This afternoon, I went to my 11 year old daughter Grace’s school conference, and it was wonderful. She is doing so well, and I am so proud of her, you don’t know. She is progressing in math, and doing excellent in all of her other subjects. I called Grace when I left the conference and told her that I was going to be picking her up. She was playing with a friend and asked me if I could take her and her friend to McDonalds. Was she kidding? I live for this. Unfortunately, her friend couldn’t go. But Grace wasn’t disappointed. She said, “I really just wanted to spend the time with you dad.” I love it when she says that to me.

By the time I got over to pick Grace up, my 16 year old daughter Sarah was home from school. I had promised her the night before that I would take her to the grocery store to pick up a few items. She’s working out now at a gym, and believe it or not, she consults me for her work out schedule and her diet. We went to the store and picked up some fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese, and salad fixings. Sarah has her permit now, so she drove us to the grocery store. I have to be careful that I don’t give her too much credit for her driving ability. She’s good, but she is a kid, and needs to be taught how to handle the more difficult road situations. Honestly, when I look at her behind the wheel, she looks like she’s 12 years old. I’m never sure if she really hears me when I give her driving tips. I get those short answers from her like okay, right dad, and I know. Is she listening to me? I don’t know. We got the groceries, and I drove her home. She got herself together, and then we drove to pick up her friends so I could drive them to the gym. I dropped them off. Then I drove back to my house to sleep over. We stopped at McDonalds on the way, picked up dinner, and brought it to my house. We ate dinner, then sat down at the table to do homework. It makes all the difference in the world to just sit at the table with her while she does her work. It shows her that I’m there in case she needs my help, and it also shows that I mean business- that I expect her to do her homework. When I saw she was done, we went in the den and put on the TV. Then we got down the Christmas lights, and had a great time, laughing and joking around. Then I sat down in my recliner in front of the TV. She always lets me doze off in my chair. When she gets tired herself she wakes me up and we go to bed. It’s 4:17 in the morning as I write this post. She is still asleep. I love having her here when I wake up in the morning.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like I spend more time with my kids now than I ever did when I was married. It can be done, but as a father I have come to realize that I need to just do it no matter what, and not think about how tired I am or that I just don’t feel like making the drive to pick them up. As I said earlier “I live for this.”

My 11 year old daughter Grace called me at 7:00 this morning. She wanted to know if I was picking her up today. I told her that I had to go to her school for the parent teacher conference at 2:00 this afternoon, and that I would be over to get her after that. Even though I know that Grace likes to spend time with me it’s always a major relief when she calls and wants to know if I’m picking her up. I think because I’m divorced, this means even more to me.

I didn’t always have this joy and pleasure of having both my girls, Sarah (she’s 16) and Grace with me as much as I do now . When I first got separated I didn’t have a place for my kids to go. I was living on my sister’s couch, and then I went to a pretty crummy winter rental in a shore town. So there wasn’t any place for them to sleep. I did buy a small condo after about 2 yeas, but at that point, my ex-wife wasn’t allowing me to take my children overnight. For 4 years after I was separated and then divorced, I picked up my daughter Sarah every Tuesday and Thursday after school, and then all day Saturday. On those days, Sarah and I would go shopping, do some homework, and then go out for a bite to eat. On Saturday I would try to have an activity planned but that wasn’t always possible either. I did my best. That’s all I can say.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were always especially difficult times for me because my children always spent those days with their mother. Needless to say I didn’t really have the holiday spirit. Then about four years ago I bought my own house and moved much closer to where they lived. That was a turning point for me. The main thing that happened was that I developed a routine with Grace, and she started to sleep over on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (Unfortunately, Sarah wasn’t much interested in coming over.)I started to feel excited when the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas approached. The only thing that I cared about was that my children would be with me. Tonight for instance I will get down the Christmas decorations from the attic and Grace will help me test the Christmas lights to see if they all work. We will put out some decorations, tell jokes, and talk about what we’re going to do for the holidays because we know that we’re all going to be together. On Thanksgiving day my kids will still be with their mother, but I have my own tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday. This is great because I get to celebrate Thanksgiving with all the fixins with my children and they don’t have to feel bad on Thursday because they’ll be celebrating the holiday with me on Friday. As a matter of fact I just invited my sister Kathy and her husband Hank to join us, and I’m really hoping they’ll be with me at my Thanksgiving dinner too.

Please, please don’t misunderstand me. This is not the ideal situation, but I think I’m making the best of my lot as a divorced dad. People who are divorced and have kids struggle through the holidays, and I think we dads can become very depressed. I believe that it goes with the territory. We have to make the very best of the situation and always remember that we have to do everything with our children in mind.