crime

The darkest day of the year

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It’s been unseasonably warm here in Wisconsin. It looks like we will set an all time high record on Christmas day. No white Christmas for us this year. We barely had any snow fall yet. It doesn’t feel like Christmas is just a few days away.

Today on the darkest day of the year, I always think of my great-uncle Harold. He would’ve been 98 years old today. Every year on his birthday we would go to his house and celebrate with him. There would be steaks and pineapple upside down cake. Aunt Grace would serve food on the multi-colored Fiesta plates, the only day of the year they would leave the pantry. It was one of the few days we saw Harold laugh and tell stories. Most of the time, he was next door working on cars at the family business.

Harold died unexpectedly the year Paul and I got married. I remember the last time I saw him. Paul and I were visiting my family to tell them the exciting news we were going to have our first child. We were able to tell everyone except Uncle Harold. He was outside working on a car while talking to clients. We didn’t want to interrupt him so we asked Aunt Grace if she could share the news. That was the last time I saw him alive.

We never really know how much time someone has left. If I knew, maybe I would’ve waited longer to talk to Harold. I think that is where a lot of my irrational guilt kicks in. If I’d only known, I could’ve done something different. I’m starting to let go of things, but it takes time to process. I couldn’t prevent the suffering of the people I care about and that hurts.

I tried reaching out to our previous employee today. But it was too little too late. I haven’t seen her for 5 years and I thought I could do something to prevent her from struggling with addiction, from committing a crime, and even from the attempt I think she tried to make on her own life? I want to help people. I want to fix them but I can’t. It’s as if I am wanting to play God and even He does not step in to keep people from physically dying and making their own choices.

I am feeling a lot better today. I wasn’t feeling the greatest yesterday, but I decided to volunteer yesterday and I’m glad I did. For awhile I forgot about my own pain. I spent a half an hour holding the baby of a homeless teen mom. He brought me joy as I held him and made him laugh. The mom needed clothes for her kids and was on her last diaper. She is a single mom living in her car with a two-year old and a baby. We had a record number of people who came in needing help yesterday.

Yesterday we had a new woman sign up for help from Africa. She is a single parent who recently came to America. She doesn’t speak any English and has zero education. She lives in a bad neighborhood. What really struck me was that there were several women from the same community that only speak Swahili. They are all parents between the ages of 20-25, the ages of my own children. I can’t even imagine what that must be like and to have absolutely no education. There is a language barrier with a lot of families that come in. It’s my goal this new year to become fluent in at least one other language starting with Spanish because I do know a little from high school, like way back from the last century.

There was a woman who came in that got arrested last week for child abuse. Ever since my own daughter was arrested, it’s really changed my view of criminals. Offering to help someone in need does not equate with me agreeing with the choices they make. They are people too. I am not afraid of them as much anymore. But that doesn’t mean I would walk down an alley by myself at night in a bad neighborhood.

Then there was the lady who stayed at the domestic abuse house. There was the lady that didn’t know she was pregnant with twins until two months before they were born. The people who reek of alcohol, cigarettes, and weed. The mentally ill. The intellectually challenged. Those who are going back to school to try to build a better life. The grandparents raising grandchildren.

I can’t go back and change anything in the past. But I can move forward and help people today.

The places I volunteer at are really hurting for volunteers over the holidays. So I decided to sign up at the places the next two days. Tomorrow helping families in need and Saturday at the cat sanctuary. I almost enjoy holding the cats as much as I enjoy holding babies. I especially love the feral cats or the cats that don’t warm up well to other people.

Maybe I can do some good to negate some of the bad in the world.

On to other things

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The cat war is over and now we have moved on to other worries.

The evening I posted the cat wars post, Paul and I made a trip over to Will’s apartment to get Arabella’s big items, such as her couch, because she just got out of jail earlier in the week. While we were there, Will said he would give Arabella her cat back on two conditions. The first that she would not lock the cat up in her room and the second that she would allow him places to hide. I called Arabella right away and she said she would agree with the conditions.

