly 22 year-olds in the section and the more experienced types like me, in my mid-30s with children and a decade in law enforcement already.

He asked how my 3 boys were, the same ones who used to be underfoot at softball games and parties during those 3 years, and I regretfully told him they had all grown up in the image of their mother and I hadn't spoken to any of them for years. I said I knew that two had gone to college because I could tell that from receiving receipts for the eight semesters of full payment for each of them drawn from two of the three fully-paid tuition plans I owned, to be used for their college education.

Regretfully, the oldest had never attended college, something that was important to me and my family but apparently not important to their mother or her line of their family. My friend looked concerned and he said he would pray for him.

I know he will, that's the kind of guy he is. Thanks Jimmy.

The Greatest Demonstration for Freedom in our Nation

Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into the beautiful
sympathy of brotherhood.

Let freedom ring.

See ya, or be ya

September 5, 2016.

Labor Day 2015.

Labor Day 2014.

The 1990s.

Maybe next year

Jimmy, Johnny and Danny are my three sons.  All of them have birthdays during the first two months of the year.  (Here's to you, John.)

Twelve, fourteen and fourteen years is how long it's been since I knowingly laid eyes on any one of them.  The last knowing communication I had from any of them was ten years ago.  (Here's to you, Jim Rogers.)

Their mother stonily refuses to tell me a single thing about them, even to say whether they are alive or not.  That's a person with a stone-cold heart, and she raised, from their adolescence on, our children to have similarly hard hearts.  (And here's to you, Dan (and Laura).)

On each one's birthday (and all Federal and religious holidays) I go to the same restaurant at noon for lunch near where they lived nearby as they became young men under her tutelage, when they learned how easy it was to circumvent court orders governing visitation and custody by merely becoming scofflaws.  What was the remedy for the shut-out parent supposed to be, to try to get the other parent (or them) thrown into jail for contempt of court?  (Good times from 2001, just before the parental alienation began in earnest (PAS).)

So that's my routine whenever I'm in town (which is almost always) those days, to try to keep alive some potential channel of communication and rapprochement.  As these three now-fully mature men climb into their thirties, I'll keep up the routine for as long as I can and maybe someday… .  😉

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

I had a wonderful Christmas, thanks to friends and family.  It really started on Christmas eve, when I was invited to a Hanukkah party at a friend's house and spent a few hours watching four children, two dogs and a dozen adult family members and other loved ones of my friend cooking, eating, drinking a little, talking, giving gifts to the children and relaxing in a seemingly chaotic scene.

On Christmas day at around noon I went to the local restaurant nearby where I always go on holidays and birthdays for lunch in the vain hope that one of my prodigal sons would show up to begin our first day of the rest of our lives.  It was closed for Christmas and no Lambertons or Rogers were around.  None came the morning before at the bagel place in town either, where I'd invited them, so I guess they all still are advocates of patricide, even as fully mature adults, as inculcated in them as tender children by their covertly narcissistic (in my opinion) mother and her coterie of "professionals."

I then went to a friend's house where we set up and trimmed a tree and enjoyed Christmas day with food and talk and the exchange of presents.  I received some lovely gifts including a warm down throw, a book on tape and other thoughtful gifts from my friend, siblings and a neighbor.

The day done, gone the sun, we took down the tree and I returned home to an empty house.  I am hopeful that the coming year will be a good one although this past year contained several shocking events such as my sudden (forced) retirement, finding out I had a daughter-in-law a year after the advent, being friended and then unfriended on FB by the same personage on the day before long-scheduled surgery, surgery and the election shocker.  Whoo boy, what's up for 2017?

Merry Christmas

Maybe next time.

I had lunch yesterday at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover at noon with the empty chair as usual.  Since it was the Columbus Day holiday, naturally I ordered the Italian Pizza Pie and two drafts, one of which went untouched ultimately.

The next holiday is Veteran's Day.  I'll try again then.

Dad Died 30 Years Ago Today

My dad died 30 years ago today at age 61, a lung cancer victim.  The government  provided him with three cigarettes in every C-ration while he fought in two of the bloodiest battles in WW2 as a nineteen year-old rifleman.

Of course he smoked the proffered cigarettes, and he continued to smoke when he came home from the war (tobacco is addictive).  His wasting disease at the end, after he had stopped smoking years earlier, wasn't pretty and took him away painfully.

But I was fortunate, along with my mother and my brother, to be at his bedside in his house as he passed, holding him as he died.  All I could think of to say at that awesome moment was, "God bless you, dad," as he went to sit at the right hand of the Father.

He was my hero, the most principled man I ever knew.  I  miss him always and think about him practically every day.

The Fourth of July

A six mile morning run heralded the arrival of the holiday on a grey day that made for a cool albeit humid run around the greater neighborhood.  I passed by a parade where that neighborhood's kids in a ragged line were chasing after three crawling lit-up and noisy fire trucks.

At noon I had a nice lunch of a Greek Pie and a draft at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington.  There was an extra draft at the table but it went untouched.

The meal wasn't altogether silent though as I had an extended conversation with my server Lily about her extensive tattoos, and she proudly showed me the wolf on her upper arm which is an exact copy of the one her deceased dad had on his upper arm.  Her love for and pride in her departed parent shone through as she described for me the magnificent tattoo she has on her back, which is an original design of hers in honor of him.

I was touched by this earnest and honest display of fealty for a father on the part of a still-grieving child.  After dark I watched the town fireworks from my back stoop to close out the holiday.