TheBanyanTree: re-cap and exorcism

[Julie Anna Teague]

I am preparing myself for reaching the end of a long road.  Or a "T" in
the road, at which point I must choose a different direction than the
one I've been traveling.  I haven't shared all the turmoil here, but
the "a thousand words or less" version of this story can be had in
the following paragraph (you can skip down if you've heard it).  This
is the last time I'm going to write down or repeat this whole story, 
even in my own mind, because I have to move past the sick and sad 
story, take what
lessons are to be had from it, and move into the life that happens
after the story.  So here, for one last recap, which is what New Year's
Eves are good for:

My ex-spouse got remarried five or so years ago.  Up to this point,
we'd been on friendly and workable co-parenting terms for several years
post-divorce.  The new wife, at first, wanted the boys to go away, so
they took me to court and the visitation schedule was modified so that
the boys were mostly with me, saw their dad every other weekend, with
many of those visitations canceled for one reason or another.  I was ok
with this, the kids were thrown for a spin, but I thought that
newlyweds needed space, and the kids were fearful and needed time to
adjust because they didn't know their stepmother at all--they'd met
her once, and they were not invited to the wedding ceremony--but that
things would normalize after awhile.  It turns out that what the new 
wife really needed was for the ex to hate me to prove his love for her, 
or something like that.  Her insecurity was palpable, which wasn't my 
problem, but it soon became
my problem. She also needed him to prove that he loved her and her sons 
more than his own sons by making them go away, including only her sons 
on family vacations, stuff like that. Being a spineless toady, one of
the reasons we were divorced, he was more than willing to go along.
Seth and Andy were put through the ringer and cried a lot.  Still, 
being ever the optimist, I thought things would regulate themselves.  
But, alas, new wife also didn't like the fact that he had to pay child 
support.  They took me back to court to get support reduced, but the 
amount is a straightforward calculation, so they couldn't make that 
happen.  Then they met a new neighbor who told them that he had "split" 
his two sons up with his ex, so this neighbor didn't have to pay child 
support.  Light bulbs apparently went off, and the ex-spouse, thinking 
this was a fabulous idea, went about trying to
make that happen with his own kids, through the courts again.  The
judge said "no way", that it was bad for brothers to split them up.
But this didn't faze the ex and the new wife.  They approached the
problem of court hesitancy to split custody of the kids by claiming 
that I was an abusive parent (abusive to ONE of our sons...apparently I 
was ok to
raise the other one because having both of them wasn't the /plan/).  
They brainwashed the youngest and most impressionable son into creating 
a kind of hell-on-earth in my home, mostly by telling him wonderful 
things like that I lied all the time, that I had committed adultery, 
and that I'd done drugs in college (my son was ten at this time) and so 
there was no reason he should have to do anything I said or respect me 
in any way.   But, they said, if there are problems in your mom's home, 
then by all means, he could come live with them and have everything he 
every wanted. Seth, seeing his dad's love as a "goal" to be won, would 
come over and parrot these things right back to me.  And for the first 
time in my parenting his behavioral problems became so out of control 
that I was desperate and stressed and resorted to physical spanking and 
dragging
the out-of-control kid to his room (I'm not proud of that...I think I 
was in shock or something. Logic and love and natural consequences had 
always worked before, but I didn't have a grip, yet, on how to handle 
this "new" kid).  Seth told the court I "beat" him.  Talk about your 
worst nightmares.  (I've told my partner, much later, that if I was 
going to be accused of beating the kid, there were a few times when I'd 
have at least liked the pleasure of having done so.  But maybe you have 
to be a parent to find humor in that statement.) Seth was also more 
vulnerable to this kind of emotional blackmail crap, I think, because 
he was adopted, whereas my older son was my son by birth, so there were 
underlying issues of abandonment and "differentness" which could be 
exploited, despite there never being one iota of difference to me in 
how I felt about my sons.  Ex-spouse was a psychology major--he knew 
how to make these things happen.  They convinced younger son that I 
didn't love him, and in fact, never had. Of course he couldn't make his 
case in court, either, because I was not and had never been an abusive 
parent.  In fact, all the court appointed
representatives who had to do home studies and interviews and all that
determined that I was an awesome parent, that my oldest son was a very
happy and well-adjusted kid.  But Seth was changed--it worked on him, 
and that's the only person it really had to work on.  This whole thing 
dragged on and on through the courts and it was the most humiliating, 
horrible, sad thing
I've ever gone through in my life.  Ex-spouse and wife, in short,
re-wrote his entire childhood.  Even for a person my age, living
through the big brain-washing stories like Patricia Hurst, I wouldn't
have believed it was possible to re-wire someone's brain like that if I
hadn't witnessed it first hand.  I had to fight, through the courts
again, to get the kid some counseling to try to help undo the damage.
The ex would take him a couple of times, the counselor would clue in to 
who was the real problem, and the ex would stop taking him.  I got 
counseling court ordered three different times, but by then it was 
pretty much too late.  After he went to live with them, the ex and wife 
had Seth committed, twice, to a local youth shelter for what they said 
was juvenile deliquent behavior.  When the Guardiam Ad Litem (GAL) 
appointed to my son interviewed him and felt that Seth had been sent 
there for very suspect reasons that did not ring true, the ex tried to 
get the court to remove the GAL.  I am over my word limit.  There was 
so much more insanity--things I honestly wouldn't believe if I hadn't 
been there--but I have to let it slip away now.