After the break up, Paul and I tried to have a non-adversarial relationship with Will. I think this really helped the cat situation. Although, I believed the cat should just stay where he was at for the cat, I believe it was in my daughter’s best interest to get the cat back. Will still had some compassion for her. My daughter’s mood improved drastically. We felt more secure about leaving Arabella at home without us to go on our annual sailing trip with friends. I was willing to stay back if I needed to. But after she got the cat back, I felt she was more stable.

While we were gone, I told Arabella I did not want her to bring any new friends we haven’t met to the house. After we got back, we met her first jail friend. This woman was rough. She told me she first got in trouble at age 14 when she stabbed her dad who was abusing her. She made it clear she did not kill him but that did not make me feel much better.

After she was released from juvie, she was homeless and lived on the streets. Although this woman was as small as a child of 10, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. She has the glean of insanity in her eyes along with a shaved head and multiple tattoos. I took an interest in her tattoos and asked her who the face belonged to of the person tattooed on her arm. She said it was a tattoo of Hannibal Lector. Sickening! Idolizing a sadistic serial killer. I didn’t know what to say. I was feeling more apprehensive by the minute. Only 24 with a decade in the system. I told her it was not too late to turn her life around. But who am I kidding, she doesn’t have much of a chance.

To think at one time I thought the psych ward friends were bad. However, the girl was over the top polite. Told me she protected my daughter from fights although she was over half her size. She helped my daughter unpack her belongings and was helpful. But she still made everyone uneasy because there was something not quite right about her. It was Labor Day. The weather was perfect for one last summer hurrah. My son had a couple friends over and so did we. My best friend brought her 13 year-old son who wanted to hang out with the girls. This really stressed me out. The girl was really sketchy and was wearing an ankle bracelet. Was she under house arrest? Was she breaking rules by being at our house? Would the police show up? Where they talking to my friend’s kid about jail or inappropriate topics?

Perhaps I made a mistake. But could I tell my daughter everyone can have friends over but you. Should we have new boundaries? No felons in the house? My daughter is facing 3 felony charges. Maybe we should have bailed her out of jail earlier. The should’ve would’ve started creeping in. We thought she would be a shoe in for mental health treatment court. No one lead us to believe otherwise, but we were wrong. We are treading in new waters once again. I wish someone would’ve wrote a book about what to expect when your kid gets out of jail.

My daughter told me her friend was on the bracelet for a DUI. But I don’t believe anything I hear anymore. I did a little investigative work on my own. The criminal records in our state are public record. My daughter’s friend has a long list of criminal records. She is 24 years old and most recently has drug charges involving meth and narcotics along with the DUI. She has battery charges as well. She has a history of being a violent felon with hard drug charges. I found out she is also a mother, but I am assuming her child has been taken from her.

What is my responsibility here? Will she introduce my daughter to hard drugs? Would I rather have her friend hang out here where I can keep an eye on things or have my daughter hang out with her wherever that may be? Our initial reaction was to kick her friend out. But she didn’t do anything wrong at our house as far as we could tell. As of right now, we are closely monitoring the situation. Arabella doesn’t make good choices and all her friends are pretty messed up. She just doesn’t attract the nice quiet church girls. Most of her friends make us uncomfortable. I knew this was going to happen, but I don’t have any good answers on what to do about it.

More birthday festivities…

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My son’s girlfriend Lexi’s birthday is the day after mine. What she wanted to do more than anything was to go out dancing. She also wanted to go to the martini bar we visited earlier in the week. Because of shootings in the neighborhood, the martini bar now closes early on the weekends at midnight. That really wasn’t a problem because after midnight I tend to turn into a pumpkin.

Before we went out dancing or to the martini bar, Lexi wanted to go out for pizza. At the restaurant, someone told the waiter it was her birthday. The server mumbled happy birthday and was on his way. Gone are the days of free drinks, meals, or desserts for those celebrating a birthday although the celebrant tends to bring all their close friends and family out. I remember times when the whole server staff would come out and sing happy birthday. Some would even add the little cha cha cha’s and really get into it. They would come out with a cake with a little candle on it. Everyone would clap. I haven’t noticed much of that spirit after COVID though. Now they have the attitude of….so, what?

