Strings

A friend at work is struggling with a custody suit. She has 3 children. The oldest, a girl, is 16 and lives with her full-time. Her 2 youngest are both boys, ages 14 and 12 (or so). The boys must live with their dad something like every other week. When the dad recently was served with papers wherein their mother is suing for full custody, and the papers included letters from all 3 children to the judge asking to be able to live with their mom (the boys desperately want to live with their mom full-time), well... one can imagine the dad was not happy. My friend has talked about the whole situation quite a bit, and she told me that her sons' father has now forbid them to call him "dad"; instead they must address him as "sir" or "yes, sir". I know parents do awful things to their kids, but for some reason this just made me very, very sad.

Another friend has a beautiful little daughter, about 2 years old, who has cancer. I try to keep positive thoughts about this wonderful little girl's future, but unfortunately, the Internet provided a massive amount of information for me to read about this type of cancer... so mostly, I worry about her. I worry so much that Gabrielle won't be around much longer to call her mom, "mom" or her dad, "dad".