Muddy Boys (Haiku)

Boys will all be boys
Playing in the mud and dirt
Covered head to toe

Men all caked in mud
Coming in from the rugby
Something’s never change!

Original photo by 0x0077BE, via Wikimedia Commons

The Cloud That Masks The Sun

My Dad left us when I was young
I knew not what to do
He said that life was sad for him
To stay right there with you

He said the past had been real bad
Like treading on eggshells
That there was more for him out there
Than staying in this hell

He said there was another Mum
Much better than my own
That she was such a nice person
A new Mum to be known

He said he’d still be there for me
“I’m still your Dad, you know”
But how could he hate Mum so much?
Why did he have to go?

I simply needed just one thing
For Mum and Dad to be
Together now and to recall
That they had BOTH made me

I wanted all the pain to go
For peace – stability
To see the sun come out and shine
For some tranquillity

I needed time to contemplate
To find myself again
I needed space to chill a bit
For I was only ten

I needed time to understand
To try and fathom out
Why adults do these horrid things
That mean they then walk out

I wanted life to carry on
Just like it was before
I wanted unconditional love
To walk right through the door

I didn’t want to hear from Dad
What I should think and do
I wanted him to put me first
And be quite contrite too

But that just didn’t quite pan out
He didn’t hear me say
Why I was sad and what I felt
What hurt me on that day

He just made up his own version
Of events to overcome
His despondency and sense of guilt
The things that made him glum

And so we parted company
It broke my heart in two
For all I needed him to say was
“We’re still both here for you!”

And so the story carries on
A man without his son
And son without his father there
The cloud that masks the sun

 Parental Alienation occurs usually due to divorce or separation where a child expresses unjustified dislike or hatred towards the other parent.  This often results in access to the rejected parent being impeded and restricted unnecessarily and is often said to have occurred due to the negative influences of the non-rejected parent most commonly the parent who the child resides with.  However, on occasions it can be the other way round with the rejected parent causing the situation through their own negativity.  The term does not apply in child abuse cases where the rejection is the result of a child protecting themselves.  The call therefore needs to go to all parents in a split to put aside personal differences, to honour an ethos of love, respect and responsibility for their child to embrace the fact that their children have a dual parentage heritage so that children do not lose contact with either parents in this situation.  For further reading you might like to visit http://resetparenting.com/2012/06/08/paternal-alienation/