Violence close to home

I have been thinking a lot lately about the rights of children, the rights of families, the rights of parents. I see so much in my job and being pulled into a recent court case that had everything to do with families and nothing to do with being a landlord has heightened this.

So often I see really bad parenting. I mean profoundly shakes me to my core parenting problems. I am always stunned by it. Which I suppose is silly. I am far from new to this job and should have grown a thicker skin by this point. But I seem unable to really do that. I can crab sarcastically to trusted family and friends maybe sometimes, but mostly I really believe that if you give people a chance at something better that they will be both willing and able to grab that chance and make life different. Give themselves and their kids that better option. That is I guess the part of me that people label Pollyanna. I really want most for my kids to have a better life than I had. I hope to have learned to emulate and improve on the best of my experiences from my parents and to eliminate that which was the worst. What I see for many people though, is just a perpetuation of a cycle whether it is healthy or not. It is the norm, the known, it is what happens.

Today I read in the paper that one former resident really never will get that chance to try and improve. The fact that they are "former" resident speaks in part to their choices, if you read between the lines. The article that I read in the paper alleges that a minor in the family is alleged to have done something unimaginable to an older relative. While I always thought this was a deeply troubled individual I never saw anything like this coming. The act he allegedly participated in is so horrific that it is chilling to think about. I don't know if it is the age of the minor in question or the fact that i don't typically travel in circles where killing is a way of life, but I am really unable to wrap my mind around this. I think of my kids and how they interact with each other and I can't in my wildest dreams, picture anything like that happening. Even when KC comes to me and tearfully tells me that his big brothers are acting "fartish" (his word for being mean to him!) it is truly small potatos. It is sibling stuff. It isn't life or death stuff.

So that leads me to wondering what if anything can be done to try and heal really dysfunctional families. Obviously safe affordable housing isn't the cure. Having cool places for kids to spend their time isn't enough. We've got both of those bases covered. Yet increasingly I see parents who can't cope. I see children who have never had boundaries set unless it was by a gang. I try to be a resource for services but it is hard. It isn't really my job and I have to also be the tough guy who sets the boundaries, says thus and so can't happen here etc. That really interferes with being the person someone is comfortable going to if they need help, though there have been lots of occasions when I feel pretty confident that I have walked between both those worlds pretty well. But not this time.

Court

OK the atty for my tenant thought she could just stipulate to my testimony and that I wouldn't have to appear, but that didn't work. So today I had to schlep several cities over to testify. The good thing was my wife could drive me. I am so brain dead when it comes to road sense--actually truthfully I HAVE no road sense. (I have trail sense when hiking but that would be another post). And she promised I would be the first to testify in the afternoon session, so in the words of our family it would be "in, out, and done."

Except that getting grilled by 4 lawyers for the state is not my idea of fun. It should have been simple. My knowledge as it pertains to this case is rather simplistic. However every time the lawyer for my tenant asked me a question one of the other lawyers was jumping around objecting. It was like watching one of those TV court shows but way less entertaining. At one point they were arguing as to whether I could answer questions asked about a letter I had written for the tenant. They finally convinced the judge that I couldn't, by the way. There were other occasions too, when my staff would report to me in the normal course of business in matters relating to the tenant and I could not testify to that as it falls under "heresay." Never mind that i sent the worker there, that is the law.

However, there is karma. Because on cross exam the state lawyers wanted me to testify to something I could only have heard from someone else and not seen or been part of in any way myself. Again, however, it would have been within the scope of my profession to have heard this information from a staff member. I said that would be heresay and I was unable to comment. Judge backed me. It was small and it in no way means that this case will go the way it should, but it felt right that at least for that one moment in time, there should be a reality check on the foolishness.

I find the whole situation disturbing and depressing. I am glad that I have a 4 year old whose idea of humor is knock knock jokes like:

Why did the chicken cross the playground? (to get to the other slide)

Why are rabbits never sad (because they are always hoppy)

So I will be hoppy!

Just Thinking

I have come to realize that blogs are not necessarily private. Not that I think I have tons of avid readers---my guess is that by and large I have very few as my musings are pretty pedestrian. However the fact that there is some degree of publicness to this means that there are things I can not figure out how to write about when they bother me. Because of the confidentiality regulations of my job, I can't write about the truly pathetic parenting issues that I deal with. I can't really write about how it bothers me when I listen to what parents use as their defense when all our other options fail and we are forced to go to court. I can't write about how i feel about the children who are forced to deal with their parents dysfunction and do so with violence.

I can't write about the parents who really really should not have their children in their home. Maybe they should some day but not now. Yet the powers that be leave them there and i watch them suffer and can do so little to alleviate that.

