The Budget of Paradox

Sophia,

I remember the summer before you were born. I remember the day you were born. I know who was in the delivery room. I even have video taken that day. Have you ever seen it? I remember when your sister met you for the first time.

Of course, I was happy to be a father again. You didn’t cry the first day. I remember holding you and wondering what kind of a life lay ahead for you. But I also had a lot on my mind. Three days later, I left for Iraq. I often asked myself, “Self, how could you walk away from your newborn child?”

The answer, unfortunately, is that your mother and I needed money. And going to Iraq was a great way to make money fast. I didn’t pick my departure date. In fact, if you had been born three days later, I would not have seen you at all until 2009. As odd as it sounds now, I was doing everything I could to keep the family going. I would have unhooked the stars for you.

Good timing is something you and I never had.

The first time I heard you cry was over a satellite phone when I was in Iraq.

I was always coming or going. One of my saddest memories is meeting you in 2011 at the Lynchburg Airport after a long deployment, and you asked me, “Are you daddy?” That shit broke my heart. That shit cuts to the bone.

I regret that things turned out like this. I can blame lots of people — myself included. But things just unfolded as they did without a plan and without any idea how the future would look. I didn’t think the future would look like this, but here we are.

I love you and miss you. It’s your 16th birthday but I’m not there. I don’t blame you for being disappointed in me. Maybe someday you can at least understand that I didn’t want today to be like this. I should be there, celebrating with you. This should be a happy time for both of us.

Happy Birthday, SoBe
Dad

Maybe send me some photos? I don’t even know what you look like anymore.

I sent you some flowers and a box with a few things. Did you get them?

Sophia,

Greenways Academy. How is it? I’m sure there’s a big story behind the switch. I hope you give me the chance to understand it all some day. I’d love to know what your day looks like. I mean, is it just rolling out of bed and getting a tablet in your hands?

As you can imagine, I have a few opinions about this, but I doubt it matters to anyone. I’m very unhappy that Lynchburg schools were such a disappointment for both you and your sister. What’s really tragic is that your mother specifically mentioned the high-quality schools in Lynchburg during our divorce as justification why she had to live there. She refused to move anywhere more convenient for me or somewhere with better job opportunities for her. Nope, it had to be Lynchburg because the schools were the best in the nation. She really said that.

And here we are, ten years later, and both of my daughters have essentially dropped-out. Morey told me she barely graduated. She certainly didn’t earn it.

The whole thing makes me sad. And I’m sure your mother will never admit she was wrong. I think she’s incapable of admitting she was ever wrong about anything. She insisted that you and Morey were much better off being raised by a single mom in Lynchburg. I think ANYTHING is better than the situation we have now.

But, whatever. I mean, everything is broken and no one cares.

I hope Greenways Academy is the answer to your problems.

Sophia,
Yes, I know. I bitch and moan all the time about lawyers and judges. I’m sure you’re sick of reading about it. Yesterday, some of my thoughts came to a point. So I had to vent.

I was always a math weenie. Maybe your mother told you so at some point. Your father isn’t completely worthless. I really do like math. I like scribbling some fetish on the backs of napkins. Prime numbers. Integer factorization. Abundant numbers. Parlor tricks. Dumb stuff like that.

Right now, I’m writing some flight planning software. I ran into a situation I hadn’t ever considered before. How do you calculate where two circles intersect?

I’m sure you have had at least SOME geometry. Maybe even some trigonometry (side note: I learned trig in 8th grade; I’d love to teach you). Hopefully, you’ve had a class that had you drawing circles on graph paper given their center and radius. Circles are normally defined trigonometrically by sine and cosine.

Anyway, I wondered how I could find where two different circles intersected. And I was shocked to learn that the solution is entirely linear. That is, there is no trigonometry involved at all. No sines or cosines. No tangents. Just a straight-forward linear equation. I think this is fascinating. I know it’s not something most people ever think about, or get excited about. But I was truly surprised.

Number theory is full of surprises.

I’m going to guess that you were never very interested in math. Or inspired by it. But, for me, the purity of math is beautiful. It’s the poetry of logical ideas; the music of reason. In math, “obviously” is a dangerous word. If you ever get to study calculus, note that the Catholic Church banned the idea of the “infinitesimal” 400 years ago. And legend says that Pythagoras kept his discovery of irrational numbers a secret because he feared people would lose their faith in God if they knew the truth. People really do get serious about this.

And, if you learned nothing else today, you learned that the intersection of two circles can be computed without trigonometry.

Yours,
Mathgeek Dad

Sophia,

This is a rant. I admit it. If you’re not interested in reading it, I understand.

In fact, I’m not very interested in writing it. But I feel like some things need to be documented just in case, you know, someday when you’re older, you feel like knowing the truth.

