Telephone

“Well, if you want to make the 4 hour drive to my house, I guess I can consider visiting with him for a couple hours. But I don’t know if a couple hours will be enough. I may still want to keep him all weekend. I don’t know. But you can make the drive and we’ll see how it goes.” Excitement said.

“Why can’t you meet us halfway?” my mother demanded.

“If I have to do any driving, I’m taking him for the whole weekend. I’m not going to waste my money if I can’t have him.”

“We drove to your house every weekend for three months to pick him up and drop him off while we were going through the custody battle. Why can’t you drive halfway one weekend to do what is best for him?”

“Because I don’t want to and I don’t have to. These are your options: Drive all the way to my house and I’ll visit with him and let you take him home. Make me meet you halfway and I’m taking him for the weekend. You decide. I don’t have to give you these choices. I can take him if I want to and you can’t do anything to stop me. He’s my son and I know you think that he’s yours now but he’s not. I’m his father and you can’t take him from me. Nothing you can do will ever change that. So you can either do what I tell you to or I’m going to take him. If I drive halfway to meet you and you don't show up, I'm going to go to your house with the police and take him from you and then you'll never see him again. So you'd better think about what I said. You can drive all the way and let me visit with him and maybe you can take him home or you can drive halfway and I'm going to take him all weekend…”

On and on he droned, saying the same thing again and again in different words. My mother couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She began saying “Excuse me, Excitement. Excitement, could I say something? Excitement, can I speak now? Excitement?” but he wouldn’t shut up. Finally she hung up the phone.

Immediately he started calling back. We were both so stunned we just stared at the phone and let it ring. He sent me text messages: "Please call" "Call me" "Call me back, NOW!". Then he called again. Then he called my mother's cell phone. Finally, I put our phones on silent.

He had to be high. His words were slurred and he kept repeating himself and his demands were just so… irrational. I dialed Boo’s attorney and summarized of the conversation for her. “Don’t answer the phone,” she said. “I’ll fix this tomorrow.”

Within two hours, Excitement had experienced a change of heart. He sent me an e-mail saying “I love Boo, I don’t want to hurt him. Let’s put this visit off for two weeks and then we’ll talk about me picking him up for the weekend.”

My mother wrote him back, agreeing that in two weeks we would renegotiate visitation, but urging him again to meet with Boo and let him get reacquainted before he took him home.

We haven’t heard anything back yet.