After pizza we went to the martini bar. We were having a lot of fun and things were going good. Then around 10:30 we made our way over to the dance club. It felt creepy because we had to walk through an alleyway to get inside. When we got in a security guy wearing a bulletproof vest took a copy of our driver’s license and took our picture. Still feeling a little creeped out. The whole place had this dirty and dingy vibe going on for me.

When we got inside we were approached right away by a guy who was pretty messed up asking me to buy him a drink. He was in my face. Then Lexi got in his face and told him to back off. He wouldn’t leave us alone. Then my son got involved. The guy told my son he was going to kill him multiple times. Then he started to take off his shirt telling Lexi and I to look at his muscles. Meanwhile, the rest of our group was far enough away they didn’t hear much of what the guy was saying.

A woman came up looking for the man who was still acting erratically. Then he started touching me, running his hand down the side of my body. I don’t think my son saw that because he probably would’ve punched the guy after watching him harass his girlfriend on her birthday and his mom. This is where I got in the middle of my son and this guy. I wanted to be the protector. I told the lady to take the guy home but she was almost as messed up as he was. I really didn’t want a big bar brawl. So we ended up leaving before we even got to dance. On the way out, my son told the bouncer about the guy who was harassing us.

My kids told me the guy was really messed up, not only drunk but probably on meth because he was twitching. I’ve never seen someone on hard drugs like that right in front of my face. But I know what it is like to live with someone that is violent and erratic. It’s like my PTSD kicked in and I responded to the man just as if he was my brother when he would get violent. I wanted to protect others. I ended up apologizing to my son later. He handled the situation well, I did not. I could’ve really gotten hurt if the guy attacked me. Who knows what would’ve happened if we would’ve stayed. The guy was out of his mind, aggressive, and unpredictable.

Once we left the dance club, we tried to get out of there as quick as we could before the guy saw us after he got kicked out. Sure enough, the guy got kicked out but he walked by us without even recognizing us and that we were part of him getting kicked out. Then he walked into the martini bar and my son also went back in to warn the bouncer of what previously happened. It was a crazy night out. People were so messed up, running out in front of cars when the light was green. Paranoid. On hard drugs. Is this what the world is like now?

I miss the days when a group could just go out and have fun celebrating a birthday. I like it when the restaurant you go to makes you feel special on your birthday. A time where you didn’t have to worry much about violence or strange guys touching you inappropriately.

Although, I am happy that my son’s girlfriend included us in her birthday plans.

Guilty!

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One thing I wasn’t expecting was to feel guilty for my dad’s crime.

I felt paranoid. I worried that the police were going to come to my house and confiscate my computers. Maybe they were going to investigate me. I knew the fear was irrational since I’ve never done anything the police would take an interest in. All other family members that I talked to about it felt the same way. It was like his dirt rubbed off on the rest of us. We all felt familial guilt for a crime only one of us committed.

The bar was set low. It didn’t take much to step over it. I wanted more for my children, for my brothers and I. I wanted a family name they could strive to live up to. Would we be looked down upon for the sins of our father?

Would they take our foreign exchange students away? I would feel a moral obligation to report a conviction to our coordinator like she told us to if the case should arise. She did have an exchange student that wrote letters to an exchange uncle in prison who was removed from the home she was placed in. Maybe they would get removed since they saw my dad once or twice before I knew of his crime. I was not planning on having them around my dad again. My brother Luke was also not planning on having his pre-teen daughters around their grandpa ever again. Do you know how difficult that was especially around Christmas time? I hope not.

I didn’t want to see my dad again either. The children were what I was living for. Otherwise I might not have bothered getting out of bed. I had to have them up and ready for school in the morning. I had to force myself to be excited, to give them a memorable Christmas. The kids are really what kept me going. I had to be alive for them. What if they were taken away? How would I explain things to their parents? Was I going to be punished for his crime? Does the trauma never end?

I felt like I received a life sentence for a crime I didn’t commit. All happiness and joy were striped away. I was guilty for a crime I didn’t commit. Guilty until I could prove to be innocent.

Panic Sunday

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That is how I ended up almost having a panic attack singing on the worship team in front of church on a joyous December morning.

I received a phone call from my daughter minutes before the service began. Grandma knows…the police didn’t arrest grandpa…guns in the house…a felon with nothing left to lose…depressed before…we need to get grandma and Matt out of the house…homicide?…suicide?

