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Dec. 5th, 2007 04:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarI don’t remember my brothers coming back from living with my father….but I think that they came back for the summer after I finished second grade…I remember all of us staying at my mother’s for part of the summer, going back to our grandparents over the weekends…and a trip to Texas, to a different house from where they lived at Christmas. The only summer where all of this could have possibly taken place was the summer after I finished second grade.
I’m not sure when the lawyer visits started- they would occasionally take me, and I think my sister once or twice to see their lawyer and have us talk to him about where we wanted to live (with them of course) there were a number of custody and visitation hearings and every time one would come around, Michelle and I were supposedly to attend and told that the judge would ask what we wanted…and for some reason, that never happened. Sometimes we’d go to the courthouse and end up waiting outside in the lobby. Other times, we would just go to school while our grandparents went.
Nothing of great significance stands out about my third grade year. At some point, a court order was established with visitation and holidays. My mother wanted to get custody of us, but somehow my grandparents managed to get it worked out that she couldn’t until she could find a house in the same school district as they lived…which is one of the most affluent districts in the county, and they knew would be very difficult for her. We continued to visit her every other weekend, I continued to fight going, my grandparents continued to videotape every time she came over- they would sit their camcorder on a shelf in the room near the entrance to the house- from where it was, it didn’t look like it was un use, no lights were visible, it made no sounds. They continued to tell us that she didn’t love us, just wanted us for an income tax break. I can’t remember specific instances, but around this time, they started telling me that I was acting or talk like my mother when I did or said something that they didn’t like.
She started buying us clothing- mostly from the very high-end thrift stores in the city, mostly otherwise very expensive clothing brand new with the tags still on. My grandparents pointed out her buying from secondhand stores as evidence that she was a bad parent. If she gave me chamomile tea when I couldn’t sleep or herbal cough drops instead of the brand that they liked, or bought whole grain bread instead of regular white bread, it was all because she was a bad parent. They continued to make fun of Keith- who was somewhat strange, but mostly okay. He seemed to flip back and forth between being a health food nut or not, sometimes eating tofu and alfalfa sprout sandwiches and taking lots of vitamins for weeks at a time. He had two kids of his own who were there every weekend. They were sometimes ok, sometimes intolerable. His son was my age- I mostly got along with him, his daughter was two years older- I mostly didn’t get along with her, though sometimes did.
The summer after third grade, we went to Texas for the summer. My father was living back in the house where he’d lived the first time we visited him, during Christmas in second grade. He was living with his fiancé, Goldie, my brothers and Goldie’s daughter Shelly who was six years older than me. It was really hot in the house. There was only air conditioning in the TV room, which was where my father and Goldie slept at night, the rest of us slept in the adjacent living room on the sofas and floor though they would tack a blanket up over the doorway to keep the cool air in. shelly liked my sister and brothers but not me...I don’t know why. Goldie was mostly nice to me, but between the two of them they decided that I was lazy and spoiled and I never heard the end of it. I wasn’t used to the Texas heat (additionally, I hated to go outside because the yard was full of red ant hills, and quite a few times that summer, I found my feet swarmed by ants- I had scars for a few years, but they eventually went away completely) and preferred to spend my time reading (I had taken a box of books down there with me. I would also read magazines, the newspaper, books lying around the house) For some reason, they saw the fact that I preferred reading to watching TV as abnormal. Goldie had three older sons, who all agreed with this, but only one ever bothered me about it. My sister and brothers all joined in and I got a lot of ridicule that summer. Shelly would sometimes take it upon herself to be the disciplinarian…she was 15, but liked to grab the wooden paddle that was kept around and smack people with it for whatever she felt like. Neither Goldie nor my father ever did anything about that. There was a lot of talk about how awful my mother was and Keith-bashing.
