Christine’s Ex

The Ex dated Christine for about a year off and on.  Kierra liked him and at times she didn’t.  He seemed to be good for Christine because she wasn’t so bad when they were on and not off.

The Ex has a daughter and a son by different mothers.  His son’s mother lives in our city and his daughter’s in another state.  We figured he had a lot to do with calming the fires with Christine since he was is the same position as Husband.  Kierra has mentioned that his son’s mother acted “crazy” with him sometimes.  She said that the mom would cause problems if she knew Christine would be around. 

I used to wish that Christine would meet someone like her so she could feel the same things we did when she acted out towards us.  Well, I got my wish.  Not that I took joy in her discomfort, I just wanted her to open her eyes to the unnecessary conflicts that she was starting with us.

We also figured that Christine told the Ex horrible stories about us especially my husband.  Right again…I’ll explain later.

As she became closer to the Ex he became more visible.  He attended Kierra’s performances at school.  The first time Husband went and introduced himself and shook his hand.  Each time thereafter we saw him; Husband would speak and held short conversations with him.  Christine seemed to be flustered that they were talking.

During their last break up Husband ran into the Ex alone.  He said, “Boy did she paint a pretty bad picture of you!”  They both had a good laugh.  He told my husband that he was nothing like Christine described him to be.

At the hospital my husband learned quite a bit from the Ex about Christine and her shenanigans.

Christine made it seem like they were back together (her and the Ex).  After Kierra’s intial doctor”s appointment she promptly called the Ex and asked him to accompany her to the surgery.  She told him that she didn’t want to go alone.  He said he came to support Kierra because his daughter is the same age.

The Ex questioned her when he got to her house only to learn that her oldest daughter didn’t go to school so that she could be at the hospital, too.

He said that he used to tell Christine about herself all the time for the way she acted towards Husband.  She knew the drama he went through with his own son’s mother.

He told my husband that she complained all the time about Kierra coming to our home for visits.  He said she would try to bribe Kierra to stay home with her so THEY could be a family.  When Kierra did stay or go with her when she was at our home for summer visitation, Christine would try to act like she was so tired so she didn’t have to bring her back.  Kierra caught on.  He said he encouraged her to let Kierra spend extra time at our house.

He also told Husband that Christine said that Husband harrassed her all the time.  She told the Ex that Husband ran all her boyfriends away because he didn’t want her to be with anyone.  (Husband and I got a good laugh about that one.  They had not been together for over twelve years at the time). 

At one point the Ex and Christine were supposed to buy a house together.  They were looking for awhile and Christine seemed to be very happy.  Apparently they got into a huge fight about his son’s mother and things went downhill from there.

The Ex broke up with Christine because of her ways.  He said she was always going off about anything without letting him speak.  (doesn’t that sound familiar!)  He couldn’t deal with the way she treated Kierra knowing he was going through the same with his son’s mother.  (Oh, and the best one…)  She lies a lot. (Really?  Who would have thought!!!)  He said Christine was a cool person to hang out with but he could not be in a relationship with her.

Kierra said the Ex and Christine have gone to the movies from time to time since then.

I’m now wondering if Christine will call and ask him to go with her again to Kierra’s second surgery?

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Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Jazmine’s mom wrote on Friday and of course, she failed to mention anything regarding her extended stay!  She did write that the facility was currently on lockdown mode, and out of boredom, she decided to write.  I have no idea what prompted me to call and verify this information but I did.  The prison has not been on lockdown since last summer when an offender escaped. 

I, too noticed that Jazmine’s mom was in a different dorm since she had last written a month ago.  I already knew the answer before I made the inquiry, but I wanted to be sure.  The prison operator confirmed that Jazmine’s mom and Eliza were infact in the same dorm when she gave me Eliza’s  location!  I knew Eliza’s dorm number by heart due to writing her so often.  I was hoping that Eliza had been moved, but no, they are in the same living quarters!

If they had a prior conflict I can’t understand why the facility would place them in the same area.  Each room contains 16 bunk beds so that means they are in close proximity to one another.  Poor Jazmine’s mom!  The devil sure has a sense of humor as my friend Stacy pointed out.  However, I feel confident that God will have the last laugh!  I don’t know what could, but I pray that something good comes out of them being together.

There Will Be Blood

Eliza is taking us back to court.  We found out yesterday when I retrieved the mail and noticed a letter from the court clerk.  Of course she failed to send us a copy of her two page handwritten letter that was dated July 31st.  Sensing that her document was ex parte communication, the clerk kindly sent us  one.

