Yesterday, Patri and I took some children to the local water park, Roaring Springs. One such child was her son, Jordan, who I personally find to be an amazing little kid. Patri had taken her car the day before to the auto body shop to have it worked on after it was hit and the front end slightly mangled, so she was left without her car temporarily. The rental car company was incredibly difficult to work with and told her things like "Uh, we don't have any cars for you to rent" (after she was supposed to have a car reserved so she went to the office to pick it up) and "We'll call the Meridian office to see if they'll have anything for you" (and then they never called). Patri was supposed to leave Roaring Springs at 2:30 to have Jordan to Nampa by 3 so that his father could take him for the weekend. Here was the problem: she had no car with which to drive him to Nampa.
In witnessing the situation, especially after happily helping out by driving her around for two days and allowing her to borrow my car to go to work one night, I thought that she should call Brian (Jordan's father and her ex-husband) and just explain it to him and he would be willing to work with her. Patri and Brian were at one time, I'm certain of it, in love, but their marriage did not end well at all. In the last two years their relationship has deteriorated severely. I wish they would stop making everything miserable for each other because Jordan, this innocent young child, is really the one who is hurting. I know this one from experience. I spent my entire life going back and forth between segments of my family and I was always cautious of where I was and what I was saying and who I was saying it to. My entire life is so much easier now that my parents can talk to each other again. They'll never know how much that means to me.
So anyway, I look at Brian and I see a really great guy. He's very nice, he is attractive, and he seems very intelligent and witty ... and this is all just from the few limited conversations I've had with him. Brian, from what I've seen first hand and from what I've heard from Jordan, is an awesome father. He's very attentive and loving and he takes his son to do things like camping and to the movie theatre. He plays ball with Jordan and rolls with him in the grass. He'll squat down in the grass for Jordan to give him a hug and then fall over when Jordan knocks him over with hugs powered with so much love and admiration for his father.
So knowing this, I thought that Brian would be willing to work around Patri's situation. She told him that she could either meet him in Nampa at 4 (only one hour later than normal) or he could drive an extra few minutes to get Jordan at 3 from Roaring Springs because we couldn't leave there until 3 and she was hoping to leave there and go straight to the rental car company to get the car she had been promised the night before. His reply was that if she wasn't there by 3, he would turn in a report to the police to supposedly go on the custody battle records or something.
This made me see him in an all new light. He scared Patri (who is a phenomenal mother who would die for her child) and made her cry, which worries Jordan (because if Mommy's upset then his whole world is shaken). I just honestly thought that he was a decent man and never thought that he would purposely make life difficult not only for his ex-wife (I'll never understand the concept of holding a grudge) but also for his son and for myself. I guess he wasn't thinking of any of us though, was he?
There's something to be said about people being nice to each other. If the two of them were just nice to each other, they wouldn't be miserable. I have no doubt in my mind that Patri would have worked around his situation if roles had been reversed, but when he starts off by being inconsiderate and juvenile, she really has no option but to stand firm. As firm as possible, anyway...
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