Day of Diaspora
One day when I was in the fourth grade, I was pulled out of my classroom and hauled off to Juvenile Hall. But initially I was summoned to the principal’s office. There I found my mother and my sister, River, waiting for me.
I wasn’t in any trouble. My mother had just taken River out of high school, and had now arrived to pluck me away from my grade school. In the car, Mom put on the kind of sales pitch one would need to put on, to convince a child not to be frightened.
“Guess, what son?! Today you and your sister get to go to Juvenile Hall! That’s a real fun place, where you get to play all kinds of fun games. They’ll treat you real nice there, and you’ll get to make a lot of new friends.”
“Yeah, Tippy, you’re gonna love Juvenile Hall,” my sister chimed in. She didn’t want me worrying, either. River always looked after me, and was trying to lure me into a positive mood. But I’d heard of Juvenile Hall before, and had always thought it was a place where bad children were sent. I said as much.
“No, good kids can go to Juvenile Hall, too,” my mother corrected. And you’re a good boy. They have a special place there for good boys and girls, where you’ll be treated very nicely.”
By the time we arrived at Juvenile Hall, my mother and sister had me convinced that this place was better than Disneyland. Why, I couldn’t wait to get inside and enjoy all the wonders of Juvenile Hall.
My sister and I sat on a bench, at Juvie, and watched my mother speak with an official-looking person. He was frowning and shaking his head. I overheard him saying something about how these kids didn’t belong here. And then my mother came back and led us away.
I felt disappointed. They’d done such a good job at selling me on Juvenile Hall, that I started complaining after my mother broke the “bad” news to me.
She took us home to a darkened house. My stepfather was no longer there. I was told that he and my mom were getting divorced. That was the best news I’d heard in a long time, as my stepfather was a very abusive man. My heart sang. But my other sisters and my brother weren’t at home, either.
This was the day of diaspora, for my family. My mother had five children, and this was the last day all five of us would live together under the same roof.
Over all the decades that have ensued, I’ve been able to piece together snippets of information that have slipped out, here and there, to decoct a basic idea of what was going on at that time, and unravel this family secret.
It seemed my mother had come up with an “ingenious” idea for making money.
She had opened up a bank account in two different banks, with very small deposits. I’ll call them Bank A and Bank B. Then she wrote a large, rubber check from Bank A, depositing it in Bank B. Before the check could bounce, she wrote another large, rubber check from Bank B, back to Bank A, to cover the first rubber check. In this way, she quickly built up large phantom balances in both banks.
Then she went on a spending spree, and paid for it by writing large, rubber checks. When businesses contacted her banks, they received confirmation that the checks were covered, due to the large rubber checks she’d previously deposited. And so they accepted these bad checks.
This is a crime known as check kiting and paper hanging.
Of course, my mom’s house of cards eventually caved in, and she had to face the music. I know she was required to pay back the money she stole. But I also suspect she had to do a small amount of jail time, though she’s never admitted to this. That’s why she tried to place my sister and me into Juvenile Hall. She needed someone to take care of us during her incarceration.
But Juvenile Hall wouldn’t have us. My sister and I were not criminals, so they could not legally take us in. Why my mother ever got the idea that they would house us, I don’t know. Maybe she wasn’t thinking very clearly during those trying times.
Mom ended up calling her parents and confessing her crime. And my grandparents agreed to take care of River and me, until she got out of jail and had enough money to take us back.
The god of irony and goddess of karma were playing cruel tricks on my mother and grandparents, on this day of diaspora. Family history was repeating itself. That’s because shortly after my mother was born, her parents had also left her with her grandparents.
It seems my mom’s parents didn’t want a child. They were party animals and alcoholics. And children got in the way of all the partying they wanted to do. They had no time for raising children, what with all the booze that waited for them, at the bars.
But then, due to the unavailability of birth control in those days, they had more children, and my mom’s mother needed a babysitter if she was going to keep up with her husband’s barhopping. So at age 10, my mother was retrieved from her grandparents’ care and forced to become a nanny to her younger brothers.
