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.