I received the two minute warning that I needed to go up and sing. I quickly said my good-bye as I threw my phone in my coat pocket and ran onstage. Maybe I should’ve taken some time off. When life goes to crap I tend to carry on with my plans. Maybe that was a mistake.

It was almost impossible to sing praises to God as I imagined my dad with a gun to my mom’s head. Singing may have calmed me in the past, but with each word my panic built to the point I almost ran off the stage mid song. I had a hard time keeping it together as the what ifs clanged in discord through my mind. It was agony to feel this way yet having to pretend that everything was fine. The service was being recorded and was live online. The whole world could watch me freak out.

I called my mom as soon as I could afterwards. She had tickets to see a show with Matt. She was going to pack her bags and come over after she took Matt back to his group home. With four teenagers in the house, I didn’t have an extra bedroom for my mom but she was welcome to stay here as long as she needed to.

I was still afraid of what my dad might do when she left. Should I go over there and try to talk with him? Was he angry with me because my daughter turned him in to the police? I called my brother Luke. He said if there was any chance that I could be in danger I shouldn’t go. It wasn’t like I had a car to drive anyway. The girls were in a matinee performance at the theater and needed to use my car since Paul’s truck broke down the day before.

Luke said he was going to give our dad a call and talk to him about Jesus just in case it was their last conversation. He said he could never forgive himself if he didn’t reach out. He also said it was time to tell our brother Mark and he would make that call as well. I decided it was time to tell my adult son Alex. Alex was very upset about the news and said he never wanted to see his grandpa again.

I decided we needed to keep the doors locked day and night just in case grandpa tried to come over and retaliate. I didn’t feel safe. We were on high alert. Later that evening my mom came over. I was relieved that she was safe. There was a lot of crying and whispered conversations behind closed doors. It was obvious that something was wrong. I told the children and people somewhat close that my parents were thinking about getting a divorce. It wasn’t an outright lie because it was possible, but it was far from the truth of what was really going on…

The day the police came

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The day the police came was a day like today, a Friday afternoon in early December. It was the opening night for the local community theater show that my daughter Arabella and our foreign exchange student Clara were performing in. The following day was the extended family Christmas party.

The original plan was that my brother Luke was going to be coming home to visit my parents with his family. They were going to see the show and go to the Christmas party. But thankfully my brother cancelled those plans after he was diagnosed with kidney disease a couple weeks before. The doctor told him he needed to try to take it easy and cut back on some of the stress in his life. He decided to stay home instead. Otherwise he might have showed up as the police arrived.

The police knocked on the door asking for my dad. My mom said he couldn’t come to the door because he had a hard time getting around. Several officers came in to talk to my dad, several more to talk to my mom, and another to search my parents house.

I thought my dad was going to be arrested when the police came. Instead they took all the computers in the house. They also went through my mom’s ipad and phone which were as expected clean.

My brother Matt was home for the weekend too. He wondered why the police were at their house. My mom told him that they were checking to make sure the computers were safe. Surprisingly, the answer seemed to placate Matt. He didn’t seem to notice that our mom was crying. He wasn’t shocked or angry. He somehow believed that several squad cars can show up at someone’s house just to make sure everything was safe. Life went on as normal for him.

That night my mom attended the show. My best friend Cindy and her family took my brother Luke’s tickets. My mom carried on as usual. I acted like everything was fine as well. We rivaled the community theater performance.

I didn’t know that the police arrived at their house until a couple days later.

What? A crime

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After a sleepless night, I decided to call my therapist’s office first thing Monday morning. What could it hurt? Surprisingly, she answered the phone. She was able to fit me into her schedule later on that day.

I was a mess. I was worried that all the healing work I had done would be undone with one swift traumatic blow. I had been in therapy alone for a couple months. I just started seeing a wellness nurse for my health issues. Would I fall back into a sick game of trauma Tetris?

My daughter was going to report my dad’s crime that night. I felt anxious all day. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t settle down. I couldn’t believe what had happened and was trying to process everything.

I did feel a little better after seeing the therapist. It’s totally crazy, but the only people I feel that can understand me are the people highly trained in dealing with trauma or have been there themselves. Those people are hard to find and are so terribly broken.

