A Grandmother's Love

Our saga began one snowy January night five years ago with a phone call saying, “Mommy is hurting me.”  After a wintry fifty mile drive, it was apparent upon my arrival that the situation in the home was out of control.  I knew I couldn’t leave the children there and I knew that my relationship with my daughter would be shattered – perhaps already was – by my efforts to keep them out of harms way.  As I explained to the children the seriousness of leaving without Mommy’s okay, the children begged not to be left behind.  However, in my own naivety, I expected the children would be with me for the weekend and would soon return home.  Sadly, tragically, at the moment when my daughter was most vulnerable, most desperate for control and most in need of her family, I had to turn my back on my own child and ferry hers to safe harbor, forever changing all of our lives.

As the gravity and the reality of the situation took hold during the next few days, more life altering decisions had to be made.  I had two children in my care and I had absolutely no legal rights to provide for them or their care.  The school became aware of the situation and contacted the Department of Health and Human Services, which was on my doorstep in a flash, ready to take the children into custody if necessary, and that would disrupt their lives even further.  After mental health workers heard our story, I was told to do whatever I had to do to protect the children, which meant further alienation from my daughter.  Since I had no legal rights, I had only one option left:  contact their father, whom they hadn’t seen in three years because of domestic violence issues.  I had to turn to the enemy for help.  Within hours there was a Protection from Abuse order in the children’s folders against both parents now and the court determined that the children would stay with me.  I still had no legal rights.

Where would they attend school?  The answer was in the town where the children had legal residence.  That wasn’t with me, but with their parents.  This meant driving two, and occasionally three hundred miles each day for a year and a half to get the children to school.  Sometimes I would just sit in the school parking lot and wait for school to get over if the weather was bad, or if I was just too tired to drive home.  Tennis, volleyball and lacrosse meant waiting at the ball fields for hours after school before starting home.  We made it!  We did it!  Looking back, I don’t know how, but we did.  After many thousands of miles on the road, many thousands of dollars paid in lawyer fees, and with two worn out vehicles, it was finally decided by the court that the school five miles from our home would be acceptable, even though custody would remain with the parents.

Who would support the children financially?  The efforts of both parents was to make caring for the children such a burden on us financially, emotionally, and physically that we would eventually fail to be able to provide a “safe and healthy environment” for them.  Because both parents are self-employed, it was and still is difficult and costly to attempt to obtain financial support.  Lawyers charging $200 an hour can quickly nullify any child support that is collected.  The parents’ emphasis is on trying to make the child’s living situation as stressful as possible.  They have no interest in paying for camp, braces, extra medical bills or child support on a regular basis?  It is much more effective for them to ignore, refuse, or even sadder, to say ‘yes’ to the children and not follow through with their promise.   Never far off is the constant lure, “If you come to live with me, you can have it all.”

We are five years into our mission.  We have had some failures and many successes.  The older of the two children is now living independently.  She has her own phone, her own car, a job and is a full student at the university.  She is lovely and we are just as proud of her as we can be.  Even now, she is very adamant that her little brother will never go back “there,” saying that, “I can take care of him now if anything happens to you and Grampa.”

“Little brother” is now several inches taller that his sister and is a wonderful young man.  He is a very gifted boy with an A average in all his accelerated courses and is active in many extracurricular activities.  His main focus at this time, besides getting his license to drive, is his future.  He will go to college; that is a given, but where?  The financial aid forms request income information from both parents.  That information is not and will not be made available to our grandson, and if it were, there is no indication that there will be any assistance in paying for his education.  By the time he is in college, he will not have spent a night in his father’s home in fourteen years, nor in his mother’s home for seven years.  In a sense, he has been independent of their care for much of his life, but they still hold the power to adversely affect his future.  Five years ago, he had to give up his family, his home, his dogs and cats, his toys, his yard and neighborhood, and his friends and school.  That should be enough for one child to have to abandon because the adults in his life weren’t doing their jobs.  If he had gone into foster care, he would able to use the status of foster child when applying for free lunch, camperships, or college funding, but because he is in a kinship home, he is not eligible for this benefit, and again, he is left out, not quite knowing where to fit in.

Where is our support?  As a kinship family, we felt very vulnerable and alone during those early months and years.  We were trying to keep the children safe without being dragged into a custody battle by the lawyers who would have ended up the real winners.  Finally, during my search for transportation relief, I was given the name and phone number of an organization that has been a wonderful resource for us.  This organization, Maine Kids-Kin, a program of Families And Children Together, has offered me safe harbor.  I have called them on many occasions for advice and sometimes just because they know.  They know that some days it just seems too hard and we can’t call “Gram” for a break because we are Gram.  We can’t call on Auntie, she has Parkinson’s, Great Grampa is 90, the neighbor has MS, and our friends, having enjoyed a few fun-filled hours with their grandchildren, are now packing their RV to head south for the winter, while we are tethered to the school system by the courts.  Who do I call?  Maine Kids-Kin because they are there to shore up kinship families all over the state and help us reach our goal of giving all of our grandchildren the chance to reach their full potential.  Being a kinship family can be isolating and exhausting in many ways, but grandparents need to know that there is someone to turn to for help.

In finishing our family’s story, let me tell you about the retirement plans that didn’t happen.  Just two months after the children arrived on that cold January night, my husband joined me in retirement.  We had the mortgage on our single bedroom home paid off, two late model vehicles that were both paid for, a health insurance plan that was great, and we had some cash on hand.  We were healthy and strong and planning to move to Florida with our dog and two cats to a house we were having built.  Well, five years later, the dog is dead, as is one of the cats; the cars were worn out transporting the children back and forth to school and had to be replaced and financed; my health insurance ran out last year; we had to renege on the contract to build in Florida, which cost us the land which was ours; I had a cardiac event this summer; my husband now plays doubles in tennis instead of singles; and my single bedroom home has a bed in the laundry room and the loft is a teenage hangout.  Oh, and one more thing:  the lawyers got all the “cash on hand.”

Would we do it again?  Yes, of course, without question.  There are some things you just do because they need to be done.  However, we do feel that somehow, somewhere, there could be a little relief for us and other kinship families who find themselves in similar situations.

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