I sleep in a twin bed in a child’s bedroom and have four bunk beds in the master so I can have my children with me. But what does having a bed for them have to do with being a good father? Nothing. Some of our fondest memories together were when I lived in the two room condo and we all slept in the living room / kitchen / family room in our sleeping bags. When I moved into a bedroom of my friends’ home for a year, we did the same; my friends allowed my four children and me to take over the basement family and game room with our sleeping bags. But my wife’s amended divorce decree mandated that to have my children stay into Mondays on the weekends I had them (I’d take them to school Monday morning), they each had to have their own beds.

I was blessed by my friends’ goodness, who allowed me to set up four bunk beds in their basement family room when a neighbor just “happened” to be giving away four. (Can we possibly think God’s hand was not involved?)

My ex wife’s seemingly silly and nonsensical demand for beds became a burden on my friends’ hospitality.

The irony is that  my children have never stayed over into Monday. I invited them, but didn’t want to have them caught in the middle of my “war” with their mother (to use my sister-in-law’s words). “War”? How can my love for my children and my hunger to see them more than six days a month be considered war? If I’m at war, it’s not against my ex. The irony is that I love her, but my war, if there is one,  is not against her but against the system of lawyers, state enforcement agencies, the plunderers of my privacy who have pushed into my personal life, stuck their hands into my family, my bank account, my work, my personal life,  and become the Big Brother to make sure I live by every point of my ex’s divorce decree. They are whom I am at war with. A war and daily battle to be involved with my children as much as I can.

So I make every excuse I can to be with my children. I offer to take them to the dentist, the orthodontist, and I volunteer at the school in my son’s class where I help children behind on reading skills … and I then sometimes see my son from a distance as I arrive at the door to the classroom.

The insanity  of it all  is without the words. I want the government out of my life so I can be a father to my children.