I can't write about the parents who really really should have their children restored to their homes but the state has such a vendetta against the mother that there is a long legal battle that I have been pulled into while the mother attempts to regain custody.

Well, I can write about the situations like these blurbs above. Totally without any form of specificity. Without a context to explain what bothers me about these cases and my dealings with the families involved.

What perhaps I can write about more cogently is the way these situations make me feel. I feel angry. I feel confused. I look at my beautiful children that I love more than I have a capacity to explain and I feel confused. Should their parents have been subjected to TPR? I hope with all my heart that these were situations where it truly was in the children's best interest. I know it was presented to me that way in each and every case. In one case, the children were being hidden in a closet and the house was so filthy that the officials who entered it still remember the level of sanitation (or lack of) to this day. In another, the birth mom appears to have sought out the adoption agency so that she could find a safe happy home for her baby and be able to both return to school and to try and deal with her addictions. In another case. the birth mom had 6 other children, none of whom she was parenting. Family members were raising the other children but could not take on another child. Mom was facing jail time due to drugs and the baby tested positive for drugs. Both mom and dad allegedly voluntarily signed TPR's.

I hope things were as we were told. I really do.

Musing on simpler living

By my friends standards we live a simple life. We have no cell phones. Really. None. We have no PDA's. No GPS. Sort of a bells and whistle free life. We usually camp when we go on vacation. We make most of our food from scratch. We grow a vegetable garden at the community garden plot. We can and put by as much local produce as we possibly can. Yet the power outage showed me how different a truly simple life would be.

First off, we spent most of Friday and Saturday together in my bedroom. It is a spacious bedroom, about 12 x 14. We stayed there because the small gas fireplace gave off at least some heat and the rest of the house was a brisk 49 degrees. I was sick and was mostly in the bed, orchestrating play for the kids. Board games card games, crafts and things they would think up on their own were the amusements. No cable TV. No music. No going off into another room because it was too cold to want to. And i thought to myself that if I was living in pioneer times, our entire dwelling might well have been the size of that room. A room that didn't seem claustrophobic to me, but warm and filled with love and community. My 4 y/o sang songs (I croaked along with my raspy cold impacted voice) No one really complained. Then about 3:#0 in the morning the power returned. Lights. Blessed heat. But no cable TV. I could read the concern in my 12 y/o's face. Football is his joy and there was a big game on TV on Sunday. Would he get to see it? I reminded him that we could get it on the radio if the cable was still out. He nodded dubiously.

Compared to most families we don't watch a lot of TV. My wife and I see an hour or two in the evening but often the music is playing while we work now instead of the television. KC usually watches PBS kids tv for an hour in the morning an hour in the late afternoon and a couple hours at night. I thought he would have TV withdrawals or something. He is used to a routine. But putting on a video in those time slots did the job just fine. He loves to play and create things and the lack of television options unleashed that even more. If you had asked me before the ice storm if we could have lived without cable TV I would have said no. Now, I think it would be an adjustment but that we likely could do it just fine. And it makes me wonder what other things I think we need that we really don't. The thing we need the most is the love we have for each other and that we have in abundance.

Oh yeah, and the cable came back in time for the football game!

We ride the Polar Express!

Yesterday we left the house at about 1:30 and drove 2.5 hours to ride the Polar Express. I was equal parts excited and nervous. I have wanted to do this with the kids for years. It is one of my most favorite Yuletime stories. The movie is OK too but they added stuff that isn't in the book and my big worry was what if the ride was more like the movie than the book? Yeah, people are starving around the world and i am obcessing over which version of a childrens story will be used! :-) But it was AMAZING!

I confess that we paid a fairly obscene amount of money for premier seating. This meant that we didn't wait in line as long as other people. It also meant that when we waited we waited inside instead of out in the cold where the temps were something like -7 with the wind chill. Since I have a cruddy cold, this was a good thing as well. When we boarded we were escorted to a dining car because we were not travelling coach. This was good because Chet, my autistic eldest son has space issues and there would have been problems with him feeling crowded or crowding others in coach. However sitting at tables worked perfectly. The youngest children could and did draw while we waited. The only down side was that our family is so large we took a full table of 4 and part of another table. This meant that me and whichever child sat with me (KC part of the time, Lissa part of the time) sat with strangers. I don't really mind that. I always look at such things as an opportunity to make new friends. These 2 folk were pretty dour for people riding a holiday train but by the end of the journey we had a reasonable acquaintenanceship going. Kirsty said that they probably wiped their brows when they debarked and said that they couldn't wait to be quit of Pollyanna! I don't really think I am Pollyanna but I was determined to enjoy every facet of this experience.

