Missing My Nadia

Yesterday i returned once again, beat, from a long 14 hour round trip to and back from Virginia to return my daughter to her mother. She was with me for a week and a half. I had taken the available time during our Jewish Holiday Tuesday off to take that same 14 hour trip to get her. But taking her to New York is a different animal than bringing her back to VA. The bus to NY is an overnight trip (12:30am-7:00am) so, i had the luxury of anticipating that she would sleep it through. Bringing her back i figured, would be the tough part, as the bus leaves China Town at 5:00pm. She doesn't go to sleep till after 8pm, so that is at least 3 hours to have her sitting still in a seat (which i am never successful at).


The bus returned early; the capping of a good ride considering i also had an extra seat to myself. But my mind wasn't as good to me. I can pretty much say that i had already begun slumping into depression, and throughout the night was randomly stoked awake by anxiety about a crash. I carried the same fear when Nadia was with me just hours earlier, yet without her there, though i could only be content with the fact that if forbid something did happen she was safe with her mother, i would day dream off through the feeling of heavy clouds in my chest, about my future
with my baby.
What i am assessing as a somewhat eroding situation between her mother and i has weighed heavy on my mind as to when will be the next time i see my daughter, and whether on her mothers part, conversations are being had with the girl in upholding a responsibility to her, that she be made to understand she has family here that loves her as well.
This comes a week and a half (upon arriving in NY with Nadia) after i received a call from her (that morning when the bus arrived with us in China Town), in which she requested that this be the last time i bring her back up here "because she is getting confused". And with all due respect to Mama Nadia over there and her right to have a relationship, grow, marry, what.have.you, it doesn't make me feel safe about the coming years knowing this is being told to me as another man goes contributing to Nadias upbringing; spending a whole lot more time with her than i and i don't doubt, contributing in other ways. I am not drawing conclusions but simply reacting to what i know and how i feel upon such an unfair command. It is a situation i cannot control, and honestly do not wish to.
It is important to me that Nadia's mother is happy, and you know what.. i would even go as far as saying, that it is wonderful to know that Nadia has a consistant male figure in her life. I disagree with the suggestion of a friend of mine that i NEVER accept that another man be allowed to own the title daddy over my daughter. Again, that is kind of not in my hands. Someday Nadia will go to school and if i am at the distance i am today, and she is knowing other children her age who call the man picking them up at 3pm daddy, she will begin to call this man daddy as well. HOWEVER, with that same respect, i expect some respect in return. I WILL NOT be called by my name. If anything she WILL know that she has a daddy with my face, even if that means she has two daddys. This wouldn't mean she is confused, but rather, that she is SPECIAL!
-She has two homes: 1 in Virginia, 1 in NY
-She has more than one grandma and one of them is Daddys mommy in New York!
-And she has the right to grow into both homes, both families... If it just so happens to be the nature of things because her mother has grown into a new family herself__certainly then Nadia has the right to grow into a third family.

My biggest fear is that someday my daugher will find it a CHORE rather than a priveledge to come see her father. That her mother will have to round up her things and say, you are going to see your father in New York and that my daughter will kick and scream and cry, resisting, because she is not comfortable here. I recognize this can only happen if i do not do my part, and you know what, that's just not an option. Because i have kept up. IM the one who makes the calls, 3 times a week. And if what is being insinuated is that i do not call enough, get ready because i will just have to call EVERY DAY! This has been the case since her mother got pregnant. I kept in contact throughout the pregnancy. Barely ever a call to MY phone. She told me straight out that it was up to me, and i have manned up to that challenge. But how does it go from "It's up to you" to "I think we need to calm it down" ??? Such a turn of events forces me to put the mirror up to Mama Nadia: IT IS UP TO YOU AS WELL! and not only for MY sake.. but lets be unselfish in recognizing for the baby's sake! My good friend/brother said it best "I don't understand these women. You have all of these guys who don't do their part, you would figure it's a good thing when someone steps up to be there. Do they want the father in the childs life or not?"

When i received my daughter in my arms a week and a half ago in a dark lot outside of a bus waiting for me to board with her bundled in blankets, she let out a cry that lasted less than a minute. That is natural. Even when she is 13 years old and leaving for New York for a month i do not doubt she will cry. That is her mother! But again, it lasted less than a minute and immediately after that she looked at my face with her tired eyes and put her head on my shoulder. Two minutes later her head was off my shoulder and her eyes stared past my shoulder to the rows of seats behind me. What i thought would be an easy trip to New York wound up actually being the tough part. She wanted to play. So we are in the wee hours of the morning and i am juggling her in my seat, fumbling around with her: allowing her to shove her passifier in my mouth for a laugh, letting her play with my hat, singing the ABC's to her and letting her tire herself out by climbing down off the seat and back up into my lap again. Finally another passenger, whom had two seats and noticed me struggling, asked if i wanted to trade. There i was able to give her space to lay and squirm till she fell out. With my bones hurting from traveling so long i nestled myself in so that we both fit in our humble two seats.
On the Flip Side; going back down to return her, wound up ironically being the easy ride. I was methodic in how i handled it. We woke up early that day and headed out the door. My plan was to make it a long day out so that by the time we hit the bus she can fall out early and wouldnt have to suffer should we be stuck with one seat again. I took her out to shop around, brought her up to the Bronx to see my peoples, and transitioned through the subways, allowing her to nap no longer than an hour at a time. When we got on the bus though she wasn't ready as i wished she'd have been to seep into her dreams. But that's when i found myself if anything, baring the chance for a final few hours with my daughter. So having been blessed with the back row (an extra TWO seats), i fumbled around with her for a finale; holding her off first with some newspaper and a marker, more nursery rhymes, some sight seeing out the window (look a car, look a dog, say hi to the man, sky.. SAY skyyyy). In between i gave her juice, i gave her her pacifier (which she would throw, and i'd retrieve), i'd give her crackers). I paced the hour perfectly. Then before her eyes begun to wobble in their sockets and she began to whine the 'im sleepy' whine, she stared me in the eye, suckling her pacifier, and said in Barney's candence "I LOVE -YOU!", before quickly sticking her neck out to plant a kiss on my lips (through her bobo), then laying her head on my shoulder.

