Sticks and Stars

My boys’ dad is coming to visit today and my two year old is very excited. I don’t know what he understands about “daddies” and about his in particular, but I do know that he excitedly points out the dads he sees at his daycare and that he’s very attached to my dad.

A while ago, once I felt it was safe to actually talk about the boys’ dad’s impending visit (since I wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually show), the boys started getting excited and my little one would exclaim every once in a while, “My daddy’s coming!” Then yesterday he and his brother were playing and he raced over to me and whispered into my ear, “My daddy’s coming to see me!” I agreed and he got the hugest grin on his face and whispered, “He’s going to hug me!!”

That just about destroyed my heart. I think about the actuality of his dad, his dad who refused to even look at him much less actually acknowledge or talk to him when we used to switch custody of our older son, his dad who denied that this sweet little boy is his son but agreed to be in his life “because he has no choice.” He does not deserve this precious little two year old of mine.

The thing I worry about with today’s visit is that his dad isn’t going to engage him, isn’t going to make the effort to get past his shyness. My two year old is so painfully shy, especially around people he doesn’t know, especially when he feels excited about those people. He really likes my brother and his girlfriend and tells me all the time how he misses them and wants to see them, but when he’s around them he does nothing other than scowl and hide his head. Today’s visit really matters to him (he’s certainly never exclaimed excitedly about someone hugging him before, especially someone who is essentially a stranger) and I’m afraid that his dad isn’t going to do all he can to make the visit a success. Indeed, I have absolutely no indication that he will at all.

This whole thing makes me feel ill.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.