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Too Big to Put in the Car
Getting sole custody via passive resistance
We waited, nerves on edge, for their father to arrive.
This time, they had decided they were not going to go with him, custody arrangement or not.
And the Ex had a dicey temper. He’d broken a door earlier that year, kicking it in while enraged.
The oldest went to the door to be their spokesperson.
He was never this late.
Looking back, did the Ex plan it out ahead of time?
Did he already know he didn’t want to have custody at all? Did he passive-aggressively make it happen? Did it give him even more fuel for his victim stories? “She took them from me — what could I do?”
He had stopped providing enough food at his place, left them alone frequently, even in the night, and was emotionally unavailable.
He had nothing to gain from throwing our kids into the mix of his new family and his new bride.
His time in my neighborhood was limited, because his wedding to his pregnant coworker had thwarted my idealistic and (as it turns out) naïve idea to keep him close by in a rental for the kids’ stability.