This was a bitter experience for my mother, which she never forgot or forgave. She’d bonded with her grandparents, and now she’d been ripped away from them. She blamed her mother for this, and her relationship with my grandmother would be rocky for the remainder of my grandmother’s life.
Yet now my mother had to eat crow and place my sister and me under the care of my grandmother. The same grandmother who’d placed her under the care of her grandparents. Fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say, and now my mother was doing exactly what had been done to her, when she was a child. This fallen fruit was bitter and rotten to the taste, when she picked it up off the ground.
It was bitter and rotten for me also. My heart felt lonely and empty, like a vacuum had sucked away everything that made life worth living. I was only nine, going on ten, and I missed my mother terribly while under my grandparents’ care. They were actually good people, in their own way, but they weren’t my mother, and every child needs their mother, no matter what sort of crime she may have committed.
But life is change, and everyone must reckon with the forces of great change at some point in their lives. I now had somebody new looking after me, whom I’d only known casually up until this point. My grandmother.
The months that followed began an on-again, off-again relationship with this grandmother that would last for many years. It was a relationship of crossing paths and give and take. Of mutual rescue through the storms of life, and mutual friendship and animosity. Over the years, we would care for each other, and we would battle each other.
And I must admit, she was a tough old bird to care for and battle against. I couldn’t have done it without my wife. In fact, she took on the greater portion of this challenge, by far. This is a series of posts about some of those cares and battles, with a lady whom my wife and I came to refer to, as the Queen of the Silver Dollar.
This is the first installation of my nine-part series, The Queen of the Silver Dollar. Come on back in a few days for the next installation, entitled, Chapter 2: My Barhopping Grandparents.
Categories: Family, Series (Family): The Queen of the Silver Dollar
Chasing Unicorns 
Odd that she would think that she could just throw in juvenile detention.
Makes you wonder why anyone would have parents these days.
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I understand what you mean about your stepfather leaving being good news. I had the same experience when my stepfather left.
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Sorry you had such a bad stepfather. It isn’t fun being raised by abusive people. But at least he left. I’ll bet you were ready to celebrate.
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I don’t know if I was ready to celebrate. I was glad he would no longer be around getting drunk every night and yelling at my mother. I was generally able to stay out of his way because while he was abusive, he was also a bit lazy.
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Good. I’ve always believed that laziness has its virtues.
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It keeps you from having too much gumption.
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Glad you were able to stay out of his way most of the time, but sorry that you had to deal with an abusive stepparent, like Tippy did. I can’t imagine! As I told Tippy, you guys are examples of not letting the past define the kind of person you become!
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I didn’t have a close relationship with him and didn’t put a lot of stock in what he thought of me. Just glad to have him gone
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It’s one of the strangest experiences of my childhood. Even at that age I thought it was a little strange.
Maybe I should have put my parents up for adoption.
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Just think, you could have used your time in juvi to develop into a hardened criminal.
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It kind of gave me bragging rights at school. I could say, “I was almost thrown into juvie,” and be telling the truth.
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I’m sorry to read that you had a chaotic childhood, TG. I’m fascinated to read more. I have a lot of admiration for people who have risen above what life throws at them, and I feel you did exactly that.
Deb
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Well, it was pretty easy to rise above it, since I couldn’t go much lower. I think a lot of people have to rise above dysfunctional childhoods, though, since good parenting seems to be rare. It’s just the way of this crazy world.
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I disagree about the ease of rising above, TG. I feel it is the exception more than the rule. Most people don’t even realize there is another way to be, or there are too many obstacles placed in their way making it an insurmountable hill to climb.
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Maybe so. Some people have a hard time letting go of their bad experiences when they were young. I’ve spent the mental energy required to do that. I don’t hate anyone who raised me, so I’m not wallowing in bitterness or victimhood. The past is past, and we all have to live in the present, and take responsibility for our lives.
