Drama

In a complete departure from hunky firemen, pool boys for hire or even my too-good-to-be-true, Paul...a bit of soap-opera drama.

When I was 23 or 24, I started dating my boss. He was nice-looking, divorced and 15 years my senior. He owned the small company with a business partner owned several companies. He drove a fancy sports car. He spent his weekends on the beach. For a women in her early 20s, those things were impressive.

I eventually learned that the business stayed afloat because the partner threw lots of money into it. Maybe it was an intentional money-pit - a loss to offset his successful businesses. Who knows? In any event, when the partner married and decided to pull out, not charging anything for his share of the company, things went south in the blink of an eye. Literally, within weeks the creditors were calling. Equipment was reposessed, as was the fancy sports car. Soon this successful older businessman with whom I'd been so impressed was an out-of-work, deeply in debt bum who didn't even own a car. Not wanting to seem like a fair-weather friend, I talked myself into giving him a reasonable amount of time to turn things around. I figured six months was reasonable. Within a week or two of arriving at that decision, I discovered I was pregnant.

Realizing I was, in reality, the mature one in the relationship, I embarked on a conversation with the father of my fetus, trying to determine how we were going to make ends meet. Having worked for himself (what a laugh!) for a number of years, he was dead set against going to work for someone else. Realizing that he was woefully ill-equipped to support himself without a financial backer who tossed him cash while making absolutely no demands, I borrowed a chunk of money (at 24 my credit was still better than his) and we opened our own company. While waiting for the equipment purchase to go through, I worked for another business doing the night shift. In return, they let me spend the last couple of hours each night using the equipment for my own work. During the day, I would pick up and deliver projects or make sales calls. Remember, I was pregnant. About six months into my pregnancy, I ended up with a raging kidney infection that would not respond to medication and I was hospitalized. I had no insurance. I was struggling to pay off the doctor and the hospital before my time ran out, or I was going to end up giving birth in a taxi cab. I couldn't afford another $2,000 hospital bill. The hospital wasn't interested in my hard luck story.

The equipment arrived and I quit the night job. It was very hard, but we eventually got the business going. When my water broke at 3AM, I got up and worked until 6AM before going to the hospital. There was a job that just HAD to get out that day. At some point, the company actually became just barely profitable. I remember how happy I was when I reached the point of working only 12-hour days. THAT, I determined, was manageable.

We had insurance when my daughter was born two years after my son. We sold the business and moved to Tennessee. I'd always wanted to live near the Smoky Mountains.

I got a job shortly after we arrived there. My husband, however, did not. I wasn't convinced he was really TRYING. At some point my company needed some part-time, temporary help and I volunteered my husband. They hired him for the project and ended up keeping him on full-time.

The kids attended a large day care center during the day. Since they had always stayed with private sitters in the past, they were suddenly exposed to all sorts of unfamiliar germs. They were sick - a lot. The flu, colds, chicken pox. I was hourly and didn't get paid if I didn't work. The day care center, however, got paid even when the kids missed a day. The paychecks just weren't covering the bills. I took a second job. I worked all day, came home and made dinner, went to a night job for a few hours, came home and bathed the kids, put them in bed, threw in a load of laundry and fell into bed so I could do it all again the following day. What was my husband doing? I honestly don't know. I was just too busy and too tired to even notice.

I was offered another part-time job for the biggest employer in town - the company where EVERYONE wanted to work. I quit the low-paying second job in favor of the high-paying second job which I hoped would open the door to a full-time high-paying job. It did! When I gave my two weeks notice at my full-time job, my boss was irate. She told me that she'd only hired my husband to keep me there and that she'd fire him if I quit. Did she really think she could talk me out of taking a job that paid me in 40 hours what I had been working 50-60 hours a week to earn?? I called her bluff. She wasn't bluffing.

Again, I was working and my husband was at home. The kids? They were still in day care. How can a person job hunt while tending to two young children? Three or four months later, it became painfully clear that he wasn't even looking for a job. I told him he had two choices. Be a stay at home dad or get a job. I gave him 30 days. At the end of that time, he asked for 30 more. I gave him 30 more. At the end of that time he asked for 30 more. I gave him $200 and a ride to the bus stop. He bought a ticket to Florida and moved in with an elderly relative.

Not quite a year later, he moved back to Tennessee. He never said he was coming. He never called. He just showed up on the corner one morning, waiting for me to drive by on my way to church. I didn't. My daughter was sick in the hospital. A former co-worker, coming to visit the hospital, stopped for gas at the corner store and recognized my ex. She brought him to the hospital. My daughter, age 2, didn't recognize him.

The next year he came and went from our lives. He visited the kids sporadically. He promised my son he'd never go away again, then moved to Indiana. I was dating my second husband at the time. My son promptly started calling him "Dad". He'd had enough of broken promises. When my son had to have some minor surgery during his kindergarten year, it was my second husband (boyfriend at that time) who was by his side in the hospital. His biological father didn't even call.

Despite his apparent lack if interest, he was not pleased to learn I was engaged to marry another man. He began to stalk us and left threatening notes. This was before the day of anti-stalking laws. I filed for a restraining order. It took literally months to serve him. It took only moments for the judge, reading the threatening notes, to issue the restraining order. It is still in effect.

My new husband and I moved to another state. On the advice of my lawyer, I had my sister mail a letter to my ex from her new home in Colorado, indicating that we had moved there. An inquiry to the kids' school would have quickly provided the name and location of the school where their records were forwarded, but he never checked. He sent one card to the address in Colorado. Then we never heard from him again.

A two-time loser, I divorced for the second time a little over two years ago. My daughter had some issues with her step-father. This coupled with her curiosity, made her start asking questions about the biological father she had no memory of. I showed her some pictures and told her bits and pieces, but never where he was. I didn't want her to contact him. I didn't want him knowing where I was.

Ironically, when my second husband's parents visited recently from Tennessee, my former mother-in-law told my daughter where her biological father was. My daughter had not asked. Oddly, my ex's mother simply volunteered the information.

I arrived home today, after working the second 10-hour day in a row, to find my daughter on the phone with the man she has had no contact with for over 13 years. She called him. Thanks to Caller-ID, he now knows where I am and what my phone number is. I'm not all that upset that she called. I was adopted as an infant and I understand the curiosity associated with an absent biological parent. I just wish she'd talked to me about it first, so I could have had her do it in a way that would have protected our location. I have no idea what my former mother-in-law could have been thinking by giving her that information.

I'm looking at another stressful work day tomorrow and I'm not sure how I'll get my head into it. I don't know what to expect now. I'm nervous. My daugher is 18. It's not like he could take her from me. It's the unknown. It's the unexpected intrusion of my unpleasant past into my newly-happy present. My head is spinning. I feel lost.