How did I get to this point?
Today is Tuesday. Allow me to do a quick rewind to Sunday a week ago, December 1st.
Phone rings. It's my youngest son, the one who's married, with two kids and one on the way. He's not happy. Apparently his sister collect-called him from a Baltimore jail. Collect call on a cell phone. That's a $12 charge. No, he's not happy.
So, it seems daughter and her hubby were in each other's face and did some amount of damage to each other, so they called 911 on each other. I haven't seen the son-in-law, but my daughter's bruises were impressive. She was being released from Central Booking and needed someone to pick her up. It was cold outside.
Seeing as Youngest Son has ALWAYS been the one to come to his older sister's rescue, (I was never in a position to help because I lived with someone who said NO - and it was his house - and Oldest Son was also reluctant to step into the dramah! that was his sister's life) he was a little reluctant to help her this time. She has always gone back to the mess that the rest of the family has tried to help her get away from, because she never had a plan. All of her previous departures from wedded bliss have been panicked, explosive emergencies that got the whole family up in arms, only to have her go back time and time again, leaving us standing around (usually with her cat in residence) wondering what the hell just happened.
I'm not going to detail everything about my daughter's life that is sad, shocking, embarrassing, or just plain stupid, but believe me when I say that when I choose friends to hang with, none of them are like her. Yeah, she's my daughter, but damn.
Back to the phone call from my youngest. He seems to think that I need a lecture on "you don't have the luxury of Not Being Mom so you have to go get her." So... the odyssey began.
Remember that I, myself, am one step away from being homeless, sheltered by the love and action of dear friends, so I cannot offer daughter diddly nor squat in the way of help.
But I can get her out of the cold.
And she's over an hour's drive away.
So, at 11:30 p.m. on a Sunday night, I set out to get her from the police station.
At about 3:30 a.m. we arrived at Youngest Son's house. I still had another hour's ride and more to get back to my home, and I had it in my head that I was going to try to go to work. Exhaustion and my offsprings' insistence that I needed to sleep won out. I slept for two hours, then texted my boss around 5 a.m. that I was calling out due to a family emergency, and I was also out of town and had not slept all night.-
*sigh*
After a few hours of crashed-out, passed-out exhausted sleep, daughter and I got back on the road. We had to get the granddaughters. I'm not going to detail that, but we did get them. The other grandmother was in tears, just heartbroken. See, my daughter had, in telling the police that she feared for her life, revealed to the police the whereabouts of a stolen gun which was buried in the backyard (still loaded), wrapped in plastic and duct-taped to the point that it took the police 15 minutes to unwrap it, which put a weapons possession charge against him. He's facing up to 10 years in jail. He was supposed to start a new job that morning. She wept for her son, for the ruin of his life and future (she couldn't see he was ruining it on his own with his drug use and promiscuity and hanging with the Absolute Wrong People) and she blamed my daughter. She said there was no need to bring that gun to the attention of the police, it was buried, it was hidden... why? I couldn't help it - I let her cry on my shoulder. I felt badly for her, but I wouldn't let her get me to take sides against my daughter, which she tried. But the woman's tears were genuine. She was losing her son to the prison system, and she was losing her granddaughters to the oblivion of an hour and a half drive away.
I'm going to text her updates on the girls.
Daughter was put up in a motel by the people who are offering me a home with them. She and the girls were in a motel for a full week. Everybody's money is suffering. She has already gone through her monthly disability check. I have drained both savings and checking. Money I was saving for moving to Montana. And just last night, my friend plunked down $1500 on a deposit on an apartment. An apartment that I have to share with my daughter and granddaughters.
I am sick. I cannot live with my daughter. I have spent a lot of years and effort staying away from her, and now I have to live with her. I can't deal with this. And yet I must. She isn't stable enough to be alone with the kids without the buffer of another adult.
It's 6:30. I have to get ready for work. I know I'll add on to this later, but there are no words for how hollowed out I feel right now. I was safe. Now I have to live with someone who needs medication just to keep her emotions reined in. This is the same person who beat me up when she was a teenager, and the police looked at me and asked "What? You can't control your own daughter?" My reply to him was, "You know if I "controlled" her the way she needs to be controlled, you'd have the cuffs on me so fast..."
