I noticed a drive for people to restore dead echoes, and this one came   
   immediately to mind.  Not that it's totally dead, but I figured I'd post a   
   little something in here, being as it's a relatively rare area of expertise in   
   current [USA] society.   
       I've been a single parent of a mixed race (mulatto) boy for over six years   
   now.  Our situation has been very far from normal; nothing about it has been   
   routine.   
       When I was deployed with the US Army (don't judge me on that, please, I   
   didn't support the war effort and my logic for joining _is_ available for   
   discussion privately or in another echo, just point me there [I'm an open   
   book]) in Germany, supporting operation OIF, I met the woman whom I was quite   
   sure I was going to be spending the rest of my life with.  She was from Nairobi   
   Kenya, living in Germany after having immigrated there due to her first   
   marriage to a German man whom she married after they met when he had been   
   vacationing on Kenya's beach resorts.   
       It took me weeks to woo her properly, but I never gave up, and eventually   
   it paid off.  Our romance took off in an absolute whirlwind.  I had over a year   
   left of my deployment, and except for some annual training and one short   
   disagreement, we spent the entire time together.  We knew that we would be   
   getting married and near the tail-end of the deployment we decided to have a   
   baby.  She was a couple of months pregnant when I began demobilization with my   
   unit.   
       Unfortunately due to the discontinuities between the national guard and the   
   'active' army, what would've been a routine matter to have JAG assistance with   
   was completely shuffled under the table.  Nobody would help.  I got back to the   
   United States and nobody in my local unit when I transfered back to North   
   Dakota knew what to do, either.  It appeared that the only possible recourse   
   was for me to spend a hefty chunk of the money that I'd saved in Germany and to   
   go the civilian agency route.   
       This was a pain.  I had to send her, expenses paid by myself, to Nairobi,   
   to gather documents from her highschool, which had burned down a decade before   
   during a civil war, _twice_.  I think in the end the lawyers and consular   
   officials that I had finally made friends with just said 'look we don't care   
   that the documents were probably torched; just send her to Kenya to get the   
   papers-- as long as she comes back with some it is all good' (advocating   
   counterfeit papers).  It took about a year to get things this far.   
       In the meantime I had flown out to see her once again while she was at the   
   8th month of her pregnancy; I had decided to spend that time with her to help   
   with the tail end of the pregnancy, and to help her with the first couple of   
   months of dealing with my son.   
       Unfortunately, during this period, things became apparent in her treatment   
   of her two daughters that would end up terrifying me about the treatment of my   
   son in my absence.   
       To make what is truly an epic story of military and legal incompetence,   
   heart-shredding drama, and personal agony bordering on insanity a little bit   
   shorter, I'm going to summarize what happened here.  Unless, of course, y'all   
   would like a little bit more information on these matters.   
       Wages in North Dakota had not yet inflated from the oil boom that has now   
   been so widely publicized around the USA.  I had no college degree, nor no   
   strings to pull.  The North Dakota national guard wasn't helping me local   
   decent employment nor giving me temporary work at the armory as the New Jersey   
   national guard had been kind enough to do.  I was unable to find a job that   
   would meet the minimum salary requirements for _national poverty standards_ for   
   a family of three.  Which wasn't applicable, because in North Dakota you can   
   live quite comfortably on the entry level wages that I'd been making even for a   
   family of three, at least at the time.   
       I went out to see her and help with my son one more time, but these   
   difficulties were starting to tear us apart (along with the internal demon   
   gnawing at my gray matter and telling me that maybe she wasn't the woman I   
   thought that she was, with the way that I now knew she treated her children in   
   high stress situations).   
       Our engagement fell apart.  I was able to obtain custody later on,   
   utilizing the very last of the money that I had squirreled away from the army   
   deployment, when her abuse because public knowledge and she was reported to a   
   German social worker (Jugendamt).  It took well over $10k, and left me pretty   
   close to absolutely penniless.   
       Eventually she married another soldier that was deployed there and got her   
   permanent trip to the states.  Now that she was here, due to a clause in our   
   international custody agreement, we had to have yet another hurdle making sure   
   that she wasn't going to be able to get my son and do god knows what with him   
   (she'd discussed middle school, kidnapping him, all sorts of other fun things   
   in the interim).   
      
       I'm interested in hearing the stories behind how others have become single   
   fathers, and what kind of influence it has had on their lives.  I know that if   
   I wouldn't have gotten my son, the insanity of not knowing he was safe, and the   
   drunken calls from his mother, may have well killed me.  I'm pretty sure that   
   they would have, honestly.   
       My son has become the rock in my life that has provided me the stability to   
   work for something to permanently better myself that I've needed all of my   
   life.  Every day, no matter how tired I am after trying to do what I need to   
   for our survival, I sit down with him and answer any and every question that he   
   has to the fullest extent that I can.  I try to explain everything to him, and   
   to keep that thirst and curiosity to know how the world works alive with him.    
   I want him to be able not to aspire to the level of my shoulders, but to be   
   able to start there and go as high as he would like in his life.   
       People seem to judge me on this, though.  I mean, some of the comments are   
   kind of cute, especially from teeny-boppers going through the mall and the   
   like.  Saying things like 'awww, I want a mixed baby,' although that does   
   strike me as objectifying a child of another race a little bit.  When it comes   
   right down to my role as a single father, though, people seem surprised when   
   they watch my son and I long enough and they noticed that I am a single father   
   who _cares_ and is taking time to attend to everything that he needs.  Some   
   people still just assume that he'll end up broken.   
       I'd like to hear other people's comments, ideas, feedback, and most of all,   
   if there are any single fathers around and reading this, I'd love to hear your   
   stories.   
       Best wishes & happy new year to everyone!   
      
       -Damon   
      
       --Damo dice, "Perhaps today IS a good day to die!"   
   --- SBBSecho 2.24-OpenBSD   
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