Lehigh Valley Ironpigs

So if you were wondering, here's how Fathers' Day panned out. Went into work early, no sign of a card from the kids before I left. Constant messages across the social media being left by people marking the day, tweeting about their wonderful dads or updating their Facebook status about their marvellous children... so difficult to escape it, so difficult to ward off the growing sense of disappointment.
When I get home there's a package waiting for me. From America. Inside - a Fathers' Day card from my children, written by my youngest daughter (a sign of how they're getting older - a few years ago, my eldest would have written it out and got them all to sign it), and a present, a T-shirt proclaiming "Lehigh Valley Ironpigs". No, I've no idea who they are either. And then my step-daughters give me a bag too, with a card and presents, and suddenly I'm feeling very overwhelmed. "You're crying!" accuses my wife. "No I'm not. Shut up," I tell her.
Then there's a phone call. All three of my lovely children are on, on the speaker phone. They're rarely allowed to phone me because of the cost. We have a brief, happy, confusing chat, with each of them talking over each other, and me not sure what each one is saying, and they tell me the Lehigh Valley Ironpigs are a local minor league baseball team they went to go and see, and they bought the T-shirt there because they knew I'd like it, and they ask me what I've been doing for Fathers' Day and tell me I should spend the evening drinking a beer and watching the US Open, so I promise to do that. And I'm so proud of them for remembering to call me, and I love them so much, and I think my heart's just going to burst.

I'm still wearing my Ironpigs T-shirt. Try getting it off me.

Keeping up with the kids

This is how my regular phone calls with my kids usually go:
Me: "Hi Joe (or Kitty or Orla, depending on who picks up the phone)"
Kid: "Oh, hi Dad!"
Me: "How've you been this week?"
Kid: "Fine."
Me: "What have you been up to?"
Kid: "Nothing much"
Me: "How's school been?"
Kid: "OK"
And so on and so on. It's hard work getting anything out of kids at the best of times. Trying to get them to tell you about their lives when they're 3000 miles away and on the end of a phone line is not the best of times. I can usually - eventually - provoke them into a bit of loquaciousness by homing in on the right topic. With my youngest daughter it's her hamster; with my eldest it's her schoolwork; with my son, it's Doctor Who.
Yesterday's phone call doesn't quite follow the same pattern however:
Me: "Hi, Kitty, how've you been?"
Kitty: "Fine"
Me: "How was school?"
Kitty: "OK... There was a bomb scare at school today"
Me: "How was.... A BOMB SCARE??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, A BOMB SCARE???"
After I get over my shock, I find out - with a bit of intense questioning of my daughter - that it was nothing too serious, a quickly-uncovered hoax. Don't you just love the way though that kids plonk a corker like that into the middle of a conversation? What's known in my profession as a "drop-intro".

Father's Day

It's coming up to Father's Day. Another Father's Day on which I won't see my kids. I haven't seen them for two months, and it'll be another month and more before I get to see them again. I used to think - in the early days of my separation from my ex-wife - that being apart from them for even a night would kill me. Strange how you get used to things, even things that gnaw away at your heart.
It's not that I'm stopped from seeing them, or that I don't make the effort to see them. I'm not a deadbeat dad. It's that they they live 3,000 miles away, in another country - another world, for all practical purposes. My ex-wife, an American, moved back there two years ago, some six years after we separated. They travel to see me twice a year, every summer, every alternate Christmas and alternate Easter. I travel to see them for long weekends three or four times a year. That's about as much as we can afford, both in terms of money and vacation time from work. I'm a Transatlantic Dad.
Father's Day and my birthday are when I miss them most. I find myself hoping so hard to get a card or a present through the mail, hoping that I don't have to remind them beforehand and seem needy, but knowing that I probably will and that I certainly am. I need to feel the love of my children, and it's so hard to feel that when they're so far away. They're kids, after all. They're primarily interested in what's in front of them, around them. They have lives, and friends, and homework, and after-school activities, and although I know they love me dearly, I also know that what's out of sight is - nine times out of ten - out of mind too.
Last year, I was over in the US just before Father's Day, and they gave me cards and a present (a US soccer T-shirt I'm wearing now - I'm very attached to it!) while I was there. This year, I haven't been able to travel there since February so I'm reliant on the postal service - and on whether my children remember to send anything. We'll see what happens.