I am told the hot chocolate served was delicous as were the chocolate candies with white insides as bright as new snow. I am allergic to chocolate so I rely on the yums from the rest of the family. The ride was just long enough and in the darkness of the mountains it was truly magical. The waiters were dressed just like the characters in the book, white coats and chefs hats as they served us all with just the right amount of solemnity and cheerfulness.

Arriving at the North Pole we followed a slightly snowy path lit by the cheerful elves. Inside we got to sit right down front (again thanks to the premier seating). In this case, the youngest kids were those who benefited the most as they could see really well. We were literally at the foot of the action. My heart was in my mouth when we went in as there was a giant projector. Again I wondered would they be showing the movie. But no, they had an actor read the story and the projecter showed each page on the screen so that they beautiful illustrations could be seen by everyone. KC watched in awe when Santa appeared. His mouth was a perfect "O" just like you see in picture books. Lissa danced while the elves sang Jingle Bells. Rob watched with a sparkle in his eye; he can't decide if at 12 he is too "cool" for this or not. Chet enjoyed it all. The upside to his autism (and trust me I look for every upside because there are so many challenges to daily life) is that there is a childlike purity in the way he enjoys things. He really enjoyed it as much as everyone else did and that is a huge emotional gift to me.

After the story we made our way back to the train. We received scarves to remember our journey by and bells just like in the story. We were on our way home by quarter of 7 p.m. eating boxed suppers that I had packed for everyone. We made it back home by 9:30 which was not bad at all. I would have loved to have had the luxury of staying overnight at the condo we had rented but it takes the kids one night to settle into a place. I knew we wouldn't sleep well in new digs for only one night. Better to drive home and settle into familiar beds with familiar sounds and scents around us. So that is what we did.

But I will remember this trip. It was special and so imbued with the magic and joy that I try so hard to give our children. We all need magic for without it the world is a cold and frightening place without it.

I wish I knew how to drop the pictures in more sequentially in the post, but this is the first time I managed to post pictures at all, so in that respect, I am doing pretty well!

Of Ice Storms and such!

We've been looking forward to our journey on the Polar Express for WEEKS now. After 3 yrs we won the lottery (literally, they have a lottery for buying these tickets) and we were all going to travel. And travel in style. Paid for premier seating, partly because I think it is a once in a life time t hing, partly because things like that sometimes are easier for my eldest. Less waiting in line etc make things much better for his autistic issues.

I sprang for a condo for a 2 night rental. We would have fun with a capital F. And then the goddess sent an ice storm. A storm of such magnitude that we were without power for 30 hours. Lost it around 9 on Thursday night and just got it back on about 3 a.m. on Saturday. And I got a cold. First time i have been sick in so l ong I can't really remember when, but it still sucked. And being cold and having a cold at the same time totally rot. You can't tell if you are shivering because the house is 48 degrees or because you have a cold and have a fever. Yup, life can be grand!

So although we were supposed to leave yesterday for our NH journey we didn't. We camped out mostly in my bedroom by my little gas fireplace. KC and Robbie played board games and card games and took breaks to use my bed as a trampoline. (Really!) We could heat food on our gas stove top though the oven is not usable without electricity for the ignition. (one of those modern changes that I hate; would much rather have an older model that will start with a match when the power is out) Our doggie day care had also fallen through with our dog sitter trapped at her home by live wires and unable to get out till who knows when. The vets were closed and all the other options we could come up with for dog sitting kept falling through. I didn't really want to leave the house with no power. What if a pipe broke and there was no one here? I suggested to the kids that perhaps i should stay home with our dog and they should go up with Mom so that at least most of us could ride the Polar Express. KC said if I couldn't go with them then he didn't want to go. I am amazed! I am not sure I would have been so altruistic at 4. So we decided maybe we weren't going to go and figured out how to make the best of it.

We had a lovely pasta supper last night and the dining room glowed in the candle light. Poor KC was so confused; he was sure it was solstice nite! We watched the moon rise in the sky and admired stars that were so bright because there were no city lights for them to compete with. And then we went to bed. It was 6 p.m. It was dark and cold, why stay up any longer?

And when we woke this morning we had heat and lights and a sparkly new day. We decided that we would go north after all and ride the express tonite and come home the same day. Or night really as it will be about 10:30 when we get home. But we will ride that magical train. Oh and our doggie care friend just called. She managed to get down to her dog care business and is available to watch Blake if we want to drop him off. Sounds like a bit of Yule tide magic after all!

How to Make it Snow!

Take sheets of white paper and show your 4 y/o son how to make paper snowflakes. Hang his art work in the window. Admire his efforts. Go to bed. Wake to find snow. Watch same son punch his fist in the air and shout "YES!" "I DID it! I made it snow!"

Four is such a magical age.