In her letter she alleges the following:

• She has not been allowed to visit with Evan, I am asking you to please address the situation with my communication with my boys, visitation with Evan… 
• She has no idea what is going on with Evan, Your honor I just want to know what is going on with my child…Your honor I just want to know that my baby is okay.
• We are withholding information from her regarding Evan’s treatment, I‘ve asked several times to have a copy of a report or medical record from his doctor but I was denied.
• We are rejecting her calls, I try to call but my attempts are rejected.
• We are preventing her from having a relationship with her boys, Your Honor I have cared for my boys as a single parent their entire life almost.  I’m not perfect but my children has always come first.  I love my boys, I’m all they really know.  I have always done my best as a single parent providing and careing [sic] for my children.  I refuse to stop now.  It is very important and necessary for my children and I to maintain our relationship.  I do pray to regain custody of my boys upon my release.
• I told her that his doctor ordered that Evan not be allowed to visit or communicate with her,  I was informed by Morocco, my boys stepmom that Evan’s doctor has instructed them not to allow me visits or communication with him.  I asked Morocco if she made his doctor aware that there is a court order allowing me permission to have a relationship with my children.

Interestingly enough, she never mentions my husband.  All of her allegations are directed specifically at me.

I am hurt. 

I have behaved pretty admirably under the circumstances.  I have written her numerous letters (over 40, the last one being sent on July 28th) providing her with detailed information about his treatment, even making the three hour trip on two seperate occasions so that I could address her concerns.  When I did in fact send her case summaries from the therapist, they only seemed to upset her.   She felt that they were an attack on her parenting–even though they only addressed Evan’s issues and his treatment plan.

I have helped him write several letters to her, even transcribing them myself while he dictated.  I send her photographs as well as crafts that he has made.  I make sure that they acknowledge her on every holiday–big and small.

Evan’s therapist did say that he was not stable enough to visit her at the inception of his treatment.  She is still sticking with her professional opinion.  Eliza also did not include the reason why Evan is even in a mental hospital in the first place.  She did not tell the judge that her child is suffering from chronic PTSD because of the violence (including the murder that she is incarcerated for) that he has witnessed in her care.  Furthermore, it is a hospital and not a hotel.  We can not check him out at our leisure in order to take him on a 14 hour roundtrip visit to see her.

Ethan has not missed a single visit since the judge ordered that we do so.  I have put 1, 728 miles on my car to date escorting him so that he may spend time with Eliza.  She failed to mention this small detail.

I have arranged outings so that the boys could spend time with their brother.

Eliza has only been able to call that one time.  She told me that her third party caller is unable to call on the day and times that the judge granted her.  To prove this we can request to have our phone records subpoened.  Also, since she left that nasty message in May, we have provided a cell phone number for her to call.  Through Sprint I am able to track how often she calls–which has been none.  We figured that she would try to blame her inability to call on us and agreed that this would be a good way to prove it.

The hospital does not accept collect calls.

Eliza is really paranoid about what we have “told” the hospital about her.  She refuses to believe that much of what has been “told” about her (other than the initial intake interview) came from her own child’s mouth.

I’ve come to the realization that she wants things messy.  Eliza is determined that man, woman, nor child will walk away unscathed.  She wants us all bleeding right along with her.  Unfortunately, we are all casualties of her war. 

She has to have something to keep the animosity brewing so that she can “rightfully” explode once she is released.  Eliza is going to continue to play dirty every chance she gets.  It’s too bad that she sees this situation as “Us( her, her other son, Ethan, and Evan) and “Them (me, my husband, and Nicholas).” 

The spoon I now feed her with will simply become longer.

Real Talk

            Monday I made the two hour drive down to see Eliza so that I could speak with her face to face regarding the voicemail she left.  I could detect the veiled hostility in her message that she attempted to cover up by concluding with and have a blessed day.  I wanted to give her a chance to talk about whatever it was that was obviously bothering her. 

It was a pretty intense visit in which we talked about a lot.  She was defensive (understandably so) and seriously in denial about Evan’s reason for being in residential treatment.  It was primarily her parenting, life, and motives that were being examined.  As I knew would happen sooner or later, events from the past surfaced.  But I was okay with that and was actually looking forward to an end of the pretense that all was well.  It was like a breath of fresh air to a collapsed lung.

 It was weird how the conversation flowed.  She jumped around from topic to topic and eventually landed in the past.  She began with the scarf story.  When CPS had removed the kids from her custody, we had them for a period of five weeks.  One day after visiting with her for a couple of hours, Evan came home with the scarf that she used to wrap her hair up at night.  She sent it to comfort him.  She continued to say that Evan told her that I had thrown the scarf away proclaiming, “Nothing that belongs to your mother will ever be allowed in this house.”  You’ll have to forgive me, but I started laughing at the absurdity of it all.  I would never do such a thing and I actually thought it was kind of cute that she had sent it with him.  I explained this to her and she burst out crying.  Apparently she believed this—though I have no idea why Evan would weave such a tale.  But then again, I do.  Sometimes when children know that their parents want to hear certain things, they will do anything to “feed” this need and begin to fabricate stories.  I’m sure she wanted to hear something “bad” about us, and because he wanted to please her, he came up with the scarf story.  She heard what she wanted to hear and used that among other tales to keep the animosity burning and the rift growing. 

She said that Ethan told her that I said that she would never be able to afford a house like ours.  Another lie.  One day Ethan asked me how much our house cost.  I thought it was a rather strange question coming from the mouth of a then ten-year-old boy.  I responded by saying that there are certain questions that you just don’t ask people and that the question he had just asked was one of them.  I knew that she sent him fishing for this particular information.

