It is often I remind people that my parents were teenagers. I don\u2019t do it for attention or as an excuse. I do it as an explanation for my complexities; for why certain people aren\u2019t in my life or why I never ask for help or why I have trouble letting anyone get too close. Truth is, I don\u2019t always need to lead with this information, but much of who I am today, I can thank those two dumbass teenagers for. Sometimes it is hard to remain grateful for our limitations and to see a different perspective on what we consider a disadvantage or hardship. But today, I am especially grateful because sometimes things happen, and at first, it makes you feel shitty, but then something shifts. Suddenly, you realize you\u2019ve been searching all this time for the sequel to a book that already ended. The ending was a cliffhanger, and you wanted more. You waited and waited. You thought, \u201cWow, this author must be working on a real masterpiece!\u201d But years pass, and you suddenly forget what you were waiting for. The original book becomes a distant memory. Every so often you are reminded about the ending of that story and how you never did find out what happened next. Some nights you even fall asleep dreaming of different ways the sequel could play out. Wake up! There is no sequel. It\u2019s a new book with a new author. This message is for more than the daughter of a couple of senseless teens that couldn\u2019t keep their pants on, this is for the orphan, the runaway, the couch surfer, the gypsy. It\u2019s for anyone that ever felt unwanted\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t take much to conjure up some difficult feelings when I think about my bio-dad. Abandoned. In a word, that just about sums it up. Now, I\u2019m sure if you ask him or his family, they will blame it on my mother. Maybe they would say she left him, or she found somebody new. Maybe they would say she went off to go find herself. I am certain she would defend her actions as ‘in search of a better life for the two of us’. While all those things are likely half-truths, none of the many reasons for why they didn\u2019t work out matters to me. Especially now, being a divorced mother of two. Because guess what? My children see their father every week and we do not live in the same town or even the next town over. We live in two different states, an hour away from one another. Yet he comes to nearly every event, sport, performance and activity. He is there for every accomplishment and milestone and is at every teacher conference. He puts his kids first. Through him, I know it is possible to have a father who knows his priorities. Mine? He had some loose version of court appointed visitation for the lousy thirty-eight bucks he was paying in child support. Visitation he didn\u2019t even want and certainly didn\u2019t fight to continue. My mother basically had to shove it down his throat, until she got tired of hearing about my disappointment. A few weekends here and there, turned into two weeks in the summer, turned into nothing at all. Not even a phone call. I always called. He\u2019d pick up. Ten minutes later, the spiral phone cord all twisted up in a knot around my fingers, I\u2019d end with the call with an \u201cI love you\u201d. I always said it first. I didn\u2019t know what it meant at the time. I think I just wanted him to love me back so badly and his empty \u201cI love you too\u201d gave me a false sense of hope. A hope I would hold on to like a lucky penny until I was wise enough to understand it was just a penny. In hindsight, I wish he wouldn\u2019t have said it back. Every year, I prayed he would call me first, say I love you first or that he would ask to see me because he wanted to, not because it was court ordered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s been 10 years since I\u2019ve seen or spoken to him. My number hasn\u2019t changed. He met my children once. Dangling his grandchildren in front of him was my last-ditch effort at a reboot. My mistake for thinking all grandparents have a soft spot for their grandchildren. It didn\u2019t accomplish anything, but a couple of photos that are painful to look at now. Add to that, he comes from a large, educated, loving family. When I had given up all hope on him, I never gave up hope that someday the extended family members would want a relationship with me. I\u2019d go through life thinking if only I could prove to them all that I wasn\u2019t just some illegitimate child. I\u2019d make something of myself, and they would be proud to call me family. That day would never come. As technology advanced and social media was born, I guess maybe in their minds being Facebook friends gave us all permission to use endearing family slang like \u201ccuz\u201d and \u201cauntie\u201d, but only on birthdays and holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was one person who would have never given up on me, had it not been for being called into God\u2019s kingdom too soon. My father\u2019s mother. \u201cOh my darling, Clementine\u201d, just like the Pete Seeger lyrics. She was across the country for my entire life, and yet she always made sure I felt her love. She often called, she wrote letters, and she sent the most unusual care packages chock-full of random knick knacks from her boutique in Paia, Maui. She didn\u2019t have much outside of the treasure chest inside that store, but what she did have, she shared with her family in the form of carefully curated gifts. Anything containing your birthstone was her favorite, alongside handmade accessories, ornate jewelry boxes, and hand painted tchotchkes. I can still feel her unconditional love that spilled out of every package like an old spring-loaded Jack-In-The-Box. She drew hearts on the cardboard boxes, and she would address it with my name spelled wrong on purpose. She thought it looked cooler with an \u201cE\u201d at the end, and so she put it there. Everytime. She recognized me as a part of her family, and she was the only one who ever truly made me feel wanted. It has been eleven years that she\u2019s been gone, and after two recently failed attempts with the extended family, I am finally ready to accept that any hopes of a large, educated, loving family, rely on me, building it from the ground up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A pioneer, that is what you have to be. It\u2019s a hard job, but someone has to be the first. There was Columbus, Earhart, The Wright Brothers, Armstrong, and Obama\u2026 the list goes on. And while I\u2019m not flying to the moon or running the country, my job is to spread love, acceptance and stability. I must give support, emotionally, financially, and physically. I must be patient, positive, and confident about my choices. I must lead by example. I must protect and preserve these beautiful growing humans that I have been blessed to mold into something good for the world. I always thought it all ended because of me, but the reality is, it all starts with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might be the black sheep in your family, discarded, forgotten, outcasted, but remember, the black sheep still provides wool. In fact, black sheep are super rare, only one in 97. Their wool is the most valuable, even highly sought after in the fashion industry. That\u2019s right! You were singled out for a reason. You couldn\u2019t see it all this time because of what nursery books, television shows and people told you was \u201cnormal\u201d, but what you were born into was not normal, and that is how it was supposed to be. You were meant to stand out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is often I remind people that my parents were teenagers. I don\u2019t do it for attention or as an excuse. I do it as an explanation for my complexities; for why certain people aren\u2019t in my life or why I never ask for help or why I have trouble letting anyone get too close….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,37,42],"tags":[29,9,40,30],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-relationships","tag-adults","tag-family","tag-inspire","tag-relationships"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonsandleather.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}