Hope Springs Eternal
And I am hopeful for you all
Hello all and happy Easter (if you celebrate). I hope all my protective parents out there are having a good holiday with their children. Or, if not this year, I hope you have your chance next year.
It’s a bold request, and perhaps I am not qualified to present it to you, but if you are not with your children on this pastel-hued holiday, might I ask that you forgive this. Forgive the aggressors, forgive the facilitators, forgive the feigned ignorance, the coercive control, the gratuitous greed. I’m not saying that the father (or mother), the judges, the courts deserve your forgiveness. But sometimes we might receive that which is not deserved, and so we might give it, as well.
Some great news:
As I’ve mentioned previously, I started this post as a way to write about the protective parent experience, because that was the focus of my master’s thesis. I spent two years investigating the case of Ruth and her son, whom I refer to as Boy. (Ruth is also not her real name.)
Just recently Ruth was granted (reinstated, really) 50/50 custody and 50/50 legal decision making. Huzzah! Hallelujah! Hip hop hooray!
This came after some eight years in the Maricopa County family courts, various judges, various lawyers, and then representing herself, a GAL who switched to representing the father, a rotating cast of visitation supervisors. All the kaleidoscopic shades of bullsh*t. All the flying monkeys. All the nonsensical chicanery a mother might care to endure in a single lifetime.
Shelling out about $300,000. Working so hard and such long hours that she fell asleep behind the wheel and nearly died. God, that scared me.
The point — *hope* — there is hope. The situation can be turned around. A deluge of pain comes, so much is lost in the flood, but the dove carries a bit of shrubbery and the sky shines in new shades, never seen before. A promise that such destruction would not come again.
It’s OK if you don’t believe in God, in a God, in a thing greater. That’s OK and such a personal decision (or trait?) is rightfully private. But I hope, as a fellow human being, that I might encourage you to believe in hope. Hope can carry us through the dark, stormy waters.
We are in a mighty maze, but perhaps it is not without a plan, an intelligent design.
For years, I’m not sure exactly how long, Ruth was obliged to see her young son at different visitation centers. And then later to have only ten hours per week, under the semi-watchful eye of a visitation supervisor. While I was doing the research for my thesis, I was able to attend some of those visitations. The situation pissed me off, grated on my nerves, but I’m also there as a third party observer, so I thought I ought to keep my mouth shut.
I did, however, feel it was within reason to remind the visitation supervisors they should take off their damn shoes. Because sometimes Ruth and Boy would play hide-and-go-seek, and they would be dashing around the townhome, up and down the carpeted stairs.
It was absolutely bizarre, painfully strange, for there to be this additional adult, a stranger, who followed the pair around, but did not play in the game. A blank, expressionless face as she tagged along, always close behind. She had her sneakers on the whole time, up and down the carpeted stairs. This uninvited guest. This representation of a decision that should not have been done. So whenever I’d be present at a supervised visitation, I’d ask them to take off their goddamn shoes.
I believe those worst days will not return for Ruth. The humiliation and degradation meted out by an opaque and vicious system. The privacy of her home, the sanctity of the bond between her and her son has been restored. There is restoration.
She waited eight years for this restoration. Endured more than words can render. More than most can fathom.
Recently, I do not know where it came from, this thought. I remembered an afternoon with Ruth, where I interviewed her, and she took her regular face time call with Boy. Prior to the call, she’d always get anxious, overly excited to be able to connect with her son. In the living room, she took the call, back straight, sitting in a chair by the door. So excited, so elated, so nervous, so captured. Ruth talked excitedly with Boy, pouring out all the love and care she could muster, to squeeze into this sliver of contact with her son, just a few minutes. As he was in the unsupervised custody of a man who’d raped her, who’d removed lug nuts from her car, who sometimes didn’t feed the kid, who burned his only boy.
I remembered this scene and realized that I had seen someone being tortured. Though I’d not understood it as such at the time.
And I thought of Nelson Mandela walking out of his prison cell after 27 years of confinement, with his advice that we must leave the bitterness and hatred behind.
Ruth has told me she is doing so much better now, to be reunited with Boy. She says she feels she’d aged a decade in reverse. She’s been given beauty for her ashes.
I do not know where you are in your sentence. And likely neither do you. This is a mighty maze that we creep through blindly.
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”
On this day of renewal, of rebirth, I wish you the strength to stand yet again. To do pushups in your prison. To wash the windows of your cell, if you are yet there.
Know that there are mothers (and fathers) waiting for you to be released, through your own endurance, perseverance, patience. Let your love for your child be your guide and give you strength.
Though today you be a prisoner, “this hour a slave,” the next you might be holy. For “to err is human; to forgive, divine.”
On this holiday, I wish for you that your capacity to forgive might lighten your heart. Might set you free from the snare others had set. That you lean into the love for your child, and that love grant you strength.
“Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres… Love never fails.”
1 Corinthians 13
Working on the forgiveness part. Thank you for understanding our experience so beautifully.