“In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father’s voice. But isn’t that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy’s shoes on? Hey, my kids do it.” (Bruce Springsteen)

Another engagement “highlight” was the transition my youngest made with his daddies.

Shortly after I got engaged, my youngest quit participating in the collect calls that came from prison. I’d hand him the phone after accepting the charges and he didn’t want to talk. Or he’d ask, “Is it my old daddy or my new daddy?” and run away to play if it was the old daddy (Shawn Merriman) calling.

I wasn’t sure if my youngest’s actions meant something, if he’d forgotten his old daddy (after all, he was just three years old when Shawn Merriman revealed his crimes, we divorced, his dad was taken into custody and my youngest hasn’t seen him since) or if he was simply being four years old. I just knew I wasn’t going to force the issue, he’d already been through a lot in his young life.

However, #5 has been a very good father the 9 1/2 months of our engagement without cutting out the previous one. He asks my children questions about their dad, things they loved doing with him and encourages them to talk about him and remember the good things. He has even expressed his willingness to take my children to visit their father in prison.

Now my youngest says he has two daddies: Daddy Shawn and Daddy Mike. And although the collect calls from prison have stopped because Shawn Merriman has a job in prison, makes something like $.11/hour and can pay for his own phone calls to our children, I hear my youngest is even talking on the phone to a voice from prison, sometimes, again.

Now my youngest seems to have only one question for his daddy, Daddy Mike, now:  ”Daddy, when are you going to marry my mommy?”

THAT’s a good question! Wish we had an answer for that…