Birthday Blues

It is inevitable. When there is distance involved the problems arise.

The children’s worlds are not one, but in fact two separate entities. One of them is where they go to school and all their friends are there. And the other one, they have to leave their friends to go visit.

The children sometimes want to bring those worlds together, give themselves some sense of wholeness and yet it is no easy task.

They have to leave for the whole weekend and parents don’t want their children leaving for an entire weekend. Parent’s aren’t comfortable if they don’t know they can get in the car and come get their children in the middle of the night if they call homesick. There is just something disconcerting about the situation.

Plus, other children’s parents have not probably seen the other parent much, if at all. They don’t have the physical cues that we use to know immediately if they are an axe murderer or just a normal person. This is really no way to tell, but people rely on instinct more than they realize.

So in the absence of physical presence, the distance and the time, physical and psychological barriers make it terribly difficult for children to bring these worlds together.

It saddens me to know that my stepchild cannot have friends over because her friends’ parents don’t know us and we live too far away to remedy that. I am willing to go the extra mile to help her bring the worlds together, if that means phone calls, introductions, extra road trips, I will do it. It’s her birthday and she should have friends as well as this side of her family with her. The two should not be mutually exclusive if it can be helped.

Return from Birthday Blues to Mom Notes