At the end of the summer, we all came back to PA this time. My brothers went to live with my mom, my sister and I went back to my grandparents. Continued to go to my mother’s every other weekend. Every time something happened that my grandparents didn’t like, they would pull out the court visitation/custody order (they had many copies of it…at one point, they were keeping copies taped inside some of the kitchen cabinets and at least one copy in nearly every room in the house) and point out how it was violated. If my mother brought us back to their house at 705 on Sunday evening, they would call their lawyer and complain (but it was perfectly ok for them to ask her to bring us back early or try to get her to pick us up later than the scheduled time)
I’m not sure when the lawyer visits started- they would occasionally take me, and I think my sister once or twice to see their lawyer and have us talk to him about where we wanted to live (with them of course) there were a number of custody and visitation hearings and every time one would come around, Michelle and I were supposedly to attend and told that the judge would ask what we wanted…and for some reason, that never happened. Sometimes we’d go to the courthouse and end up waiting outside in the lobby. Other times, we would just go to school while our grandparents went.
Nothing of great significance stands out about my third grade year. At some point, a court order was established with visitation and holidays. My mother wanted to get custody of us, but somehow my grandparents managed to get it worked out that she couldn’t until she could find a house in the same school district as they lived…which is one of the most affluent districts in the county, and they knew would be very difficult for her. We continued to visit her every other weekend, I continued to fight going, my grandparents continued to videotape every time she came over- they would sit their camcorder on a shelf in the room near the entrance to the house- from where it was, it didn’t look like it was un use, no lights were visible, it made no sounds. They continued to tell us that she didn’t love us, just wanted us for an income tax break. I can’t remember specific instances, but around this time, they started telling me that I was acting or talk like my mother when I did or said something that they didn’t like.
She started buying us clothing- mostly from the very high-end thrift stores in the city, mostly otherwise very expensive clothing brand new with the tags still on. My grandparents pointed out her buying from secondhand stores as evidence that she was a bad parent. If she gave me chamomile tea when I couldn’t sleep or herbal cough drops instead of the brand that they liked, or bought whole grain bread instead of regular white bread, it was all because she was a bad parent. They continued to make fun of Keith- who was somewhat strange, but mostly okay. He seemed to flip back and forth between being a health food nut or not, sometimes eating tofu and alfalfa sprout sandwiches and taking lots of vitamins for weeks at a time. He had two kids of his own who were there every weekend. They were sometimes ok, sometimes intolerable. His son was my age- I mostly got along with him, his daughter was two years older- I mostly didn’t get along with her, though sometimes did.
The summer after third grade, we went to Texas for the summer. My father was living back in the house where he’d lived the first time we visited him, during Christmas in second grade. He was living with his fiancé, Goldie, my brothers and Goldie’s daughter Shelly who was six years older than me. It was really hot in the house. There was only air conditioning in the TV room, which was where my father and Goldie slept at night, the rest of us slept in the adjacent living room on the sofas and floor though they would tack a blanket up over the doorway to keep the cool air in. shelly liked my sister and brothers but not me...I don’t know why. Goldie was mostly nice to me, but between the two of them they decided that I was lazy and spoiled and I never heard the end of it. I wasn’t used to the Texas heat (additionally, I hated to go outside because the yard was full of red ant hills, and quite a few times that summer, I found my feet swarmed by ants- I had scars for a few years, but they eventually went away completely) and preferred to spend my time reading (I had taken a box of books down there with me. I would also read magazines, the newspaper, books lying around the house) For some reason, they saw the fact that I preferred reading to watching TV as abnormal. Goldie had three older sons, who all agreed with this, but only one ever bothered me about it. My sister and brothers all joined in and I got a lot of ridicule that summer. Shelly would sometimes take it upon herself to be the disciplinarian…she was 15, but liked to grab the wooden paddle that was kept around and smack people with it for whatever she felt like. Neither Goldie nor my father ever did anything about that. There was a lot of talk about how awful my mother was and Keith-bashing.
At the end of the summer, we all came back to PA this time. My brothers went to live with my mom, my sister and I went back to my grandparents. Continued to go to my mother’s every other weekend. Every time something happened that my grandparents didn’t like, they would pull out the court visitation/custody order (they had many copies of it…at one point, they were keeping copies taped inside some of the kitchen cabinets and at least one copy in nearly every room in the house) and point out how it was violated. If my mother brought us back to their house at 705 on Sunday evening, they would call their lawyer and complain (but it was perfectly ok for them to ask her to bring us back early or try to get her to pick us up later than the scheduled time)
