Along the Way: 2011

Mid Journey

I updated this story in 2011, thinking it was “over.” Not a chance. One thing I know now, it will continue to be a drama, but one that resembles familiar lives—or rather what used to be known as familiar lives.

In 2011, Ben had a son, a dog, a five-year-plan, and loans and scholarships to go to college at last. I thought his life was settled. But it wasn’t.

He would graduate from community college, although not on the planned time line. First, he would have another child, then his wife would throw him out, and he would return to prison for four more years.

We thought prison had totally straightened him out the first time; he never really belonged there and once he came out he was determined never to go back and acted accordingly. He led a middle class, dual-income life in which I was one of the grandmothers. He married into a large and supportive family that accepted him completely. But when his wife got tired of marriage and threw him out, he went back to the streets until he was imprisoned again. Always drugs. Crimes related to addiction.

Angie was 25, the single mom of Adyn, a toddler, for whom she wanted a better life. She never went back to school and was a shift supervisor at Starbucks, where she has worked on and off since age 16, until she left for a job working nights. While she still hasn’t gotten a GED, she wants to do that. But becoming a mother turned her life around. In 2011 she lived with another single mom she met in one of her foster homes; they’ve been friends since childhood.

Before her pregnancy, Angie had smoked dope, lied, stole credit cards, walked on all her apartment leases, and shoplifted. Although she never went to prison, she did get caught and put on probation. She was successfully granted early release for good behavior.

When she got pregnant and realized she was going to have the family that eluded her throughout her childhood, she straightened out almost over night. She’s paid restitution, supported her son, and had been working the same job for over a year.

BUT…then she got involved in a relationship with a man who was the black sheep of a family. His parents encouraged the relationship, recognizing that Angie’s stability was desirable. This man fathered two children with her, Irish twins, and then settled into permanent alcoholism. She has raised all three kids on her own.

In 2011, when I first updated this story, Bobby was 22. He grew up in what I thought was the most stable environment. When Gerry was dying and we had to give him up, he went to a foster home where he stayed until age 18, although that family went through its own divorce. However, as soon as he aged out of the system, his foster dad delivered him to my house, because Bobby had told me he wanted to go to college.

I had always promised the kids that if they wanted to go to college I’d pay for it and they could live with me. Indeed, Ben and his fiancee did live with me for a year. So did Angie on and off when she was on a positive path. So it was only natural for me to take in Bobby.

Unfortunately, Bobby didn’t complete his classes and was fired from several jobs, ultimately ending up doing nothing. I showed him some tough love, and kicked him out. He hasn’t gone to school since. He’s a sweet kid, but has no ambition or drive, and in 2011 lived with Angie, trading our rent for some help with Adyn. He worked as a dog bather while he figured it out.

And Anne who vanished so many years ago? Well, one Sunday I got a call from Ben telling me Angie had located her at long last. Angie had never stopped looking for her older sister, who had taken care of her as a baby. Angie’s strong maternal instinct has helped her try to bring her family back together, and she finally found Anne’s daughter, now grown, on MySpace, and located Anne.

Anne wasn’t sure I wanted to see her, but I told Jerry I would be right over.

Of course I wanted to see her. I had made a vow to keep their family together, and I had tried as hard as I could to remain a still point in their turning world -- there when they needed me, though not to be taken advantage of if they indulged in counterproductive activities. Jennifer was the missing piece in my own puzzle as well.

I showered, dressed, and ran over to Angie’s. They were all there! There was an adult Anne with a teen-aged daughter (and two younger children she’d left in Tucson for the weekend). Although overweight, she looked healthy, resilient, strong.

But then I noticed that the rail-thin woman sitting glumly on the couch staring at the TV was their birth mom, as angry as ever that someone might be a friend to her children. She refused to speak to me, barking only monosyllabic answers to my polite questions. Nothing, she said repeatedly, was any of the kids’ business.

I asked after her boyfriend, whom Ben had told me already was dying of cancer. “He’s good,” she said. “You know that’s not true,” Ben said to her. “It’s none of your damned business anything in my life,” she barked. She got up and left the room.

The kids were ashamed of her, and angry at her rudeness to me. By now, they knew who I was and despite their various degrees of PTSD and attachment disorder, I knew they all appreciated me. They dealt with her in their lives, but they were still very angry at the way she used them when she wanted a feeling of family, still tries to borrow money from them, and pretended she was not derelict as a mom when they needed her.

It was a pretty awkward meeting. At one point, Ben and Angie suggested we all go outside (although it was 105 degrees) so we could talk freely.

How did I feel? I was really happy for them. I brought them a bottle of champagne so they could celebrate. They had found each other at last. They were struggling as young people with their lives, but they were all trying to succeed, each in his or her different way. And they were a family, which is very important both to them and to me.

I think they are sorry now that they didn’t get more education, yet the only one really trying to do that is Ben, the one who originally sought me out as a mentor and spent the most time in my home. But as Jennifer said, wisely, to me “the past is the past, and now we’re in the present.”

They are all still in my lives, in their roles as the adult children in my second family. And even as we came out of the Great Recession, they were all working. They’re net contributors to, not takers from, the system. One more chapter will bring us up to date.