I haven't had visitation with my beautiful son, Seth, for more than two
years.  He hates me.  He hates his grandparents, uncle, aunt, cousins,
a whole family of the most loving, involved, and good people a kid
could ever hope to have in his life.  He hates with a hatred that has
become psychosis and which, the counselor says, has turned him into a
different person.  Yet another court-ordered counselor who specializes
in these kinds of things has tried to get my son to reunite with me for
over a year, with no change at all, and the counselor says that, at
this point, it can't be done.  So on January 14th, 2008, I am supposed
to have one last "meeting" with my son.  To say goodbye to him.  This
is the best the counselor feels he can do at this point--just offer me 
"closure".  As if that could ever be.  But to that end, for my own 
mental health, I have gone through a lot of pictures, books, stories 
I've written, stuffed animals, old clothes, favorite pillows, etc., 
tearing my hair out, crying my eyes out, and saying goodbye in my own 
heart.  And so, in this forum, I want to leave you with just a few of 
the stories I've written about Seth, my beloved son, over the years.  A 
memorial, maybe, to the kid he was to me--a smart, hilariously witty, 
goofy, loving, expressive, beautiful boy.  Goodbye Seth.  I love you.  
The door is always open.  My heart is always open.  Always.

-------------------------------
Seth at the Fair (July 1995)

Little boy at the fair
running ahead on baby legs,
what amazement sparkles
in your dark eyes big as the starry sky.

Little laughing boy
what joy I find
in your adventurous soul,
shining in a face of big round oh's.

Little sleeping boy,
brown velvet skin against my skin,
sticky hands, sweaty curls
and dreams of flying.

I love you Seth,
Your Mommy


------------------------------------
A "brief" look at the public school cirriculum  (Nov 2001)

I was talking, yesterday, to number two son, Seth, the perpetually sparky
and funny child.  We were having the "what did you do at school today"
conversation, and he pulled this large sheet of paper out of his backpack
and said, "Here Mom, you'll really like this!"  One of their assignments,
he told me, was to write a "What if..." question and then illustrate it.
There might've been a context for this activity, but Seth
does not usually feel constricted in any way to the topic at hand.  At
eight, he still ranges freely in and out of reality and flutters at the
edges of acceptable humor.  The question he came up with was:

          What if dogs were potty trained?

The picture shows dogs sitting on toilets, pants around their ankles,
reading newspapers.  Another dog is standing up peeing, holding his doggy
talleywhacker, and saying (in large letters), "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH."  I
noticed that the dog going weewee did show the seat up, and each doggy had
a sink for washing up, so I see that some of life's little lessons are
registering.


-----------------------------------------
never a lull in the conversation (Nov 2001) (excerpt)

Seth, eight year old king of deep thoughts and one liners, also asks
really funny questions.  These questions, which always start with "Mom"
and a long pause, even when I am the only other person around, and come
completely out of the deep blue sky. Some of his recent questions:

What is your favorite kind of potpie?

Did you ever have a bicycle with a banana seat?

What if all of Bill Gates' money was in pennies and we could swim in them?