Eliza was also holding it against us that a friend of her middle son’s father, Carl, told him that my husband and I said that we did not want the kids at our house.  Carl, of course, relayed this misinformation to her.  I gently pointed out to her that immediately after the incident that landed her in prison, my husband made arrangements to get them.  Now mind you, Eliza is the one who did not want my husband to receive custody.  Before her husband went to prison, she had him call my husband asking him if he would terminate his parental rights! Not to mention, she fainted in jail upon learning that we had Ethan and Evan.

            I was a little shocked at how much she thrived on the whole “he say-she say” phenomenon.  But then again, she does have that drama seeking, immature personality.  It seems that she was expressing her own actual feelings through Ethan and Evan.  She didn’t want to come off as totally paranoid or as if she really cared what I thought about her.  These are her adult insecurities that she has bequeathed to her children.

  She also said that social worker involved in the CPS case told her that she felt I was too controlling.  Again, I had to laugh as I informed her that Shan, the caseworker, had told me that exact same thing about her!    

Eliza attempted to badmouth my husband but I stopped her by simply saying “I am not here to defend my husband—what for?  You had a past with him that I can’t speak on.  Your experience with him belongs to you and him alone.  I understand that he is not perfect and I’m sure that you both did things wrong that resulted in a failed marriage.  But I would like to remind you that he is not the same person that you married, as I’m sure you are not the same.”   She appeared to accept this.

I guess I have moved on because I didn’t once mention any of the problems that she caused for me.  My entire focus was on the kids and how we could continue to work together for the good of the whole.  And in case you’re wondering, Eliza did apologize twice for leaving that message.

            The kids were I teach have a term that they use to describe a serious moment of conversation known as “real talk.”  Yesterday, as tedious as it was, was our first “real talk.”  In the end I was glad that she had the opportunity to get some concerns off her chest.  Do I think there’s more? Yes.  Am I ready to throw in the towel? Kind of.  Am I sick of dealing with her and the whole ordeal? Absolutely!  Am I going to keep talking and working through this mess? Most likely.  Why?  Because I know that I can’t always give up or give in when the going gets tough.  

Fed Up!

A few weeks back my husband received a call from BM with an update about Kierra’s doctor visit.  Kierra had been complaining of chest pains and her doctor had referred her to a specialist.  Well, today is her scheduled appointment and my husband asked me to go with him.  This will be the fist time all have attended a doctor’s visit together.  I had considered calling BM to break the ice before going.  I wanted to avoid feeling awkward. But something happened last Wednesday that caused me to change my mind.

As we are finishing dinner the phone rang and I answered.   It was BM.  She asked me to tell Kierra that she was on her way.  Then she asked if my husband was home.  I handed him the phone and his expression instantly turned serious. All of a sudden he stormed out of the house.  I figured something was wrong because BM sounded frantic when I answered the phone.  When he came back in, it was clear that he was upset.  He then told me that BM was calling to confront him.  Apparently some kid that goes to her oldest daughter’s school told her daughter that my husband was talking about her at his place of business.  Instead of consoling her daughter and assuring her that husband wouldn’t do anything like that, BM added fuel to the fire. 

BM was hollering and screaming that she has a right to call him and complain about what he supposedly said.  She had already assumed that this kid was telling the truth.  My husband told her not to call him unless it concerned Kierra.  The next day he talked to her oldest daughter.  She told my husband what the boy said.  It seems as though BM had added more lies to the pot.

A while back Kierra and her sister had a two hour delay from school.  BM called our home asking my husband to take Kierra to school because the bus didn’t show up.  Husband asks BM if she wanted him to take Kierra’s sister as well.  BM told my husband that she already had a ride.  So when my husband got there, he questioned Kierra about missing the bus and found out that they just didn’t want to go to school.  So he told the sister to get in the car and he was taking her to school, too.  He then called BM to tell her that THEY were being sneaky.  BM went into this story of how her oldest daughter loves school and Kierra is the one that doesn’t like school.  So husband dropped it.

BM had apparently mixed that conversation into what this boy said and made it a big mess.  Because of this, my husband does not want to talk to her at all.  She constantly makes up these stories for no reason.

On Saturday Kierra called my husband and said that BM wants to know if “Kierra” could borrow $20 for her co-pay.  My husband told Kierra that BM needed to write a check.  Yesterday, Kierra called her dad and said that BM wanted to talk to him.  She went into this story about how she doesn’t have any money because she has to give the girls lunch money for school.  (Last week Kierra called my husband wanting to know if he could give her money for lunch because BM didn’t have any money.  He gave Kierra money for lunch.)  She went on and on about she needed the little money she had to feed the kids and for gas.  He told her that she had three weeks to prepare for Kierra’s appointment and that he had to think about it. 

$20 is really no big deal but it is the principle of the matter.  He just gave Kierra money for lunch.  He is so fed up with BM right now.  He said he would pay the co-pay himself and get the receipt.  I’m sure BM will have nothing to say to either of us today.