Major. Writer’s. Block.

Today’s post is supposed to be about birthfathers – it says so right there on the blog calendar.  The way they’re ever present even through the longest absences, the questions that linger, how the struggle is more challenging for T-man… 

But I’m sitting here, pen in hand, utterly unable to string together a series of coherent thoughts today. Looks like we’re going with stringing plain old regular thoughts.

Considering (or maybe because of) his absence, T-man’s birthfather occupies enormous space.  I specifically note T-man because he’s the one who’s talked most often about this particular family member.  Bear tends to clump the birth family together with, if anything, an emphasis on her birthmother. 

T-man’s age plays a major role in his recent focus.  For most of his childhood we talked about Miss C, only occasionally fielding a birthfather question, but this summer our son turns thirteen.  T-man’s growing into himself (I refuse to say “becoming a man”) and has, well, questions.

Do I look like my dad?  Talk like him?  Laugh?  Is his skin like mine?  Does his hair look curly, too?  How tall is he, and did we have the same name?

An endless loop of unanswerable questions creating a bottomless hole.  One T-man fills with imagination and conjecture, landing him in a big quagmire.  A mixture of feelings we can’t really resolve.

But I suppose fixing feelings isn’t really our job.  Listening is.