Oh, Reed, how disappointing. At age 18 I was one of the first male day care center teachers at a state university's day care center with 2 to 4 year olds. Working with them every day I was sure I was rehearsing to be a great parent. But I got married and divorced twice with no kids. Yeah, now what? I can't answer that, but I feel the question in my bones, too. Much support to you, my friend.

Reed, please don't blame yourself how things have turned out with your family and your kids. We have NO CONTROL over what other people do. our kids or not. I am sure your heart is breaking at the thought that you won't be involved in this child's life. Remember though that things "can" change and if they don't, hopefully this one won't be your only Grand Child. It would be nice to see far ahead and know for sure but we aren't that lucky. Just remember that you WERE a good daughter, wife and mother. Hold on to that. Good luck to you. Hopefully the ex girlfriend will think about what she is doing and change her mind . ((((HUGS))))

I have a dream family, in a way. I have a girl and a boy, who are both gifted. My husband adores me. We have two great dogs.

But let's look closer at my dream life. Sex is such a big part of our marriage and I'm dependent in many ways. There's such a danger of falling into kind of a "kept" woman type scenario, and I try not to do that.

My son's math genius is coupled by his shadow illnesses of OCD and ADD, though not yet pronounced enough to warrant treatment. But his night terrors in his toddler years worry me for his future. My daughter gets frustrated trying to show him how to behave; she felt she had to do that when my leg was bad and I wasn't able to physically be as present as needed. I feel inadequate.

So strange that my life turned out so traditional when I always felt so avant guards and daring. My mother often told me that I was an accident and a birth control failure. She'd always follow that with how glad she was that I was s girl, but it still stung. I can't imagine how hurtful your childhood must have been. hugs and support.

I also grew up in a home where I wasn't wanted, and while I don't know you personally I promise you are not alone.

I wanted a big family also, and struggled to be the perfect wife. My ex-husband was mentally ill and abusive and we have a daughter together. I found the love of my life and wanted to settle down and have more children but we can't because cancer took my uterus before I met him.

While my husband, daughter, and I may appear to have that dream family that's only what people see on the surface. We struggle a lot financially because I am in grad school and because of my health concerns. When I say struggle I mean we almost got evicted two years ago for lack of payment when I asked our old landlord for a one-week extension on rent (and I was already skipping meals at that point to save money, and ate ten-cent ramen noodles for an entire month so my daughter could have food).

Nothing is as simple as it looks and nobody's life is perfect, you know? I would like to think the more perfect a family looks on the surface, the more conversations they have behind close doors. My family wears its issue on our sleeves and that works for us (an is liberating in itself).

I'll be sending you positive thoughts and prayers as you sort through all of this!

Ramble warning. This post hit a current need in my strictly personal cycle.

My unwavering faith in cycles comes from my life as a feral kid. I had a family unit to "belong" to, but. . . I was safer in the country fields near the low rent farm houses my parents kept moving us into and out of. Fifth of eleven children. . . Been over 40 years since I ran away from country dangers to the urban throw-away kid camps and I am not at all sure anybody has noticed I am gone yet. There is plenty of room to believe I had the freedom to start roaming fields as a toddler. Nobody cared enough to know where I was.

To this day, I am more comfortable with nature's cycles than civilized humans. Day-to-night. Season-to-season. Birth-to-decline. Plant and animal migrations. Etcetera, etceteri. Cycles are everywhere, in continual motion. I call it, "Just Life." There are even cultural cycles constructed by humans. Economic fluctuations. Slang/language. Family structures. Academia. Fashion. Urban Renewal. Etcetera, etcereri.

I call my personal place in the "Modern Family" (Mom-Dad-Kids), "The Plate Glass Window Cycle." I have never actually been part of such a family. I have only watched them through plate glass windows, using my creative gifts to imagine what they are saying in the picturesque scenes and filling in the blanks of what they are doing when I was not playing Peeping Tom.

Girl, howdy, my own attempt at family life has revealed allot of gaps between my youthful creativity and the functional realities. The only reason I haven't had multiple spouses is that I don't have enough faith in the Plate Glass Window Cycle to visit a divorce lawyer, much less go through more than one courthouse visitation for marital blessings. The times my husband and I had separate addresses, I had no intentions of looking for another partner of either gender. That unnatural cycle is as appealing as the oil spill cycle that feeds our machines.

But the primal need for family and community? That one is hard-wired. That sucking black hole where my family is supposed to be is sucking harder with every year that passes.

This morning finds me the grandmother with rejection reflexes roaring at the Father (youngest son, 32), and Mother who decided to set up camp in my territory last night. Especially when the infant woke the household during my meditation hour. How dare you?!?!

Thanks for the reminder to inventory my Plate Glass Window Cycle, Reed. Still don't know what to say to the invaders on the other side of my privately owned window behind me as I type, but. . . Attitude works in progress. . . Maybe I can improve on my conditioned responses. I may not have the proper education to be part of a "Modern Family," but. . . I can do more with what I actually have.

Off-Topic:
"Modern Family" is a formal sociology term for the "Leave it to Beaver" family model in the early 20th century. I have been highly entertained by the Academic slip-and-slide of Professors attempting to carry the term into our current family cycles. Believe it or not, some of those professors still like me after I enjoy some academic mockery at their expense.

Not even Beaver and Wally did well in the "Modern Family" model.