Letting the girl handle things

Grace spends every other weekend with her father. On Mondays that follow weekends she has NOT spent with him, she is scheduled to see her father for a few hours in the evening. We have a mutual agreement that he'll communicate with me by Friday afternoon/evening his plan for Monday. If there's no contact, there's no visit.

Last Monday night she visited with him according to their Monday-night schedule for the first time in several months. This is the story of how it went down.

No word was heard from him by the Friday before or throughout the weekend. No mention of the visit was made in our house. On Monday morning, about 10a, I got this email:

Heather,
I realized on the way into work this morning that I had not called this weekend to confirm plans to pick up Grace after school for dinner tonight. I apologize. At this point I am not sure what to do or how to follow up with Grace. I would still like to pick her up to come over to visit. But I guess I should ask if this still works for you following the weekend. As well, how can I contact her to let her know that I will get her from school? Again sorry for the confusion. Thanks for your help.

Hm. What to do, what to do, what to do.

It seemed like a step up from earlier weeks he missed in that at least an apology was included and the message came before 4p on Monday. Still, Grace was at school and I wasn't going to interrupt her school day to send her a message that her father would pick her up from school when he got off work and just to wait for him.

I replied to him that Grace usually called me after her after school activities were finished to ask when I would be picking her up. I would tell her then that she should wait for him. He sent a "thank you" and said he would be there at 5p (school is dismissed at 2:45p).

4:15p. My cell phone starts ringing. The call reads "Home."

I answered the call and got Grace, happy as a clam, telling me that she and her friend had come home together. It was at that moment that I decided to put the whole wrench in the works into Grace's hands and let her decide what she wanted to do.

"Did you think about seeing your father today at all?" I asked. She told me that because she hadn't heard from him, she figured not. She would like to see his family and all because she hadn't seen them in awhile, but there wasn't any plan.

I told her about the email correspondence in the morning and her father's subsequent plan to pick her up at school. She apologized for coming home early, explaining that she didn't know. I told her no apology was necessary; she didn't do anything wrong. Grace said she would call him so he wouldn't worry about her when he couldn't find her at the school. I asked her to call me back afterward.

When she called back, her tone of voice had changed. He apparently couldn't make it to the house by 5p, even though he had said he could pick her up at school by that time. Note, 5p at school would have been an hour of waiting for her after all her afterschool activities were done. She said fine, but told him that she would like him to buy her dinner out. And then she told me, 'he's going to make this up to me.'

I went home shortly thereafter and Grace was still at home waiting for her father. At 5:10p, she decided to start practicing her viola. When he rang our doorbell at 5:45p, she was still practicing and didn't stop. I answered the door, then told him to wait while I went to tell her he was there. When I came to where she was practicing, she acted as if she didn't know he was there and as if she had forgotten he was coming. She gathered her things slowly and took her time going downstairs.

Hm.

When she returned that evening at 8:30p, I asked her if she had gotten what she wanted for dinner. She answered with a steely, 'yes.' I told her sarcastically that next time she should ask for college tuition rather than settle for the small potatoes of fast food for dinner. She responded, 'good point,' and exited the room to get ready for bed.

ONE WEEK LATER (this past weekend):

Grace, for the first time, called her father and cancelled their assumed-to-be-scheduled Monday night visit. My husband and I were going out to dinner for our wedding anniversary. She said she'd like to come along with us. So she called her father on Saturday night (note, he hadn't called by the Friday afternoon deadline again) and told him she had other plans. And that was that.

Hm.

It's fair to say that Grace is thinking through some things. My gut tells me I should just let her work this out with her father and not get in the way. I'm not sure what the end result will be. I have a good friend whose parents were divorced throughout her childhood. She told me a story once about her senior prom. Her father was supposed to come pick her up and take her to the prom as her escort, as this was the tradition of the country she grew up in. An hour after he was supposed to arrive, she asked her brother to escort her instead. Her father arrived as they were walking out the door. She took the opportunity to let him know that it would have been nice if once, just once, when it really mattered, if he could have done something that showed that he cared about her. I keep wondering if in our family we're going to cross this bridge at some point.