I was planning Carly’s 11th birthday party, a feat I had done 10 times before, and I was pretty good at it. Although, this time, I had invited around 10 little girls to spend the night in our home. YIKES! So, I needed help if I could get it. I had games planned, cakes ordered, presents purchased, everything. And Chris had recently seemed more interested in becoming an active part of Carly’s everyday life again, which thrilled me for Carly. I was absolutely ecstatic for her. I had plans of involving him as much in her life as he would accept. So, I invited Chris to come stay at our house and help with Carly’s party. He would be invited only for the party portion, and then go home close to the end of the night, whenever that happened to be. He had never really even been to one of her parties before, apart from the ones we threw with his family, and I just knew this would be a great bonding experience for the two of them. He showed up the night of her party, and a gaggle of girls showed up with some parents staying to help as well. It was an amazing and fun night- full of glow in the dark hide-and-seek, prizes, tin foil costumes, a Wii dance party (with a house full of kids and a few adults thrown in all dancing together!), cake, presents, giggling, shirt painting, and just absolute fun. Chris even had fun around all those screaming girls. He was grinning from ear to ear. We braided little girls’ hair, we ate cake and chips and had a blast. Carly seemed so proud to have both her parents in one place, and it reminded me that she had never had that feeling before- both of her parents present, and happy, even enjoying one another. She beamed with pride. I was so happy to see Carly happy that I told Chris just to stay over, sleep on the couch, and he could be there when she woke up. So he obliged, which was great because I really needed the help late into the night anyway. Did you know it’s really hard to get a group of screaming girls to go to bed at a decent hour?? Yeah, I should have known. But it was so much fun.
Carly and some of her 11th birthday crew
And it surprised me how much fun I had with Chris, whom I had always called “Carly’s dad”. I did this on purpose. I’d kept my distance emotionally from him, trying to never look him in the eye if he happened to be there when I picked Carly up from her mamaw’s house. I didn’t speak to him about Carly, he knew nothing about her days at school, her grades, her friends, her struggles, her achievements, not because I didn’t want him to know, he just didn’t seem to ever care. I didn’t know this person that I’d had two children with. I was an adult now, I owned a home, I had a preteen, I had dated, I knew what I deserved in a man, and what I knew him to be- well, he was not anything close to what I wanted. He did always have a charming smile that I could never get over, and he made me laugh constantly, and something about him always continued to draw me to him, but I never dared tell him that. It was too dangerous, and I knew that he was always battling his addiction. He’d go to rehabs, many many rehabs, which his parents paid for, but he’d always end up on that stuff again. Over the years, almost every time I had seen him, he’d still tell me that he loved me, tell me that if I would just take him back that he could get clean, and he would even propose to me every couple of years, partly to be funny, and partly to let me know that he still cared about me. He even had a girlfriend one time who he’d told up front that if I ever even hinted that I was interested in him, that he’d leave her flat and come running to me. He had always “loved” me and let everyone know that. He told his friends and family over those 11 years how he wished he could get clean, get straight, and get his family back, that he would never want another thing in this world if he could have Carly and myself back in his life. I never took any of this seriously, because he was a dope addict, and I had learned over the years first hand that he tended to be overly emotional and never use logic. For instance, he would say all these things, crying while he said them in fact, despite the fact that he never seemed to care about me while we were together as kids, despite the fact that he never paid any child support and never offered any, even though there were many years that times were tough and Carly and I did without, and despite the fact that he was barely there as a father for Carly, only on the two weekends per month that she went to his parents’ home, and that was if he didn’t have more important things to do like get high. But now, sitting face to face with him at my home, he was more mature than I’d ever seen him. He told me about how he’d been in the drug court program for over a year already, and how they had sent him away to really get clean. He was gone for quite some time at a rehab down south, and during his stay at this rehab he had accepted Jesus as his savior, and he had realized how awful he had been to us, and how he hadn’t helped me in any way with Carly, yet I still always allowed him to see her whenever he requested (which was rare) and I was just the best mom to sweet Carly. He told me how he had great respect for me, and he looked up to me, he wanted to be as good at being a dad as I was at being a mom. This, for completely understandable reasons, melted me. Again, not in a romantic sense, but in the sense that I felt that Carly would finally have the father she had wanted her entire life, and what’s even better, it was her actual dad. I had never heard him speak this way about anything. He was reasonable, calm, he was asking for forgiveness, he was acutely aware of all the wrongs he had committed against us, and he was stating that he wanted to make it right. I committed to co-parenting at that moment, this was my chance to make sure Carly had as normal a childhood as possible.
About a week later, I had tickets to a hockey game that my company sponsored, and I invited Chris to go with us, and this was the start of our co-parenting journey. We walked around Big Spring Park after the game, and enjoyed each others’ company. After that, for a few weekends, I didn’t see him. Things went back to normal. He didn’t pressure me to see him, and that made me trust him even more, because the old Chris that I knew would have been trying to focus on me, and not our daughter or his own life. Chris spent his weekends with Carly, and one weekend I asked him if he wanted to go visit the Indian burial mounds with us when I picked her up. He said he’d like to, and so we went. On that trip to the burial mounds, something happened, and I don’t know why, but I felt our relationship turning, from a co-parenting relationship, to a romantic one. We got along so well, and this was how it was supposed to be right? Mom, dad, and daughter, together? He seemed to have changed so much, seemed so mature. I decided to leave it alone. I was still too scared of what could go wrong, that I wasn’t about to bring up anything like a relationship. Things were great, so we co-parented. My 29th birthday was coming up the next month, and I was going to take a big risk, and ask Chris to accompany me to my birthday dinner along with some friends. We definitely had some romantic tension going on, but neither of us were discussing it at this point. I had not felt actual butterflies in my stomach in quite some time, and it was exciting. I thought, “Finally, Chris has grown up. He’s a good man. A Christian man. Maybe this was meant to work out. Maybe…maybe…” but I wouldn’t allow myself to finish the thought.
Meanwhile, Carly was putting little bugs in my ear, while riding home from the burial mounds:
“You know, dad still loves you, right? He talks about you all the time.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yep. He won’t shut up about you.”
“Well, that’s nice. I’m glad he’s come around to being in our lives more. That makes me happy. I’m glad that he got clean- he did that for you, baby girl.”
“Yeah. Me too! I’m glad he’s around all the time.”
I know I’ve already said it, but she beamed with pride whenever we went somewhere, the three of us. She was so proud to introduce us as her “mom and dad”. That “and” meant a lot to her. This was something she had never had before. And I cherished the look on her face when she got to say it. It made me want Chris around always, and I look back now knowing those weren’t the right reasons for wanting him around. My intentions were good of course, but I had never dated someone that Carly actually even liked, and now her dad was around all the time, and she loved it. It made me seriously think.
The next few weeks, and my birthday dinner, would prove to be the turning point in our entire dynamic.
Love you guys!! Thanks as always for reading!!
MorningLori 