Ray Hobbs experiences, relationships, family, friends, teachers and environment played a big role how I approached parenting when that time came for me and the eventual career choices I made as a result of the changes that followed.
I was the keeper of the family photos, I was the one who wanted to know all of the family history, where we came from and why we moved away from our roots out to the wild, wild, West. My memories never faded and actually became a search for some type of authenticity of who I am and who these people were in these old photographs, how they came to be.
So it would be appropriate that when my siblings and I reached adulthood I would be the one who would retrieve these precious memories before the trash man came, I didn’t understand how some could sop callously throw away such valuables but values would become the center of discussion and surprises were yet many to be had.
To parent or not to parent, to be allowed to parent or not allowed to parent that is the question. Casually tossed to the side like the photos dumped in the trash, some parents just are not allowed to be parents. Historically this has been so and still there are a few that just simply cannot accept the norm as the way it shall be for them, and so they rebel. And rebel I did.
Not accepting what was offered to me in so far as access and a life with the children I assisted in bringing into the world, I found myself at war instead of some cooperative union between the egg and the sperm, forever. No, it was complicated and a narrow pathway that left few options for the non custodial parent. That is what I was determined to be and was expected to comply as millions of others, generations before, willingly and unwillingly eventually submitted to. Even within my immediate family it was expected. Walk away from your children and forget about them, pay your Child Support and see them, know them if they choose to, when they are grown. That I could not do.
What was crystal clear though is that I needed options as what was presented to me was a lifetime entangled in the “misery industry”. Though I knew little then compared to what I know now it was glaring out, screaming at me that this was not right, this I could not do. I had to create my own options, I needed more information other than the little that I had and time was not on hold, people were moving on children were growing up and being moved around. What I thought was a clear pathway to the American Dream had become a bottomless sinkhole.
To be continued, ... April 10 2026