Good Parents & Bad Parents

I read with some interest the latest post from the Not-So-Venomous-This-Time Kate over at Electric Venom in which she describes receiving the perfect birthday gift. And from the way she describes it, it couldn't have been any better. There is nothing in this world that is more important than family. Nothing.

I just couldn't help while reading her story, juxtaposing it against my own situation. Almost everything is the exact opposite.

My girlfriend has three kids with two different fathers (I have none of my own). But instead of fighting to keep them out of their lives, we spend a great deal of time trying to remind the kids that they actually do have biological fathers.

With the oldest, it doesn't much matter to her. She knows that her father is a drunk whose only really care is where the next beer is coming from. She knows not to expect him to keep any promises.

It's the two little ones that are tough.

Christmastime, we buy gifts and put their father's name on them, so that they think he cared enough to buy them something. Phone messages? We have to make them up, not throw them away. The only thing we lie about is that we don't tell them that Daddy is coming around because he stole from them so he could hit the crack pipe; we tell them that he's working or that he went back to his Mom's house. I hate perpetuating a false myth, God do I hate it, but they're too young to know the brutal reality of their father. They need to be kids first; they can grow up later.

There are times that I wish these kids, my kids, could have parents that cared even one-tenth as much, no one-one hundredth as much, as Mrs. Kate does for her daughter. Even an acknowledgement of their existence would be nice.

If only they could be so lucky.