The following evening my husband and I met with our pastor and his wife. Our pastor said my ultimate goal was forgiveness. But I was not even at step one, acknowledging the fact that my dad is a pedophile. Anger burned inside my heart for my pastor. I felt jealous because he had the type of parents I wanted. I wanted more than anything to belong to a healthy loving family. He had no clue what it was like to deal with trauma. It wasn’t his fault, but I resented him for it. Although, in his defense, he had no idea what he was getting himself into and wasn’t trained for this.

No one really knows what to say. I don’t either. When your good godly father dies, I don’t know what to say to you. It seems insensitive to say that I wish I had a father like yours. It doesn’t matter if he is dead. Many times I wished my dad was dead. Then, perhaps, this hell will end. But will it if it is stuck inside of me? Maybe I will always carry this baggage long after the train has left. I suppose I will have the answer someday, but it doesn’t make me feel like a good person right now.

Later that evening I received a phone call from the police. By then my nerves were shot. The officer asked me a lot of questions. What are the birth dates of your parents? Do your parents own guns? Did anyone else live in the house and have access to the computer besides your mom and dad? I told the officer that my disabled brother lives at home on the weekends. But I also told him that he cannot read or write which crossed him off the suspect list. I nervously answered all the questions asked of me.

The officer asked me to not have any contact with my parents until they talked to them. I thought I would be getting a call from my mom after my dad got arrested. But that is not what happened.

Dangerous addresses, part 4

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I found myself asking how much my life was worth.

Sometimes when feeling down I found myself teetering on the fence between life and death. Will I choose hope or despair? There is a reckless courage when you find yourself in that place.

But when pressed, when my life was in danger, it showed me how much I wanted to live. I had to continue on the path to hope, healing, and growth even during the moments I wanted to say screw it all.

As my time with the census came to an end, they were looking for people willing to travel. I said I would be willing to go to the furthest north woods of Wisconsin. Yes, it could be very dangerous. It was very remote with limited cell phone coverage. Heroin is a big problem in some dead end towns. Wandering into a property illegally growing marijuana. Dangerous. Wild animals. Finding bathrooms. It was an adventure I was up for.

I awaited my instructions to travel, but they never came. Instead, I got a call about travelling to Milwaukee. Now that is a different kind of dangerous. This year alone Milwaukee surpassed the highest annual homicide rate ever recorded. Unfortunately, this year isn’t even over yet.

I turned it down.

My supervisor said that another employee went, an African American woman. She was sent to such a horrible neighborhood that she was utterly terrified and asked if she could come back home. I think I made the right call.

They were looking for census employees to go to Detroit, Kenosha, and Atlanta as well. It takes a special (or should I say crazy) person to do the census especially in dangerous unfamiliar places.

If I had the chance, would I choose to do it all over again? Absolutely! Will I work the 2030 census? Probably not.

Fortune cookie wisdom #17

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The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Let’s talk about wheels a bit today…shall we?

You may remember a couple of months back when I told the story of my son’s new set of wheels…The very night, less than several hours after we got him the car, some small town criminals decided to chase him down because he was squealing his tires. They smashed the front end of his car and took a tire iron to the back of it.

Shortly thereafter, he hit a deer which smashed his headlight. The car was also leaking oil everywhere in big pools. We decided to make an appointment with someone that would fix foreign cars. It took a couple of weeks to get in.

Once the mechanic opened the hood, he took one look and said he wouldn’t work on it. He said that someone spent a whole lot of money to make the car completely worthless. In essence, we bought a lemon. It was their policy that they do not work on modified cars. So here we were stuck with a 17 year old foreign modified car that no one would fix. He did say that it would probably cost thousands to fix the oil leak.

Then we got the estimate for the damages incurred. The damage from the deer cost $2500 and the damage from the hoodlums was $3500. So, technically, the first few hours after my son got the car it was already totaled.

The two offenders are middle aged men. One man was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property. The other was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass to property when he chased my son and his friend into the friend’s house threatening to kill them. We are hoping to get restitution for the damage to the car.