I wanted children. My first wife and I wanted children, but she died before that could happen. I thought about having a family again soon after I met your mom. Some children are the result of surprise pregnancies; some kids are fathered by men who aren’t interested in being fathers. I get that.

But not you or Morey. You and Morey were conceived by married parents who loved each other, and lived with each other, and had careers, and money, and time, and space in their hearts. We were ready. Even as a newborn, Morey had her own bedroom. On Friday nights, I didn’t go out drinking or hang out with my friends. I stayed at home. I dealt with a crying baby, poopy diapers, teaching Morey to read, and watching Dora the Explorer videos with her. I took Morey hiking and surfing and flying. I took her to concerts and the zoo and the desert. I loved being a dad. And I wanted all of these things for you, too, and more.

I wanted to give you the world.

From 2004 to 2008, your mother made most of the money in our marriage. And she managed our finances. But that 4-year period ended in total financial ruin. We lost everything. And for the next four years, from 2009 to 2013, I made all the money. And I was in charge. And that 4-year period ended with us on top. We were debt-free. I paid your mother’s taxes and debts. We had a fat savings account. You and Morey lived in a nice house with nice birthdays and vacations and Christmases and summer camps.

Things go better when I’m in charge. I know that’s a source of tension and embarrassment for your mother. But I don’t give a shit. She and I were in the business of making our children’s lives better. For years, no one earned more money and spent more money on you and your sister than I did. No one. I could choose whatever future I wanted for you. As a parent, there is no greater feeling than that.

Things go better when I’m in charge. Some people could drop acid in the wallpaper section of Home Depot and still not see a pattern here.

But, for reasons I still don’t understand, your mother wanted some scumbag lawyers and some retarded faggot judge to take over, and micromanage my family and my finances. The lawyers and the judge – strangers all – decided they know what’s in my children’s best interest better than I do. Imagine that. They were strangers. They never even met you. But they’re going to decide what’s best for you? Please make it make sense.

And, naturally, they fucked it all up. You and Morey and me were doing just fine until then. Everything moved like clockwork. All your needs were getting met. You had a loving father involved in your life. It wasn’t broken, so a bunch of strangers from the government decided to “fix” it.

I can’t iterate this enough: We were doing just fine without any help from anyone. But a bunch of lawyers wanted to get involved, and now, everything is broken and no one cares.

I know you can’t see that. You’re only 15 and I don’t expect you to understand the world or even your parents’ divorce. But maybe someday you can see it. I still have all the documents if you ever want to see them for yourself; the tributaries of truth. I’m not lying about anything. In fact, the truth is much worse, but I can only put so much into this rant. You wouldn’t believe half of it if I told you everything. But it’s all true.

This life that you have now, I didn’t want this. I fought hard to keep dirty lawyers from dissolving my family. But in the end, the government decided it was more important to ruin my family instead of a working, reasonable, realistic solution that everyone could have lived with. If Family Court had a national anthem, I would take a knee.

Your mother says that you don’t want me in your life at all anymore. I can’t hear it from you directly, so I guess I’ll just have to take her word for it. This, from the same woman who testified in court that I shook you as a baby and set your house on fire, but has no evidence of anything. I know she knows she’s lying, but she was under the spell of a scumbag lawyer who promised her lots of money if she lied in court. It was like a drug she was on; the drug of pure self-righteousness. And they weren’t just lies, they were anti-truths. Sadly, your mother couldn’t see that she was being manipulated. You were cheated out of a father because some lawyer wanted to drive a nicer car. That’s the truth no one else will tell you.

And of course, the lawyers who were supposedly looking out for the “best interests of the children” are long gone and don’t give a shit about you or your sister or your problems. They don’t care about my career or my ability to support my kids or participate in their lives. I predicted that you and Morey would have behavioral problems (I have it in writing, going back ten years!), but my opinions were pushed aside. I lost my vote, my voice, my sovereignty, my children. The man who solves problems and makes your life better was told to fuck off because they said it was in your “best interests”. I’ll never understand that. I guess you have to go to law school to understand such galactically retarded shit.

One of my jobs as a dad was to review your math homework. In math, you’re required to show your work. It’s too bad we don’t require Family Court to show its work. The lawyers don’t have to show their methods or strategies; the judge never explained his decisions. They only consider the evidence that they’ve manipulated (just like people, court evidence will say anything if you torture it enough). And if anyone needs proof of the potential for abuse in the Family Courts, they only need look at our case. To think my daughters would grow up in their legacy, it horrifies me.

I love you always. Maybe you’ll start to understand some of this before I die.

Yours,
Dad

Sophia,

What’s going with you and your school? I don’t know what’s happening. But something’s happening.

Whatever the problem, you have a father who prides himself on being able to fix problems.

I wish I could help. Whatever it is.

Talk to me.

Dad