Not To Scale by Noah Kaplowitz

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Article

Not To Scale

The personal price of a custody & child support verdict

by Noah Kaplowitz

I am a dead beat dad.

And I will attempt to simplify a somewhat complicated matter:

This is the continental United States of America (not to scale): [ ]

This is how far away I moved from my three and a half year-old daughter Abigail: [ ]

The amount of money I have sent in support of Abigail since I abandoned her 11 months ago: $0.00.

The amount of times I’ve visited her in those 11 months: 0

There are fundamental things I no longer know about my daughter: Her shoe size, her favorite cartoon, her favorite meal… So much changes during 11 months in the life of a toddler. What I do know of her is buried in my heart like a time capsule. Sometimes I dig it out, dust it off, look at it; each time I am more removed. More saddened. (Size 5, Spongebob Squarepants, Macaroni and cheese with slices if hotdog mixed in.) Then I bury the time capsule again. Under decisions I have made, not dirt. And each time, further from the surface.

I was not always a dead beat dad. Why, once I was a super dad. My life was full of playground mornings and Dollar Store toy afternoons. Of ABC’s and 1 2 3’s teaching evenings, and of bedtime stories and nights spent dreaming side by side. My Abigail and I went and did everything together… From tattoo parlors and pushing my friends stalled cars across avenues (Abigail strapped into the backseat, laughing) to grocery shopping and toy baby caring.

But these experiences do not show in court records. Especially not when Mom’s family buys a lawyer and Daddy has to save up for a pair of Levi’s.

Amount of paperwork and documents Abigail’s mom filed to support her claims that I was NEVER there as a father: 0

Amount of paperwork I have filed to support my claims of the truth: Roughly 50 pages.

Outcome: I am still being sued for $476.00 a month, dated back to Abigail’s birth date.

It was not supposed to be like this. I loved spending every waking moment with my Abigail. I was not resentful of her mother’s drug and alcohol abuse, of her absence. I wanted her to grow into her motherhood, not to strip me of my fatherhood. We were supposed to share Abigail. Cut her in two (I was promised the half that eats, not the half that shits). Of course this is silliness, and we had a true agreement, several in fact, but aren’t all broken agreements equally as inane?

I still talk to Abigail almost daily. She calls me daddy like I call Bill, Bill and Frank, Frank. If she knew me as Noah, she’d use that. I am just an interested man that lives in her mother’s phone and asks questions of her day that she doesn’t have the words to answer yet. I ask her for a big hug and kiss. I hear a kiss and the phone scrape her arms and chest. And I get such hope from this simple act. Then she hands the phone back to mommy, or sometimes mommy’s boyfriend and I hang up. And I cry. Sometimes I act unbearably to those that love me.

When I was with Abigail, I was not a complete man. I had no life and no future. I was trapped in a situation that gave me only what I needed to care for her. And I was dead. Now I am alive. I moved here to be with Rebecca, a woman I knew would be the mother to my children I wish I had for myself. (Thankfully Freud has now been largely discredited). We have a child together, a brother Abigail has only seen pictures of. I have a family now (An 11 year old step daughter and an 8 year old step son.) We wait for Abigail like my family waited for Elijah at our Passover Sedars in long ago Brooklyn.

But the court sees me as a dead beat dad. And the truth is for sale and history is written by the victor.

Rebecca, stammering over her own thoughts has told me that my Coney Island accent and my sometimes booming inarticulate voice probably make me sound like a black man on the phone. This unfortunately, can’t help when calling lawyers and courthouses. When trying to fight the dead beat dad stereotype. “But God, I hate thinking like that”, she reflects. And I jokingly respond, “when’s Bob Dylan gonna write a song for this nigger?” As mockingly I shadowbox and claim that I could’ve been the champion of the world. My laugh is empty, void of joy… As 3,000 miles away, my daughter busies herself with something I fear I will never know.

About the author: Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Noah Kaplowitz is the most renowned poet/essayist of his household.

Nowadays, Kap resides in the Pacific Northwest, where his chronic depression is masked nicely by the chronic depression of others who live in the eternally rain-soaked State of Oregon.

Along with his loving girlfriend, he is raising four children, a menagerie of pets and a vegetable garden come next spring. In his spare time, Kap enjoys thinking up ways of garnering more spare time, while simultaneously (and bitterly) cursing his lack of spare time.

His collection of poetry, ‘West of West’ can be bought throughJazz from Hell Publishing.

"It’s a simple, un-photogenic thing really, a purposefully nondescript chapbook with 64 poems."

To purchase:

Contact Kami at cammy@arcom.com.au

Contact Noah Kaplowitz:

noah.kaplowitz@gmail.com

Noah' s blog:

www.noahkaplowitz.blogspot.com .

Noah Kaplowitz