Contact With Cydney’s Grandparents

I’ve documented in great detail (but left some good stuff out) about my relationship with Timile’s parents.  We never got along as much as just put up with each other during Timile and my five year relationship.  They were hoping I’d be a passing phase and Timile would find someone better suited to their liking.  In the ironic twist of fate Timile’s gone and in order to have a relationship with Cydney they legally have to deal with and interact with me.  Didn’t have to be this way but it is…

Since Timile’s parents and I last went to court in January they have been reaching out to Cydney.  Timile’s mother at one point wanted to speak to Cydney everyday to tell her goodnight and I thought she was bugging.  Nah, yo.  Parents get that privilege and I’m not redoing my whole schedule to fit in y’all talking to a toddler for a couple of minutes.  I don’t think I’m wrong for that especially when I don’t like them anyways.  Anywho.  They’ll try to Skype with Cydney once a week–usually on Thursdays it seems.  Once again at first we’re supposed to schedule these things.  I look at the Skpye app on my iPad and see multiple calls at times we didn’t necessarily arrange.  Nah, fam that’s not how this is rolling either.

Anywho, when the times are arranged and they call in.  I set it up on my iPad (that is until Cydney broke the charger port on it…I didn’t even have that thing for two months) let Cydney and them do their thing and then I leave the room.  I don’t want to hear it or see them.  Timile’s mother is a short woman and has a very high pitched shrill voice.  It does something to my insides that just makes me cringe.  There’s also the added bonus that it’s her, but the timbre of her voice is just the icing on the cake.  Cydney seems to have a good time.  She’s Skyped with friends of mine and stuff before so she knows what to do.  She jumps around, looks at herself on the screen, and is her overall pleasant self that she hides when she’s not being a terrorist.  

I also don’t like the Skype thing with them because Timile’s parents tried to use it to play games.  The day before court they finally wanted to Skype and did so from their home making it seem like they weren’t showing up to court the next morning.  Well, it was just Timile’s father and youngest brother.  The tactic was the two people that would possibly be able to drive were the ones onscreen so my guard would be down thinking this was a cakewalk.  Lo and behold, there they were the next day.

The second or the third time that Cydney Skyped the whole family was there.  Timile’s brother who was two years younger than her lives in Japan so they were holding him up to the screen as well.  I didn’t want to see him either because he made all kinds of threats, said I wasn’t a man, a deadbeat dad, and insinuated that he’d put his hands on my among other little threats.  No, I didn’t take them seriously because Facebook is a video game and coming from where I do you don’t take threats seriously from people who just talk tough.  I was peeved by all of this because he’d bought into the propaganda that his parents were spewing without as much as a phone call to me to ask how much of this was true.

Nonetheless, the whole family was there to greet and talk to Cydney.  Before I walked off, Timile’s father said that he had to go but that he wanted to say that after watching me with Cydney when they were in New York that he thinks that I am doing a very good job with her, he’s happy and proud to see that.  I responded “Thank you,” but in my head I thought “No shit.  That’s what I was doing before y’all tried to Deebo my child from me…I’d been holding it down and your daughter would’ve told you that!”  I knew that he was watching me.  After Cydney had been finished with all of the pomp and circumstance at McDonalds after court she just wanted her dad.  So she pulled me aside and we sat with the Ronald McDonald mannequin, ate, talked, and fed Ronald.  I could see him observing in the corner in my eye.  I’m no idiot.  I pay attention to my surroundings.

A picture I took of my enthusiasm while Cydney was Skyping

So that’s how things have been going on that front.  I still say we’ll never be one big happy family.  The damage has been done.  I can be cordial, but technically and legally I don’t have to give not one iota, teeny, tiny, proton, electron, or neutron of a fuck.  As I started this off I’ve never liked them and they’ve never liked me.  That’s the way it’s going to be and when we’re around each other we’ll put on the fake smiles and happiness for the sake of Cydney and I will continue to let them have a relationship with her even though I hate the way things have played out over the years.