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"This morning I made myself a cup of coffee and set a bowl of Kix on JD&amp;#x27;s little table. He ran off into his room to play trains. I turned on the Today show. What is going on in the world today? I wondered. Matt Lauer had just introduced a segment about a recently published piece in the famed Modern Love column of The New York Times. It was about John, who left his wife, Victoria, when she was seven months pregnant and had little contact with his son, Judah--until John was diagnosed with cancer and dying. Good morning, Chrissy. &amp;quot;Beep, beep,&amp;quot; JD tooted from his train table. In &amp;quot;Could I Forgive Him One Last Time?&amp;quot;writer and English professor Victoria Rosner writes: &amp;quot;Until the time of the diagnosis, Judah and his father hadn&amp;#x27;t seen much of each other. Sometime between Judah&amp;#x27;s conception and delivery, his father decided that he couldn&amp;#x27;t be married anymore, not to me, he said, and probably not to anyone.&amp;quot; Victoria moved to New York City to be close to family (I moved to NJ to do the same and because I couldn&amp;#x27;t afford to live in NYC with a baby), and John remained in Texas (JD&amp;#x27;s father moved back to Indiana). When John got cancer, he learned the best treatment would be in New York City, so he called his ex-wife, Victoria: &amp;quot;You are totally within your rights to say no, but I hope you&amp;#x27;ll at least listen to me. I had always planned to have a relationship with Judah when he was a little older, but now I don&amp;#x27;t know if that can happen. I want to start seeing him more, as much as I can, right away. I don&amp;#x27;t have money for New York hotels, so I&amp;#x27;d like to stay with you or your mother when I&amp;#x27;m in town. During chemo, I might not be able to travel, but I&amp;#x27;d like to talk to Judah on the phone every night. And maybe have you bring him to visit me.&amp;quot; I stopped reading dead in my tracks right there and thought, This guy left when she was two months away from delivering THEIR BABY, hardly saw his now preschool-age child, but HE NEEDS something, so now he&amp;#x27;s coming around? What! Seriously? Guess what! Victoria&amp;#x27;s friends reacted the same way. Deep breath... As a mother, my first priority is JD--everything is about JD. I&amp;#x27;d recap my weekend, but I think it might bore you. It involved Elmo (ahem, family day at JD&amp;#x27;s school), swings, brunch with friends and JD, a sleepover in my bed last night (he appeared in my room from his tot bed and said &amp;quot;Hi.&amp;quot;) Single parenthood is 24/7--precisely why those WHAT! OMG! feelings I just wrote about quickly subsided. A mother&amp;#x27;s love is unconditional. As Victoria writes below, I would never keep JD&amp;#x27;s father from him, or JD from his father. (And JD&amp;#x27;s father knows this.) &amp;quot;I found myself thinking about what I would say to an older Judah, long after his father had died. That Judah would have a lot of questions about a man and a relationship he couldn&amp;#x27;t fully remember. If the day came, I knew I would want to have stories to tell of the two of them and pictures to show. I suspected that the grown-up Judah, if given the choice, would want to have known all he could of his father.&amp;quot; Something else I took away from this piece? Forgiveness is not black and white. It is various shades of gray. We forgive people for many reasons, but we never forget. Let&amp;#x27;s discuss. I respect Victoria&amp;#x27;s decision to forge a relationship between John and Judah. Do you? Did your child&amp;#x27;s father show up when he needed something? How did you deal with it? *** More on glamour.com: Is your child&amp;#x27;s father involved? These guys say they were tricked into becoming fathers. Aw! How cute are these celeb dads and their kids? *** More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering for or logging in to Glamour.com! Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;#x27;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage. Follow us on Twitter."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/storked/2010/01/this-single-mom-forgave-her-so>