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Very true, TG. When we are kids we have little or no control over our lives but when we are adults we are responsible for our own actions and the time has passed when we can blame it on our parents. It’s on us, now.
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Yep.
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Not hanging onto the bitterness which you had a right to I think is the big key to how you turned out so well! Some people just don’t know how to let that go. When I worked in the nursing home, I heard stories from the residents and some had very hard lives, and the sad thing was that you could still hear the bitterness in their voice about it. Sadly they were some of the more difficult patients to take care of, for it the bitterness had just enveloped them.
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Too bad for them, going through all their lives as victims. We all go through rough times, so anyone can become a bitter victim if they dwell on the rough parts of their lives too much.
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Very true!
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Shaking my head! I can’t believe all you have been through! I am looking forward to this series, though I feel like it will be tugging at my heartstrings. Thanks for your honesty in opening up and sharing, and you are a true example of how one can go through really hard times and still come out shining!
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If I’m tugging at your heartstrings, then you might want to take a nitro pill.
This story is mainly about my grandmother. She was quite a character, even for all the flaws in her character. But I wanted to set the background up so the reader could understand her better.
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I am intrigued to know more about her, wondering how she got the title “Queen of the Silver Dollar.”
I think my heart will be safe without nitro. 🙂
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If you pay me, I’ll give you some hints.
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Haha! I think my curiosity can wait.
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But I have some real juicy tidbits to sell.
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Nice try, but why pay when I can read them for free! 🙂
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Because you can’t read them today, for free.
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Well I do have some patience you know!
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I did not know you were a doctor.
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Amazing the surprises you learn, eh! 🙂
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wow – talk about a tough childhood, but you managed to not only survive, but to thrive. Looking forward to the rest of the series…
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It took awhile, but I did manage to eventually emerge, and make a happy, successful life for myself.
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a testament to the strength of your character and your ability to adapt…
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Reminds me of the disruption my friend went through growing up. He didn’t have a step-father, but he had 5-step moms and some of them were pretty rotten.
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Yeah, geez. There are a lot of sad stories out there about kids raised by abusive parents. I hope your friend finally came to terms with it, and has managed to live a normal life.
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Well, to be honest, he did not know how to live as a normal human being. His dad was a real piece of work and his biological mom was an alcoholic who ended up out of his life and then he had these crazy stepmothers, one who tried to seduce him when he was 15. It took him running a foul of the law and being put on intensive probation and having to go to group therapy for a long time before he finally put it all together and is now a fine upstanding citizen with perspective.
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Wow, he’s had to do a lot of work. I’m glad he succeeded at it, and gained a healthy perspective.
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I had the opposite experience. I was raised by my maternal GM for the first three years of my life. All my birthday cake pictures are with her (and, being born on her birthday helped). My parents were 18 & 20, unmarried when I “debuted” and 19 & 21 when “appeared.” I distinctly remember the day my mother put me in nursery (before our town had kindergartens). Three years old and in a rage, beating on the glass paneled door. I bonded with my GM and I was none too happy.
I had an odd mother and it took me YEARS to figure her out and I’m still not totally sure about her. In reflection, as best as I can tell by behavior, she is in the autism spectrum, somewhere. I was “robotically” cared for but, love & hugs came from the grandmothers.
I had a stepfather for about 13 months. He was a decent guy with custody of his two girls…car salesman that went to high school with my dad (heh…small towns).
It sounds like your mother was panicking. Your description of events felt that way. I can’t even imagine. I decided at a young age that kids would not be a good idea. My parents weren’t abusive (violence-wise) but, they were indifferent and neglectful.
I am so sorry.
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It ain’t easy growing up. We can’t choose our parents, anymore than they can choose us. I’ve heard it said that neglect is the worst form of child abuse, so other than the care you got from your grandmother, my guess is you had a tough time of it, too. But somehow we survived. We humans can be very resilient.
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