---------------------------------------------------
multiples (Jan 2003)

My son Seth and I were sitting in the
coffee shop this morning.  Andy was off at music lessons.  We realized
that we'd forgotten our reading material, and so Seth recommended that we
get napkins and pens and practice our long division.  How could I refuse?
He's practicing up for a big math test that will allow him to jump from
the third grade math book to the fourth grade math book.  The prospect of
fourth grade math has him mesmerized.  When you are that age, I think, the
next "grade" is always some mysterious place where the answers to the
universe await.  It is a place where you become a year older but many
years wiser.  You can't wait to get there and see for yourself what the
big hullaballu is about, even though your older brother has already
dismissed it as old news.  And here is Seth, being offered an early peak
if only he can master long division.

But the wierd part, which is the story here.  We began making up long
division problems. Just any old number divided by any other old number.
Twelve into 372 was the first one Seth wrote down.  Answer: thirty-one, no
remainder.  Then I made up one.  Three thousand something divided by
twenty something.  We worked it out--no remainder.  We looked at each
other.  Hmm.  Funny.  He wrote down another one.  Some big number divided
by some other big number.  Again, exact multiples, no remainder.  Now we
were unduly excited.  The coffee went cold and ignored.  This was hot
stuff.  He made up another one. For the fourth time, exact multiples.

"It's a spell," he whispered.

He wanted to do it again.  I said that I thought maybe we would break the
spell and should stop right there.  Seth said, very seriously, "We can't break
it. It's too strong."  And then we both broke into maniacal laughter.


-----------------------------------
cheese (April 2003)

My sons and I have a
running joke about cheese.  I don't remember how it all started, exactly,
but the word "cheese" was somewhat humorous to us already, and then came
the commercial around Christmas time last year that said, "Cheese makes
good gifts."  Fuel to our cheese fire.

And then there was that one near disasterous dinner at Steak-n-Shake.  There
were all these signs with cheese slogans.  Perfect juvenile humor such as
"We'll give you new ways to have fun with your cheese" and "We'll cut
the cheese for you" etc, etc.  In any case, the boys got tickled pink,
and then red, and then purple, and then bits of french fries were
reappearing half chewed.

Later, they apologized for being a little too crazy in the restaurant
and I apologized for being tired and grumpy--by sending them a picture
postcard of Swiss cheese.

So we have this history with cheese and just /saying/ cheese
makes us laugh.  Which brings us to this morning when both boys woke up in
terrific good moods for a Monday.  I even
overheard them diffusing a battle situation between them with no screaming
and no parental intervention.  Then Andy started singing (he sings all the
time, and is noted for his impromptu compositions):

         It's a beautiful mo-oo--oorning,
            and my life is full of CHEESE!

Seth was in such a good mood that he
followed with:

    ....And when those mice come around,
          you know they're goin' down,
          cause you know....know........KNOW...... (big finish...)
          it's my CHEEEEEEEESE!

And I have to say that it warms the cockles of my heart to have these
silly little insider jokes with my children.  I see our lives together
stretched out before me.  I picture my sons at thirty-something,
unwrapping cheese on their birthdays, and all of us, laughing and laughing
and laughing.


----------------------------------
delightful havoc in the kitchen  (May 2004)


I don't know what is going on in there, but they (the boys) are both in
the kitchen and they are not fighting.  They have both been really into
cooking of late.  Andy (13) made a wonderful apple pie for Mother's Day,
by himself, and then outdid himself a week later with a from-scratch
chocolate cake and chocolate icing, completely by himself (I
wasn't even in the kitchen), from a recipe that he found himself.
Noticing the accolades his brother was getting for his fab desserts, Seth
decided that he would plan and cook a whole meal. He called it his "Soul
Food" dinner--fried chicken breasts, fresh green beans, rice, and black-
eyed peas.  I had to help him some (he's only ten) but he did a lot of it,
and it was a wonderful meal.

So, back to the kitchen.  Cooperation abounds, and that in itself is a
near miracle.  They are playing "Iron Chef".  They asked me to give them a
main ingredient, like on the show, and they would devise dishes around
this ingredient.  They wanted to do desserts, so I gave them chocolate as
the main ingredient, knowing that I had half a bag of chocolate chips in
the cupboard, some cocoa, a square or two of white chocolate.  I've heard
the mixer going, pans clashing, oven timers going off, pleasant chatter
between the two.  I am not allowed to enter.  I am to judge the event when
everything is completed.  I hear Andy saying, "No no no no no!" to
himself.  Or to the chocolate, or the pan or something.  Seth claims to
have made use of the fresh strawberries in the garden.  I heard them
digging around for marshmallows.  I smell some cinnamon.  I heard Seth
say, "A whole stick of butter?  That will be unhealthy!"