Now apparently the nephew of one of those hoodlums goes to school with my son Alex. We have had problems with this kid before. In middle school, Alex and this kid wrestled in the same weight class. He was first, Alex was second. One year Alex decided he wanted to try harder. He went to summer wrestling camps and signed up for preseason lessons. He got to be really good at wrestling. He was so good at wrestling that he challenged this kid who was first and beat him several times.

This did not bode well with the other kid who was the son of a son of a son of a wrestler whose ancestors have been going to the school probably since the school first opened its doors. This kid got a group of other wrestlers together and started bullying Alex because he threatened his position. The coach did nothing and finally my husband took the situation into his own hands and contacted the parents directly. That was the year my son quit wrestling after doing it for 8 years, the year he wrestled his best.

Now this kid is talking bad about my son to my son’s girlfriend over what happened with the car. My son said that if this kid disrespects him to his face then he will fight him. He said that if he does that, he would probably get kicked out of school. Yeah, that will show them all! Fighting will surely fix the car and all of the other problems. NOT!

The strange thing is that I understand. When I heard about the hoodlums that damaged his car, I was so angry that I wanted to go over there and kick the crap out of those guys myself. I think I have so much pent up anger and rage that I have one good fight in me. Is that bad?? I would never act on it, but that is how I felt.

So, yeah, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.. I talk about my son a lot on this blog. I probably talk about him a lot more than my honor student daughters.

Bashed

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I thought that I would finally be able to get some sleep last night…

It was 10 PM and my son wasn’t home. It didn’t seem right given the circumstances. My husband said that I worry too much and went off to bed.

Earlier in the evening, we bought our son a car. My husband made a bet with our kids when they were very little. If you beat me at chess, I’ll buy you a car. My son ate and breathed chess, even joined the chess club just to beat his dad. Paul is great at chess and I’ve never once since we were together saw anyone beat him in real life…until the day my son did. Immediately I went out and bought him a match box car and put a little bow on it.

That’s when the arguments started. My son wanted a souped up sports car and my husband wanted something practical for him. Finally they were able to find something they could agree on, a 2001 Audi with a stick shift and turbo boost. It is a beautiful car with a sporty look.

After we bought the car, he wanted to drive it over to his friends to show them. We really didn’t have a problem with this. But several hours passed and he still wasn’t home which seemed odd to me for swinging by and showing his friends.

I texted my son and he said he got into a bit of a mess with the car. WTH!!?! CALL ME!!

Alex said he picked up his friends and was driving through the old neighborhood. He was showing off his turbo boost and squealed the tires near several older guys that were outside partying. They were drunk and this pissed them off. (Yes, apparently some people get drunk and crazy on a Monday night in Wisconsin).

One guy got on his 4-wheeler and chased Alex down. He cut Alex off on the road. Alex slammed on his breaks and hit the guy smashing up the 4-wheeler and the front end of his car. The guy climbed off the 4-wheeler onto the hood of the car and tried to smash the windshield with his arm. The whole time the guy was screaming that he was going to kill Alex and his friends.

To put things in perspective, there were around 4 very intoxicated middle aged men chasing 3 teenage boys that squealed their tires near where they were partying. What??!? Who does that?

Meanwhile, a couple other guys got into a pick up truck with a lead pipe. Alex and his friends got away from the 4-wheeler only to be followed to his friend’s house by the guys in a truck that were a part of this group.

One of the men in the truck hit Alex’s car with the lead pipe. He also threatened to kill the boys and chased them into his friend Jay’s house. Thankfully, Jay’s dad was home. He pushed the guy with the lead pipe out of his house while the other guy got in. Jay’s dad threatened to call the cops. The man in Jay’s house said that if he called the cops, Alex would get in trouble for hitting the 4-wheeler.

Jay’s dad called the police and the men fled. Thankfully, Alex knew where the guys lived. Apparently the guy with the lead pipe was a convicted felon. They are facing criminal charges. My son ended up with almost as much damage to his new car as what we paid for it.

Seriously, we just got him the car and in less than a few hours it is bashed in already!!!!! Thankfully, no one got hurt with the exception of the guy that tried to smash the windshield with his arm.

Needless to say, we didn’t end up going to bed until after midnight.