Pity Pater

This brilliant headline woke me up out of a sound sleep one night last week. I was all fired up to write the associated story (the blog post, the novel, the screenplay) IMMEDIATELY. But we had just begun the Lenten season and I was trying sooo hard to behave. Really. I do try. I also had some processing ... and praying to do.

Apparently, I'd already misbehaved, though, as I broke some unwritten rule of etiquette and was de-friended on a well-known social networking site. And to add insult to injury, nobody responded to my posts about feeling Amish or having just been shunned.

Perhaps the slightly random-seeming posts just weren't newsworthy enough to invite comment. Then I suppose anyone who saw them (and knew I hadn't been sleeping) probably thought the sleepless nights had really caught up with me. Others are just accustomed to my non sequiturs.

I've been enjoying re-connecting with friends whom I haven't seen in nearly 25 years. With the re-connecting I discovered there was one particular formerly very significant someone who was also dipping his toes in the social media pond. Someone who has been, shall we say, living off the grid for close to two decades. Perhaps a little bit outside of the law. Well, I sent a couple of "private" messages about this astounding discovery to the now former common friend ... and then posted one teeny-tiny (what I thought was somewhat obscure, yet clever) message on her "wall."

The next thing I knew ... I'd been de-friended. No warning, just all evidence of communication wiped out. And my friend list was a tad smaller. I also got a notice that my account was being checked or "optimized." Good gravy - had I been "reported??!"

Now I thought "Pater Prolific" (the cleverly alliterative part of my teeny-tiny message) wasn't so bad. What would you call someone who produced (at least) four children with (at least) four different women? Is he to be praised ... or pitied?

I suppose one might also ask something about those women. What would they have seen in such a man? And where are they now? And more important: What has happened to the children?

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm one of those four women. And I don't live on a commune in Texas. My middle-class Midwestern life plodded along quietly and devoid of drama for a good long time. A full life, to be sure, with work, family, friends, church, community ... raising a beautiful, brilliant daughter with the help of "the village." There have been times when I have experienced great guilt for not giving E a better life, a "normal" life. (Although she made me feel great last fall when she called upon returning from a weekend trip to tell me how well I prepared her for the real world.)

This is not a tale of woe or bitterness. It's about survival. And hope. And experiencing incredible joy - even through ridiculously difficult times. E is my incredible joy. I consider myself privileged to have spent 18 years with my greatest blessing before sharing her with the world.

I've re-connected with another of the four mothers. (I don't know the other two.) While we're both scratching our heads over the reappearance of PP in such a public forum, we enjoyed catching up on each others' lives and learning of the attributes and interests the two sisters share. Our biggest concern and most fervent prayer is that the foundations we built for them are strong enough.

Still, I can't help but wonder if there is an underlying reason, such as serious illness, for him to reach out without worry of retribution. Is the one who missed the pitter patter of our daughters' footsteps really the Pity Pater now?