Why I was forced to abandon my son and didn't see him again for ten crucial years

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=532728&in_page_id=1879

By DANIEL KEN - More by this author » Last updated at 23:15pm on 12th March
2008
Comments (27)

As got out of the car, my son told me: "Maybe you should have worn a Batman
outfit "He smiled, a be-caped image of me flitting across his mind: "Or then
again, maybe not."

The idea of me launching a caped Fathers 4 Justice-style protest was
evidently not to his liking, but then, it wasn't to mine either.

I'd been trying to explain to Joe in the gentlest, most non-accusatory tone
I could muster why his mum had stopped me seeing him for a number of years,
and why I'd stopped trying to make her change her mind.

As an inner-city secondary school teacher, I witness on a daily basis the
crisis of masculinity that is occurring in many of the more deprived areas
where men and boys are becoming socially, emotionally and fiscally
redundant.

Where the state has become sole provider for a majority of those splintered
underclass families, and where a vaguely liberal and extremely feminine set
of values has replaced the older, vigorous certainties of what men are and
how they should behave.

I see the long-term harm done by absent dads and the lack of appropriate
male role-models, and I experience the damage caused by unsocialised boys -
both to themselves and to others - and their inability to function as men.

And yet I abandoned my own son, just at the time when he was starting junior
school, and I didn't see him again for those ten crucial years when
character development is at its most vulnerable. And I'm still not exactly
sure why.

So what did happen with his mum and me? How did two people who got on so
well for, roughly, the first three weeks of our courtship somehow arrange to
get married, fight like two cats for the next four years and yet produce a
beautiful boy who turned out as well as if we'd been the very model of Mr
and Mrs Silk-Buttons? I really don't know.

My relationship with Joe's mum was a whirlwind romance of the sort you
usually read about only in Barbara Cartland novels - it was hectic,
destructive, passionate, and we decided to have a child within weeks of
meeting.

Joe was very much a wanted child. Still is. But even then the cracks were
showing. We argued constantly, often bitterly. Disagreed on everything,
except our increasingly destructive passion for each other.

Early on in the relationship, her mum took me aside and confided: "You're
the only man who's ever been a match for her," and even then I understood
that my mother-in-law wasn't talking about compatibility or our mutual
wellbeing.

Two perfectly normal, well-balanced people had somehow collided to create a
monster of a relationship. And into the middle of all this, Joe was born.

After a brief post-natal armistice, during which we worked hard to try to
stay together - both of us hoping that something, anything, would fix things
between us - what followed was a tumultuous couple of years, after which we
split up.

Perhaps I should have seen it coming. All of Jenny's friends were single
mothers, all of them professed to have "difficult" relationships with their
exes, all were well-versed in the trench-warfare of failed marriages and
custody battles. And none of the children saw their dads.

So we split, and she agreed that I should take Joe to live with me -
unusual, I know, but that's the sort of people we were.

But even then I sort of knew it wouldn't last, knew that this time I had
with my son was to be short-lived.

All I had to do to raise the curtain on the final act was to meet someone
new, which I did, about a year later.

Within three months of me meeting someone else, Jenny had won back custody
of Joe. Why? Well our first arrangement, when he came to live with me, had
been informal.

Now, my legal advice was that unless Jenny was some sort of monster, which
she wasn't, I'd lose any custody battle. So I conceded what I felt to be a
lost cause in order to avoid a fight, and we agreed regular access. But
within a year I'd lost contact with Joe.

Looking back, it seems something of a cliche how quickly it all descended
into some sort of Fathers 4 Justice hell, wrangling over my access to Joe,
and my rights and everything that had nothing to do with our child.

He had become the new cockpit around which our relationship revolved.

I think that, early on, women see their children as a physical manifestation
of themselves. Fair enough. If I'd carried a child inside me for nine
months, I probably would, too.

But I think that a lot of women don't stop thinking this way. They're unable
to see their child as independent of their will, their needs.

Certainly for Jenny, it was perfectly acceptable to use Joe as a proxy
through which to attack me.

It was perfectly acceptable to send him to me tired, unwashed, unwell, or to
cancel or change arrangements at short notice. Or, as on one occasion, the
first Christmas after Joe moved back in with her, to give away the presents
I had bought for him.

"That was for another little boy," he told me one day, when I asked him
about a Christmas gift I'd bought him.

"Right," I said, quickly grasping what had happened. "Yeah. Good job you
realised," and I ruffled up his hair.

I could have told him the truth, but that would have meant engaging in the
sort of emotional guerrilla war that I was trying to stop.

While I could endure it, I couldn't endure Joe being used that way -
couldn't see him confused, upset and disappointed on a regular basis.

Or as it was turning out, due to constant changes of arrangements,
cancellations, holidays, "pressures of work" and other handy excuses, see
him on an increasingly irregular basis.

One day, after two months of failing to pin down a day and a date to call
and pick him up, I'd managed to confirm a visit.

I trekked across town and, on arrival at the house, I spotted him peering at
me from behind the safety of his bedroom door. Then he shut the door and
hid.

I realised that, whatever the reasons, the randomness of my visits and the
increasing gaps between them was distressing him. What he was told by Jenny
about me in my absence I can only guess.

I was coming to the conclusion that having one parent and a happy, contented
life was probably going to work out better for him than having two parents
and living in an emotional war zone.

And this, I'm guessing, was precisely what Jenny wanted me to conclude. I
decided to surrender, sign the papers and just walk away.

I justified this by telling myself I was acting in a mature, adult fashion;
I wasn't going to use him as a proxy to continue a fight that neither he nor
I could win. And maybe that's true.

