An Absentee Parent

I for one will never understand how a parent (mom or dad) who helps bring a child into this world can decide one fine day that their creation is not of importance to them. There are tabloids and tv shows that are rife with images of dead beat parents and dads who have been absent in their children's life only to emerge one fine day and proclaim that somehow they were "messed" up and profess innocence or worse, ignorance. 

For every story about abandonment, there is yet another story of the "half boiled egg". A parent that pretends to be there but really isn't there for the most part. I find that even worse. It's like being pretentious. Keep one leg in the child's life enough to create a farce of being there and yet absolve yourself of all responsibilities for "your" child. I find parents who are like this perhaps worse than the ones who are entirely absent. I for one would rather have someone there or be gone entirely. Call me crazy but for every half baked parent, there is another who toils day and night to be there for his/her child and often gets nothing in return except being taken for granted. While the half boiled egg retains all the glory and the charm. It can make a guest appearance once in a while and shower all the attention and disappear in the cloudy half boiling water looking extremely elegant. All this while there is a parent who watches in amazement it's trivialization and marginalization and wonders what life would have been if he/she had not chosen that path, but of course that choice had always been there for her/him. Somehow he/she is reminded of the greater calling from inside it's gut which is often called conscience. A trait only carried by those who posses a spinal cord and you shake that thought and go back to taking care of your loved one, because life isn't just about going after the glorious, it also about doing what is right.................................