All the gods and goddesses help me.
Phone rings. It's my youngest son, the one who's married, with two kids and one on the way. He's not happy. Apparently his sister collect-called him from a Baltimore jail. Collect call on a cell phone. That's a $12 charge. No, he's not happy.
So, it seems daughter and her hubby were in each other's face and did some amount of damage to each other, so they called 911 on each other. I haven't seen the son-in-law, but my daughter's bruises were impressive. She was being released from Central Booking and needed someone to pick her up. It was cold outside.
Seeing as Youngest Son has ALWAYS been the one to come to his older sister's rescue, (I was never in a position to help because I lived with someone who said NO - and it was his house - and Oldest Son was also reluctant to step into the dramah! that was his sister's life) he was a little reluctant to help her this time. She has always gone back to the mess that the rest of the family has tried to help her get away from, because she never had a plan. All of her previous departures from wedded bliss have been panicked, explosive emergencies that got the whole family up in arms, only to have her go back time and time again, leaving us standing around (usually with her cat in residence) wondering what the hell just happened.
I'm not going to detail everything about my daughter's life that is sad, shocking, embarrassing, or just plain stupid, but believe me when I say that when I choose friends to hang with, none of them are like her. Yeah, she's my daughter, but damn.
Back to the phone call from my youngest. He seems to think that I need a lecture on "you don't have the luxury of Not Being Mom so you have to go get her." So... the odyssey began.
Remember that I, myself, am one step away from being homeless, sheltered by the love and action of dear friends, so I cannot offer daughter diddly nor squat in the way of help.
But I can get her out of the cold.
And she's over an hour's drive away.
So, at 11:30 p.m. on a Sunday night, I set out to get her from the police station.
At about 3:30 a.m. we arrived at Youngest Son's house. I still had another hour's ride and more to get back to my home, and I had it in my head that I was going to try to go to work. Exhaustion and my offsprings' insistence that I needed to sleep won out. I slept for two hours, then texted my boss around 5 a.m. that I was calling out due to a family emergency, and I was also out of town and had not slept all night.-
*sigh*
After a few hours of crashed-out, passed-out exhausted sleep, daughter and I got back on the road. We had to get the granddaughters. I'm not going to detail that, but we did get them. The other grandmother was in tears, just heartbroken. See, my daughter had, in telling the police that she feared for her life, revealed to the police the whereabouts of a stolen gun which was buried in the backyard (still loaded), wrapped in plastic and duct-taped to the point that it took the police 15 minutes to unwrap it, which put a weapons possession charge against him. He's facing up to 10 years in jail. He was supposed to start a new job that morning. She wept for her son, for the ruin of his life and future (she couldn't see he was ruining it on his own with his drug use and promiscuity and hanging with the Absolute Wrong People) and she blamed my daughter. She said there was no need to bring that gun to the attention of the police, it was buried, it was hidden... why? I couldn't help it - I let her cry on my shoulder. I felt badly for her, but I wouldn't let her get me to take sides against my daughter, which she tried. But the woman's tears were genuine. She was losing her son to the prison system, and she was losing her granddaughters to the oblivion of an hour and a half drive away.
I'm going to text her updates on the girls.
Daughter was put up in a motel by the people who are offering me a home with them. She and the girls were in a motel for a full week. Everybody's money is suffering. She has already gone through her monthly disability check. I have drained both savings and checking. Money I was saving for moving to Montana. And just last night, my friend plunked down $1500 on a deposit on an apartment. An apartment that I have to share with my daughter and granddaughters.
I am sick. I cannot live with my daughter. I have spent a lot of years and effort staying away from her, and now I have to live with her. I can't deal with this. And yet I must. She isn't stable enough to be alone with the kids without the buffer of another adult.
It's 6:30. I have to get ready for work. I know I'll add on to this later, but there are no words for how hollowed out I feel right now. I was safe. Now I have to live with someone who needs medication just to keep her emotions reined in. This is the same person who beat me up when she was a teenager, and the police looked at me and asked "What? You can't control your own daughter?" My reply to him was, "You know if I "controlled" her the way she needs to be controlled, you'd have the cuffs on me so fast..."
All the gods and goddesses help me.