Today is my daughters’ birthday and I am 280 miles away and can do nothing about it. She turns thirteen years old today and it shocks me to think I now have a teenage daughter, but I do and I can’t be there for her today.

I will call her today and talk with her, see if she likes the Calvin and Hobbes collection I got her, but I would have preferred to be there with her to pick out a gift. It is hard to know what to get you teenage daughter, they are all so unique with tastes truly their own. It would have been better to be there with her and have the joy of walking through the mall to find something special, but I can’t be there today.

To be with my daughter, just be with her on this special day would have been all I could ask, but life and the court system are at odds with me and I can not see her. Her mother is a heartless person and will not allow it because of a technicality, and my lawyer who was to help me with this has not lived up to her promises again. What am I to do?

And now, as she is entering a new world, one in which she may need a father to give her some advice and guidance, I am 280 miles away and sometimes a phone call can not help nor convey the expressions of love and clarity I wish to impart.

I know this day should be about her, and I want it to be, but to share with her and make it hers I have to be there to love her. I feel bad about this and there is nothing I can do today, nothing I can do by tomorrow, but maybe soon. Maybe soon I can be with her, as I keep telling her in a strained and helpless feeling refrain.

Maybe soon, but for now I have a teenage daughter.