September 20, 2013

Dear Shaney,

Hey bud, I know it’s been a long time since I wrote. I got an interesting text message from your mother the other morning after I sent her one of my own. She said she doesn’t know why I can’t love you unconditionally the way you do me, but that you have been composing a letter to send to me. It is a prime example of how much she gets on my nerves, exactly what she said and the way in which she said it. If only she knew the strain I have been going through just on this end to try and keep things going.

Oh that’s right! I have to congratulate you, Shaney, you have a sister! A half sister, to be exact, as she comes from my future wife Rosalee and not your mother. Her name is Rosabella Gonzaga Ayers Brooks, and boy is she a cutie! She got her mother’s good looks, and our blue eyes, what do you know? She is five months old now, and she has gotten huge since she was first born. She was born way far premature, and she was only three and a half pounds when she was in the hospital. They kept her until she was five pounds. Now she is, get this, over thirteen pounds already! She is a fuss budget, not nearly the joy you were (so I am told) when you were a baby. She is one of those “special needs” babies who demands your full attention ALL OF THE TIME!

So Dad is a new Dad.

Bud, I don’t know how to tell you how complex it is for me to have this all planned out this way, but I have a lot of proving myself to do on this end before I can venture into being anywhere near what you would want from me on that end. I have begun the process of becoming a full time – EMPLOYED writer, and it is quite the process, believe you me. I got a cheap laptop this month with some of the money I get every month, and starting writing the way A WRITER SHOULD, if he wants to make any money in the business. I write atleast four hours a day, five days a week, at a rate of about twenty pages a day. At this rate, I should be writing four hundred pages a week, and sixteen hundred a month. That is to say, your Dad can write like four full books a month. How cool is that? It is pretty cool, let me tell you. I have been working on it for a long time, and I can write with the best of them I feel.

This means that sometime next year I will begin making enough money to get Rosalee and I and your new baby sister a house somewhere out here. And a car, for that matter, something else we desperately need. Right now we have been relying on Rosabella’s grandparents to help us out with doctors appointments and such. I have been making plans, and not having any money to back it up, see little man. Money is what makes the world go round it seems at times, and your Dad has very little of it. Barely enough to pay your child support, and have left enough to have a place to live and food on his table. Not to mention diapers, and wipes, and the other things that will come up in our little Rosabella’s life that we so desperately struggle to make sure she gets.

I know you flew out to California with your Mom-Mom this past summer. I wonder what it was like, your first time in a big airplane with all of that ground spaced out below you. Did you get a window seat? I hope so. Unless of course, you are like your Dad and hate flying, in which case, let me tell you.

Flying is millions of times safer than driving everyday in your car around town, I have read all of the stats on that to try and make me feel better.

In any case, kiddo, I have gotten mixed reactions from my life partner as to how we handle your situation. She does not want to be any kind of Mother to you, though she loves children, she feels that this would place her in a very uncomfortable position. I have admitted that, in the future, which is coming soon (and probably to a theater near you too) I do want to have some kind of relationship with you. I am not ready as of yet. Neither of us is. The burden of taking care of our little Rosabella alone has been enough to put us under severe strain already in our relationship, and adding the turmoil of our troubled loose ended ties with the trouble your mother most always brings to my life would be the deal breaker.

I hate to say it, but when I have written forty new titles by the end of next year, and have book deals, and script deals, and self published earnings, I will have a lot more breathing room to begin to dictate us having any kind of in contact relationship.

Last I tried it by phone, it was a miserable failure. I ended up listening to you not have anything to say, and getting either yelled at by your mother or screaming at your brother until you just hung up on me every time. It ended up making us both I imagine, just feel worse in the end.

In any case, kiddo, I do think about you and it makes me feel sad to miss all of the great growing up I missing on your side of things. I promise you I do not want to miss them. At all, or all. So there is hope for us yet. In the meantime, I will continue writing these letters to you and compiling them into a book I can hand to you when you get old enough. No matter what we do, my son, we will never get the time that a live- in father and son get together. I am way out here on the west coast, and will remain that way for all time. I have found the woman I am going to spend forever with, and it is our decision together to root our little family here on the west coast. I promise to try and call you soon, as I don’t think I could bear to miss out on hearing from you for too much longer. It just amazes me that the burden and all of the responsibility for making sure I get my time falls entirely on my shoulders 3500 miles away.

Kid, I love you. I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU. I pray that someday soon with time and hard work, all of this will pay off for me, and I will have more choices to make for the positive in sending for you for arranged visits that are not out of my control. If we were to arrange for a visit, it would have to be on my turf, at my home, on my time, and on my penny. I don’t want to be looked down on, or rather (because I am) experiencing being looked down on by my family as we encompass our visit. I want it to be pure unfettered joy. OK kid, I don’t know what else to say for now, so I am gonna go. I will write again soon. Maybe I can start actually sending these things out to you to have your mother read them to you. Or maybe, you being a lot like me, you could just read them for yourself already. We will see big guy. I love you! (brings tears to my eyes)

Stay strong/ keep the faith,

Your Daddy Joel Brooks