That touched my heart.

In my life there has been alot that i have started and failed to finish; Some of it i simply gave up on, some of it has been a work in progress, that i add to like each layer of the seasons does the earth. The relationships i have made over the years, the folks i've grown with and those ive met along the way; their numbers for the most part remain on my phone, some are gone; every once inawhile they cross my mind, but still, i am a loner. I might drop in for a birthday then dissapear again. There have been promises i have failed to keep. It all reminds me, admittingly not in the organic sort of immediate sense, but if i am challenged to find a metaphor, of my father and the time he spent with me growing up. My mother raised me and for a good portion of my life i had a step father fill the void of my father, whom i would see on weekends. Sometimes he was more consistant than others. Sometimes he made promises he didn't keep. But he was a good man, whom like no other perhaps, was a sharing man (He'd throw everything in the fridge at us; often times dinner consisted of both Chicken AND FISH on the same plate as mashed potatoes, Macaroni and Cheese and Rice). He didn't have much but we couldn't tell. We didn't see it as staying with him in a studio the size of a box, or a basement apartment with low ceilings, we saw it as a weekend when the breeze felt a bit better; weekend with daddy. We didn't see it that he had a drinking problem, and that so much of the time he seemed a disconnected, almost as if though while we asked questions his mind was floating. We just knew that was our mellow dad, with a spikey chin and big hands. He used to always give to the homeless and sometimes we'd even spend our weekends playing by Prospect Park as he sat on the bench to talk with them. He would take us to see a baseball game every once in awhile and to go fishing.
But by the same token as ive gotten older i cannot ignore that there were times we struggled without him. That my mother carried the burden and that when all said and done he in fact was this sort of guy who came and saved the day in our disillussioned minds, while our mother never did enough. It didn't help that at the age of 13 he would leave and simply never return.
That being said, I will never forget when Nadia's mother told me in plain terms "I want you to be there for Nadia, more than my father was there for me". She said this, despite the fact that she feels that her father WAS there for her. But as is the case with my situation, just being there here and there wasn't enough. I know this is true, because i feel that way. I went through it. And in having been so i have the insight to be able to step back every once inawhile to evaluate where i am with my daughter, and where i need to be.
There are MANY ways in which i need to make up for, in being there the way i feel i need to be. So my depression is partly of my own making, although, this is not about ME or my depression,. It is not about Nadia's mother, or my father or anyone else but our baby girl!

Nadia was conceived not out of a romantic passion but out of a different kind of love. A love of LIFE. A deeply held sense of humanity, spirituality and faith, in ourselves as potential parents and by parents, at least speaking for myself, i mean a human being with a natural affinity towards reproducing my own, intent upon contributing to the physical and spiritual miracle that is our existance. There can never be too many, there can never be one least important or marvelous than the other. But for all my ambition and will for humanity, there was a void in my life to begin with when i received the call that i had conceived a child. Quite simply i wanted a child. It wasn't a back up plan and for all i talk about my values, it went beyond avoiding abortion. It was something i cannot explain. I think its something that all humans hold intuitively. A yearning. I simply wished to allow it to manifest. Because for once i think i knew i had something to complete.
If there were ever anything i am OWED, by the government, by Mama Nadia.. it is the next 17 years of the right to my daughter.
If there were ever anything i WANT, it is for Nadia's will to happily know and need me for those 18 years, and to WANT the same to continue with me till the day she's got to burry me with my grandchildren by her side.

Think i could use one of those neck support cushions for the trips which commit me for years to come.
.
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The bus pulled up on Canal Street at around 6:30am. The silent feet carried their bodies incrementally out onto the pale sidewalk. My mouth held the night in and my eyes, the crud drying in the sun rays arriving to open me up to another day. My body ached, but held easy anticipating the rest awaiting me, where i erected in the cool air by a bus stop around the corner. In the silence of a morning stretching awake with an occasional car swishing past and padestrian skipping by with a ducked head, i waited still in my thoughts; a cat from behind the gate of an empty lot rubbing a pur on my polyester sweat suite as it walked figure 8's between my legs. Then the bus, through its windows the small shops posting Chinese signs building to impressive skyscrappers rising solemn in the solitude of a sunday off. Then then ferry terminal, coffee, the paper, then the boat and its own windows, water out the window, whitening clouds, and land... A long ride home to go; the bus and its curvatures through and around the hills of downtown Staten Island and up along Hylans coast.
When finally i got to creak my way into the light bathing living room i took the opportunity to disassemble myself. Off with my bag, my shoes, my sweater... and to the room which stores my belongings. Through the door i pushed, remaining aback with my eyes on the first thing to grab them. Nadia's little bed, empty, with her blanket still jumbled in her place. From it's angle on the ground stood I, overstanding the emptyness i saw in my eye and felt inside. Yet unable to overlook the sorrow.


-Tony