Thinking about any one child of mine (see earlier post today) naturally causes my thoughts to return to H-.

Want to know what some folks advise? I wish I was kidding. There are, supposedly, well-educated and well-trained men and women in the business of divorce that suggest, “Send cards and letters over the next 5 years or so at least for birthdays and holidays etc. That way, when she is 18 and maybe thinks differently and is free to do as she pleases, she won’t be able to (fact-check-proof) say, ‘You never even…’”

As I receive this advice, I always poo poo it, saying agreeably, “Yeah. I know. Of course I will.” But that’s a lie. Not the part about whether or not I will use the USPS to attempt to parent, but the part about my belief that it somehow works. My kid, H-, would have to be some kind of moron to think, “Oh, he actually did love me,” because she received some one dozen articles of mail each year for five years.

Seriously, can you imagine an adult woman falling in love with a man who did the same?

“But he sent me a Hallmark card every major holiday!!” the imaginary imbecile woman’s response to friends, after they chide her for ever having confessed that she nursed a dream of real relationship with a pen pal.

That woman would be a moron!!

And so would H- if the greeting card thing had any effect, by my thinking. And I’m not looking to raise morons here. Marry them? Yup. Divorce them? Yup. Produce them? Nope.

I have far too much hope placed on H-’s inborn ability to get to the bottom of the situation before she turns 18 (or after, for that matter) to waste any on the experts’ advice.

No, to be clear, the truth still lay where it always has.

After 12+ years of rocky, but never hopeless co-parenting (and more money transfers than sanity permits to reckon, both in total dollars and percentage of income), H- has recently been kidnapped by her mom (and any others over there who don’t actively work for H-’s freedom). Right now she has developed Stockholm Syndrome, which, when put plainly as if for 14 yr olds, means: she prefers the company and agenda of her kidnapper—despite the crime—than the terror that she now surely believes, wrongly, comes with freedom and knowing the truth.

Oh. And her mom is a money-grubbing whore. Always has been and always will be. The future for H- will include a realization of all this, followed by a tepid-at-first, then common-to-perhaps-loving-even return to me (including apologizing for ever doubting), plus a daily and disastrous relationship with her mother that is anything but encouraged by little ol’ me after said realization. Then, maybe later, the two will talk it out through the glass on those phones at a prison—as her mom is locked up for the what is illegal in the future—the general crime of allowing a heart of absolute moral blackness to continue to pump blood throughout her body.

(The fantasy sustains me; what do you want me to say?)

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Post recap: Don’t be a moron. Cards and gifts alone could only ever serve as “Exhibit A” of the dysfunction and moral crimes you live under.