Teach your children

By Joe Parr There's more to teaching than talking

1994 Seattle, WA - Teach your children well ... The tears swell up in my eyes as I drive home from another meeting of disenfranchised parents. After another couple hours listening to stories of destroyed lives and offering them only the tenuous hope of salvation through planting political signs along roadways, despair overtakes me once again. I know the cavalry is never coming over the hill. Curse this oldies station on the radio. Their father's hell did slowly go by ... I had better slow down the car in front of me is getting blurry. A few years ago, I was a quiet and bashful engineer content to wallow in the love of my family and delight at the adventures of my young son. That man has died and in his place was born another father of the 90's. I, like millions of others, have survived this grueling rite of passage where the ideals and dreams of youth are dashed by the cold reality of living. And feed them on your dreams ... Who would have guessed a few years ago that I would be dreaming about a judge allowing me to spend Christmas eve with my son? Now I dream of the life I almost had until the state in its infinite wisdom decided to eliminate superfluous fathers from the lives of children. State Mandated Employment

Now I dream of the freedom to pursue a life of my choice. The state has mandated my career with the threat of indefinite imprisonment. They take the money I could have used to support my son and pay the maid to clean his mother's house. Other fathers pay large sums of support to the welfare office who give it to totally unrelated women, while the child, who is supposedly entitled to the benefits of his father's money, lives in poverty on welfare with less than 20% of what his father has paid to the state. The State has a clear agenda to increase the rolls of welfare children when there are parents whose income can be tapped. The state is stealing from the children! Unfortunately, the only people aware of this treachery are the noncustodial parents who have also been impoverished and are unable to fight for their own children let alone realign the laws with a structure of reason. I dream of the parent I had wanted to be. In every case, it is the time and affection of the parents that has the greatest benefit to the children. The state has deprived my son of a father and put him at risk for difficulty in school, drugs, gangs, and even prison when he is older. My son deserves to know his father as a model of a productive, loving man that he might grow into. The amount of money in the lives of children is far less crucial than the amount of parenting from two devoted parents. The one they pix, the one you'll know by ... Visitation Withheld

Visitation with my son is regularly withheld. I am of course powerless to enforce court orders because of my gender. My son understands my devotion and commitment. That feeble security seems to be all I can offer him at this time. I know that the children who have grown through divorce recall the devotion of the noncustodial parent and the consistency of visitation. I have never heard a grown child of divorce mention the money provided by an absent parent as significant in their lives. There is more that I can do. I can work on campaigns. I can call the lawmakers who created this nightmare. I can write to the newspapers with my story. But not right now. Not while my heart weighs so heavy in my chest that I gasp for breath. I am going in the right direction. I just can't tell where the finish line might be. You who are on your own must have a code that you can live by ... I know what is right and I will speak my mind to those who will listen and I will console those victims still within their life's transition. And so become yourself because the past is just a good-bye ... I have gone well beyond the limits I had imagined for myself. I have come to know the power of my passion and the strength of commitment through years of working and growing. Complex Issues

My son has many more years to grow. You of tender years can't know the truth that your elders grew by ... These issues are too complex for my son to understand. By the time he becomes capable of understanding my world, his world will have changed to obscure the emotions and battles of today. Children live in a world of potential, opportunity and adventure. While the promise of our own potential and opportunity has been stripped from us by the state, our children will have the strength to bring change. My son has exposed the residue from years of cynicism accumulated on my attitudes and perspectives like grime accumulates unnoticed on the windows until a little Windex brings the sun scintillating in to my home. A day in the life of my son will take him from anticipation and ecstasy to devastation and despair and back again. And so help them with your youth, they see the truth, before they can die ... The truth that I see has me crying quietly by myself on I-5. My son has taught me to experience the unmitigated emotions of a child, to live in the present. What has allowed my pain to overwhelm me is the same strength that drives me to make a change. My strength is restored just to gaze into the eyes of my son, only to find myself, smiling back.