Birthdays Without Daddy: 5 out of 7

Today is KBug's 7th birthday. My little girl is seven years old.

Wow.

 

That's not what I plan to write about this morning, though. Today I want to write about KBug and her dad.

 

This will be the second year in a row that KBug will not be speaking to her father on her birthday.

 

Last year he had promised a Skype call. We had originally agreed on a time, but I had forgotten that she had gymnastics at that time and arranged to have an earlier call time. He wasn't happy, but he ultimately agreed.

 

The night before the call was supposed to take place, I sent him a text message to make sure that he was still planning to Skype with her in the morning. GF responded and told me that he was working but that he did plan to call. Ok, great. We are set to go.

 

So the next morning I get KBug out of bed and get her ready to go to gymnastics. I decided not to remind her of her daddy calling so it would be more of a surprise when he did, so we just went about our business. A little while before the call is supposed to happen, I set up the laptop, log in to Skype and make sure everything is working for our call.

 

Well, as it turns out it was a very good thing that I didn't remind KBug of the call.

 

Because he never called.

 

So the day goes by, we go to gymnastics, KBug has a birthday party with more than 20 children at our house, we clean up the house and then collapse at the end of the day. Eventually we all crawled into bed to go to sleep.

 

At this point I haven't heard anything from the Ex Husband.

 

The next morning I wake up and discover I have a text message. That was sent at after 11:30 the night before. From someone who has asked on multiple occasions that I not text him after 9pm. What happened to do unto others what you would have done unto yourself?? Hmmm... But I digress...

 

Anyways. So I wake up to find a text saying that he was called into work early that morning and couldn't make the call. Well, I had kind of figured that out, but thanks for telling me. I texted back and said that if he wanted to do a call that day, we could and specified the times that worked for us (it was a Sunday and we had to go to church and run errands). I got a text back from his GF saying that he was sleeping but she would let him know when he woke up.

 

Never heard from him.

 

So, in the end, KBug didn't get to talk to her daddy at all on her birthday weekend. She realized it the following Monday when we went to see her counselor and he asked her about daddy. KBug started telling him that she was going to have a call with her daddy on her birthday, and then she realized that her birthday had already happened and her daddy hadn't called her...

 

Let's just say that the aftermath of her realization was not pretty, nor was it fun to navigate.

 

The night before his last deployment (July 28, 2009).
She's only seen him 5 times since he returned stateside.
All 5 of those occurrences were over 3 years ago.

Now here we are, a full year later, and KBug still remembers. How do I know she still remembers? Let me tell you.....

 

Last night KBug was getting out of the bath tub when she asked me if she had a Skype call with her daddy that night. I told her she didn't. So she asked if she was going to have a call with him today, on her birthday. I told her no.

 

She then went into this long story about how daddy didn't call her last year and now he wasn't calling her this year and it wasn't very nice of him. So I kindly explained that we have plans today and daddy wasn't available when we have time to talk to him. I reminded her that she was going to have lunch with a few of our friends and then she is going to see Mommy's choir concert before we come home to have a nice evening at home. I told her that daddy could only talk during the afternoon while she is at the concert and not in the evening.

 

Well, why can't my daddy make time for me?? Why can't he talk to me when we have time?? It's MY birthday! He didn't call me last year. He isn't calling me this year. My daddy needs to start making time for me.

 

That's the gist of what came out of her mouth. And boy was she mad! I didn't even know she remembered that he hadn't called her last year, but apparently it had a huge impact on her and she definitely still has that floating around in her head.

 

I did explain that daddy and I tried to make it work so that they could talk today, but we just couldn't find the time. And she isn't upset that she is going to the concert instead of talking to daddy. She is upset that he won't make time to talk to her when she can talk. And I think she has a right to be angry. She's only seven years old, it's her birthday and she wants to talk to her daddy. She doesn't quite understand that her conversation times with daddy revolve around GF's work schedule. And forget about trying to explain why, because I don't even understand why he can't talk without GF present. But it is what it is.

 

And, unfortunately, KBug is spending today without her daddy.

 

5 years total.

4 years in a row.

2 years without a phone call.

No card, no gift.

 

Tell me again how she's supposed to know that he loves her like he says he does?





KBug and her daddy at the last birthday he attended.
Her third birthday party (April 18, 2009).