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Not all non-residential parents live near their children.
Being a parent means supporting all of your child’s needs, including their financial ones. As the workplace has changed over the years, so have the places people can actually get work.
As a result, many non-custodial parents, including yours truly, live more than an hour’s travel time from their children. Sometimes it’s just that – a different part of the same state. Sometimes, it’s a few states away: say, Boston when your child lives in New Jersey. For others it’s a plane ride.
Just like a non-custodial mom is still a Mom, a long distance parent is still a parent. We have all of the same worries and woes of our local and residential peers. We are the ones the school calls when they cannot find our fearless co-parent, because we know how to get them. We get calls from the principal’s office. We juggle school events and visitation schedules with blended family schedules and work. There is an empty room in our homes set up for the conspicuously absent child we are carrying in our hearts. We have Amazon Prime for the exact inevitable moment we find out a school project, concert uniform, sports equipment is needed on Monday.
When we cross – via plane, train, or automobile – that state line to where our children are waiting for us, our smiles get brighter and our hearts get lighter.
Non-custodial parents who live nearby and don’t take advantage of every second they could have with their children are anathemas to us. We fight for every moment. We cherish every second.
Our heart breaks when, at the end of the day, long weekend, week, summer vacation, our children return to their residential parents, but we do not stop being Mom or Dad.
You don’t stop being a parent when your child is not in your presence…
Because Autism
I cannot possibly write about my life without writing about Autism, typically referred to as a “spectrum disorder affecting 1 in XX individuals.” I’ll leave the “XX” there in place of an actual number because the number of autistic people changes constantly the more the world learns about Autism.
By the way, Autism is NOT a disorder. Not in my eyes. Not in the #actuallyautistic community’s eyes either. A “disorder” is something that might someday be curable, or that can possibly prevented. A disorder is something those affected WANT cured, and/or prevented.
My son is Autistic. I have been told I exist somewhere on that vast spectrum. Neither of us wants a cure. There is nothing that can prevent Autism. Leading Man #1 has had and continues to have his ups and downs, just like any other late teen/early 20-something. He has other currently disabling conditions to go along with his being Autistic. I say currently because my son’s future is not written yet. Don’t judge him by what his Mom says in a blog. Don’t count him out of achieving his dreams, or doing anything he sets his mind to. He can. He always has. He already does. He will.
I have never been formally diagnosed with Autism, just told I meet the DSM-V criteria for being on the spectrum by the professional support team I enlisted to help me in my earliest years as a non-custodial and long-distance Mom, when I was wracked with guilt about one, the other, or both.
Common sense, you know. You have something in your head you can’t handle yourself, you go and talk to someone. You get help. In the beginning it was extremely hard for me to handle my son not living with me full-time. I felt guilty to my bones for abandoning my son by not fighting a custody battle. I also felt like everyone in the world was judging me – badly – for being a non-custodial MOM.
No cures, no tragedies, and yes, we both get flu vaccines every year. This is life. We like it, and ourselves, as we are.