I know that it killed me to do it and, maybe if I'd loved him less, I could
have fought on.

I like to think it worked out better for Joe, in the same way an extraction
is better than chronic toothache - but maybe I'm just trying to rationalise
my actions.

To be honest, I haven't asked him how he felt about it. Haven't dared. And
it didn't ever make me happy: jettisoning my first-born, whatever the
extenuating circumstances, was never part of my life-plan, or my plan for
his.

My dad is a strong, vigorous rolemodel and loyalty is something he taught me
from an early age: "Me and mine," he'd tell me, "that's all that counts. All
that matters."

And he judged other men on their ability to hold down a job and provide for
their families. The worst kind of men, he taught me, were idle, or boasters,
or both. And the very worst type of men abandoned their family.

I know from experience how important a good role-model is for a growing boy.
Dads provide boundaries, they model acceptable behaviour, demonstrate how
men should act.

And despite what my ex told me, via numerous letters from her solicitor,
boys do need their fathers. And yet here I was abandoning him.

Fortunately, I knew that if I withdrew from his life, Joe wouldn't lack for
male role-models: on his mum's side he has uncles aplenty and they're mostly
of that warm, jocular, physical brand of masculinity that is easy and
uncomplicated and supportive. They'd do, I thought. They're not me, but
they'd do.

And this is how you abandon your children. Not with fireworks, not with
emotional catharsis or some lingering cinematic close-up, but incrementally,
with sadness, tiredness and an "OK, they'll do".

In retrospect, could I have done it some other way? Probably, but I don't
know how. A couple of years after she'd started making access difficult, and
after five sessions at court, we tried counselling.

She didn't turn up. She didn't need to. I did, and the counsellor, a
distinguished old gentleman with a white goatee beard, watched me sit down,
turned his full, grave attention to me and asked: "Why do you insist on
causing your wife so much trouble?"

The heavy artillery, I discovered, was on the side of Eve.

In the years that followed I had occasional contact with Joe, but every
contact was followed by a flurry of letters complaining that my presence
upset him and after a while I lost contact with him, didn't know his
address, his school or his mum's workplace.

I'd made it clear that I'd like to renew contact at any time. I sent him
birthday gifts and cards care of his Gran, paid my maintenance like
clockwork and waited.

After a while, I remarried and had another couple of children.

What followed was a sort of emotional stasis. I'd learned that whatever the
law might say, in practice, there was little point in trying to fight for
custody.

Ironically enough, in the end, and in spite of my experiences with the
family court system and the goateed family counsellor, it did take a third
party to arrange a reconciliation between Joe and me.

It wasn't until he grew old enough to get a girlfriend of his own that he
could really speak to anyone else about how he felt about me.

With his mum, as I found out later, any discussion of me provoked a row.
With a caring, supportive partner, he could talk freely. And one day, God
bless her, his girlfriend called me.

Aged 16, he'd just left school, she told me, and felt that he was now old
enough to make the decision about whether or not to meet up with me and:
"Would I like to meet him?"

It had been ten years. We met in a quiet bar, Joe, me and his girlfriend
Evie, who initially did a lot of the talking. It wasn't anything like I
imagined it would be.

Despite my concerns, there were no awkward silences, no recriminations,
though, being men, there was a lot left unsaid.

There probably still is. But mainly it felt as if he'd popped out for five
minutes and then returned.

Despite the gap of ten years in seeing each other, there seemed to be no gap
in our relationship.

The moment we met, we hugged and I was struck by the thought: he's a man. In
my mind's eye he was a boy, but here he was, this big physical presence.

And while my heart broke for the boy I'd lost, I loved this young man
straight away.

So what's he like, this son of mine? Well, he has his mum's colour, he's
engaging like her, too, and like me he's subject to madcap enthusiasms,
loves sport and is an avid reader.

Like both of us, he is charming, talkative and enjoys company. But it's the
little things I notice: he says "Thank you" exactly like I do, quickly and
with a "g" where there should be a "k" - sort of a "Thang you".

We have the same-shaped hands. He has my eyes, too. And when I look at him,
the person he reminds me of most is my dad. I'm pleased, relieved in fact,
he's turned out so well.

Overall, and with the small exception of depriving Joe of a relationship
with his dad, I think Jenny, my ex, did a good job in bringing him up, a
really good job.

Joe disagrees with me on that. For his part, he claims to have brought
himself up. He and his mum argue constantly, he tells me.

He doesn't get on with her boyfriends, doesn't approve of her lifestyle, or
she of his.

In fact, he appears to have the same incendiary relationship with his mum
that I once had with her.

I tell him: "Don't argue with your mum. If she annoys you, cut her some
slack. Arguing, that's her forte. So learn to let things go."

And anyway, I always want to add, you shouldn't fight with your mother all
the time. She's your mum. She loves you. Maybe it's his eyes. My eyes. It
must kill her, looking at him and seeing me.

It's a decade or more since she bested me and, with my reluctant
acquiescence, had me legally amputated from their lives.

Yet every time she looks at him, it's me who's looking back at her. Ouch!
That's got to hurt.

But as for the time we spent apart, well, there's really nothing I can do to
redeem that loss. There's a big part of his life that I'll never be part of
and I've had to come to terms with that.

For a long time I wasn't sure how to feel about it, or how to reply to the
quietly persistent voice in my head that told me I'd abandoned my son.

But here's the thing: after a decade apart, I discovered that my son has my
eyes. And that's probably the best response I could ever make.


--
Never trust a woman, how can you trust something that bleeds every 28 days
and doesn't die!!!



.