The Dilemma
I never knew to what extent my belief system would be challenged until I became a parent. I always believed that if a significant other was incarcerated I would not visit them depending on the reasoning behind why they landed themselves there. We all know lately, even that has been challenged with our black men being arrested for inexcusable reasons, but that’s not my point. I felt that if you did the crime, you need to serve your time and if I don’t support what you did, I’m not coming. Hey, that’s just me. But the dilemma comes in here. My ex-husband landed himself in prison, out of state, not too long after our break up. At the time we had a two year old son, who had just seen him one month before he was arrested.
So in my mind at that moment, I felt he was an idiot for putting himself in a position to not be able to see his son and furthermore live his life. As far as visiting him in jail, it was out of the question for me. For a number of reasons:
I didn’t want my son to be subjected to that environment
I didn’t want my son to think it was okay to visit someone after their wrongdoing
I didn’t know what impact seeing his father in that state would have on him
So against his grandparents wishes my answer four years ago was ‘NO.’ My son is now 6 years old and real questions are starting to pour out. But not just questions, statements. He told my grandmother,
“I wish I had him around to be my Dad, not to be with my Mom, but just for me.”
When I sat him down and asked him how he felt about it, it tore me to pieces. He told me that he never met his Dad before and he wished he had a Dad like everyone else. I knew I couldn’t help that his father’s sentence was incomplete and he wouldn’t be home yet. It just baffled my mind that according to him, aside from sporadic phone calls, his Dad was almost a figment of his imagination. I knew then that what I believed had to be modified for the betterment of my child’s sanity. I want him to know that you do have a Dad and he’s right here. So I called up his grandparent’s to arrange a time to fly him out there to see his Dad for the first time in four years.
This decision was a huge dilemma, but my child’s needs came first. Let me tell you how God works in mysterious ways. As I’m talking on the phone with his grandparents, his Dad clicks in and my child was able to tell him on the phone that he was coming to see him. The excitement that spread across his face was something I will always remember. I know I made the right decision. After we hung up from his Dad he said,
“Mommy thank you, I’m going to see my Daddy in real life.”
