Disturbing......

We (Katydid, Rozmo, Deb and I) witnessed a rather disturbing scene at BikeFest this weekend. It has been on my mind ever since, but I didn't want to spoil the happiness that was the bike ride with this scene that was ... not happy.

I noticed a group of people down below us, on the Riverwalk, because there appeared to be some tension. Then a container of ... something ... french fries? ... onion rings? ... went flying. There was a little girl involved, probably about two and a half years old. There was a young woman, an older woman (holding the child), and an older man. The older two appeared to be parents of the young woman and grandparents of the child.

Their voices became louder and I could hear them clearly all the way up where we were standing, probably about a hundred feet away. (Give or take ... I'm terrible with distance. Which probably explains why I continue to choose to ride the century route when I could be watching football.)

I could clearly hear the young woman (who wasn't teenage young, just younger than the other woman, obviously, since that turned out to be her mother) saying, "Show me the paperwork. Show me the paperwork. Show me the paperwork or give me my child."

It was obviously a custody dispute, and I wanted both to turn away because I felt like a Peeping Tom and to watch as closely as I could in case the verbal dispute became physical. I had already heard someone ... maybe BOTH women ... saying, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" The little girl, thankfully, was not crying, but I couldn't stand the thought that she might get caught between these two seemingly irrational adults. Well, one was more irrational than the other, but the situation was getting out of control.

Enter Rozmo.

She had gone to take pictures down on the Riverwalk, and the argument moved down her way. The father had come up the steep stairs to where we were standing, presumably to wait for police to arrive. Rozmo had stumbled upon the two women arguing, asked if everything were okay, and when one said "Yes" and the other said "No," she tried to mediate.

That's Rozmo. That's the way she rolls. She has SUCH a way with people, and especially children. She was able to calm both adults and get them to walk up to where we were standing, and she kept the little girl engaged in conversation the whole time.

I won't bore you with ALL the details, but the woman had lost custody of her little girl because of a drug issue, and the grandmother DID have paperwork, which she was only willing to turn over to law enforcement. I have no idea how this scene came to be played out on the Riverwalk, unless there was an issue with visitation or something. It seemed a strange place for such a situation to get out of hand, without any social services or law enforcement people around to keep things under control in the first place.

Sadly, I didn't find the situation with the mother and the drug habit and the loss of custody surprising at all. It's what we hear all the time these days. What I DID find surprising was that the mother who has lost custody is an OB/GYN but has no job now because of her drug habit. She has no right to have her child now because of a drug habit.

How tragic. It's tragic for ANYONE, I realize, but to think someone with the intelligence to go to college, complete medical school, survive the internship and residency, and become a practicing medical doctor could throw everything away like that just because of drugs just boggles my mind.

I hurt for the little girl. And the grandmother. And the grandfather.

And the mother.

Beautiful Boy and Tweak.....

I have just finished reading both Beautiful Boy and Tweak, books about one young man's addiction to several (many?) drugs, mostly crystal meth and heroin.

I'm not going to review them here, because reviewing someone's memoirs is sort of like judging his life. Beautiful Boy is written from his father's point of view, and Tweak is written from the addict's.

These books were powerful and powerfully disturbing. They made me stop and say, out loud, "Thank you God again today for not making me go through that."

One of my best friends in middle school and early high school was also one of the most popular, talented, beautiful girls in our crowd. When she chose me to be her BFF, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I would do almost anything for her. I wanted to be her. I copied her style, even when I couldn't pull it off. I joined the chorus because she sang. I spent many nights at her house. I borrowed her clothes, even when they didn't fit very well. I copied (almost) everything she did.

But when she turned to drugs, I turned the other way. Why? I so desperately wanted to fit in. To be accepted by that popular, seemingly glamorous crowd. What made me resist the urge to try drugs? I did other things I wasn't supposed to. I drank alcohol before it was legal, and the drinking age waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back then was 18. I skipped school. I left during the school day to go to the store. I smoked in the bathroom. So I can't necessarily say it was good judgment that made me avoid doing drugs. But SOMETHING kept me away from them, even when my friend and her crowd were doing them.

I always say parenting is nothing but blind luck, and by all rights I should have had a hell-raiser of a child. I did my own share of that, after all.

My Sweet Girl was way better than I was when I was a teenager. She was better than I think I deserved. She didn't do any of those things either, and I don't think she even had any friends who did. She wouldn't have been friends with them for very long. (Well, there was that baseball player she had a crush on who went by initials instead of a name, but we won't talk about him, will we Sweet Girl? I was naive enough to think that if he was an athlete he couldn't also be a pothead. Wrong!)

Don't get me wrong - I am GRATEFUL that I had such a good child, and an easy one. I just can't take the credit for her having good judgment during her teenage years. I don't think I modeled good judgment very well, and some of the time I was too busy trying to prop up a disastrous marriage to pay as much attention as I should have.

Thank you, Sweet Girl, for NOT being the kind of child that these books were written about. I don't think I could have survived the heartbreak. There's a reason you're an only child -- I didn't think I could get lucky enough to have TWO good children, and I wasn't willing to take the chance. I love you!