POLTERGEIST CHRONICLE
The Poltergeist who took over my daughter's very soul was gray and wispy and did not look that dangerous. I took a photograph of him, which my child still has framed, now, years later, when the Spirit-Who-Had-To-Be-Vanquished is, no more, the Master of her Life. These are not light accusations...Had I still been a Catholic, I would have hired one of those wild eyed priests in the movies who could have tried his stuff. I do not know what would have happened to the Evil Creature I had to fight, then...would he have been weakened or strengthened? I could not be certain, so I told no one. There are battles to be won or lost, but a War is a War, and must be won. This war was going to be over my own Blood and her Soul. She was too young and too smitten by this Lord of Evil to fight a lick. She was on his side, to put it mildly...In the photo, he swirls around her as she moves toward me with anger in her face. He really exists there, for all to see...when I had laughingly taken the shot, I had said, "I'm taking a picture of your Poltergeist, Sara!" She had snarled. Now I know that it was He who snarled. The War had begun.
When raising children, most good folk feel they know what they are doing, what's 'good' for their kids, who their kids are...This illusion is vital and strong until each kids hits around twelve to fourteen years old. All those good years, the infants, the toddlers...all conflicts with bodily functions and delights. You can pick the kid up, physically, and off you go with her or him, where ever and when ever you desire! You do all that for the good or for the bad, but most survive those times...Then, those "latency" years: Heaven! (if all has gone well so far...) The kids are your Pack! They follow you everywhere! They do (most of the time) what you say! What you say actually has meaning for them! You are their Hero! It's heady stuff...! You are raising your kids better than your parents raised you, even...you are smug in your wonder and in you wonderfulness! I know, many households aren't like that good ol' Leave It To Beaver myth and all, but, for many well fed, sheltered American kids, it is that way, just like I said...at least, that was my experience....Everyone had their troubles and all, cliche, cliche, cliche...you know them all, of course....
Here I would like to take a moment to ask, Why does no one tell you about the TEEN YEARS, I mean, really TELL you? People hint at it: Enjoy the kids while they're kids...those teenage years are something else again. And then they shake their heads ruefully and chuckle. I mean, what's up about that? There should be War Stories shared! There should be Combat Training! Some one should tell the moms: Around age thirteen, when your darling daughter and you are finally even 'friends!', she is going to go into a funk and eventually or even very soon hate you and be in competition with you until she's twenty five! You know, that would be FAIR to tell moms that...And! That their sons will be all sweet around their moms, but actually rarely be 'around' at all, on account of they're out making trouble and sowing wild oats and all, and having to get bailed out for drinking and throwing up in the cop's car....For the poor dads...not better. No sir. The daughters adore them and try to pit them against the mom every other second, and then pout for centuries if they didn't get their way with their besotted dad, all the while protesting that he is their 'favorite parent', and trashing their moms hourly without mercy...And the Lads...ah the lads: they are Direct competition with the poor dad 24/7 with no mercy and weapons and everything! They must kill him, quite simply: it is their duty!...OK, I'm exaggerating a wee bit...but not much!
Anyway, back to the kid at hand: my kid with the Poltergeist...
Sara was a real teddy bear until she turned thirteen. She was an almost giddy, fun-lovin, creative, good-hearted, topsy-turvy, tomboy child! She laughed a lot, and drawed and made art a lot, and she adored animals as household gods are adored: must to have many! must all be strays! Dogs! Horses! Hamsters! Fish! Turtles! (no snakes) - LOTS of animals! Every one loved Sara. She was such a 'middle' child - always in the middle of Everything! She and her younger brother were joined at the elbow; together constantly, playing together, doing art together, going to school together...Still, after twelve, things changed...she had shingles, for one thing. I thought she took it pretty well. She was isolated in her room for a couple of weeks, sure, and that was hard. She had a bad case, and only I was serving her her meals upstairs and seeing through her meds and showers and stuff...otherwise she was on her own while the lesions were contagious. Years later, she told me she was 'very depressed' during those weeks...and I, a fancy Psychiatric RN, hadn't seen it at all...Was that the 'beginning' of The Troubles? Is there ever one 'beginning'?
Sara's years between thirteen and sixteen, were, well, quiet. That was the overall impression...just, quiet. She was singing in the chorus in her all-girls Catholic School. She was getting decent, though not great grades. She had a boyfriend here or there: sometimes black guys, but not exclusively...she had been overweight, but was losing weight. We "sponsored" a horse for her to ride....her art work was wonderful! By Senior year she was given the 'Pin' award for four years of excellence in Art. She was picked as one of the fifty best Senior Year Artists in the State of California. She even had a full scholarship to a college...in the South. For a girl who dated black guys, that didn't look like a good idea.
Then the proverbial shit hit the fan...she began to 'go with' a mixed kid - black and Swedish white - named Lenny, and her years of any innocence were over. She had been, all along, it was later 'found out', a drug user and a lying one as well...her weight loss was uppers. Her only-fair grades were cuts from school, covered with forged notes...her life had been unraveling for a long, long time...Her punk clothes and earrings and tattoos and pins in everything; her black English; the missed curfew times...it was all a snowball headed down to hell at a fast clip!
Her step-Dad and I fought back like fury. We went to War. I was the General - he had always just followed my direction about raising the kids. We hoped to keep her older sister and her younger brother safe and out of the way. It was a double-triple life - a life without rest. We kept the older two going to schools and lessons and monitoring their limitations and all, and they were great. We didn't know the ways they were being hurt by it, but we worked day and night to minimize the effect of their sister's problems on them...life was very, very, very difficult. We both worked full time and stayed 100% present to the War. She was a person possessed. We couldn't keep her away from the dude, who was truly an evil kid, truly. Her brother even went into the martial arts, convinced, in his young life, (poor kid) that he was going to have to kill Lenny. (He didn't tell me about that for over twenty years!)
Then, she had two kids in a row with this dude. He was her drug dealer, and he beat her too...all this was happening in a family where there had only been love, where no one hit any one, ever! Where no one drank or smoked anything or took any drugs except Aspirin! She hid her first pregnancy with drugs, weight loss, and clothes choices, so that no one, not even her RN mother, could see it until it was too late. She was almost nineteen, so it was her choice as well. In the meantime, she was always trying to attend classes and do part-time work...trying to "look normal"...It was up to her to decide whether to keep the kid or not. She decided to do an open adoption, and I didn't try to stop her. I wasn't going to offer to take care of a kid with a dad like his, who would come around and ruin his and our lives. The couple that adopted him were good folk, both psychotherapists (my daughter saw that as a plus; having worked in the field, I had my doubts) but, it was her decision...I was there when the boy was born, and she had a hell of a delivery....
Then, things went from bad to worse...while in therapy, with us still policing every thing we could as best we could, she got pregnant again...with the same guy, who had literally sneaked back into her life...It took all our courage to keep fighting...while pregnant, Sara moved to Fresno with a kind black guy named Joseph...while there, during a time I was back visiting in Chicago, she birthed her second boy, with the waiting adoptive parents of the first little guy at her side. They took him on too. Two grandsons, lost to us, but...we hoped...saved from their cruel father....
The therapy was starting to help Sara see what her world had been: six years of an agitated depression that had been so well-hidden and secret, that we all had been fighting a War against Phantom Hordes of Evil in every sense of those sci-fy-sounding words!...the hormones of pregnancy had pulled her out of the depression once and for all...
Sara went into the world and became a Vet's assistant for eleven years...she pulled herself though all the things she had to learn, and thanked us over and over for always loving her but never letting her alone (which she had hated us for at the time). Our consistency had been her life-line, but we hadn't seen enough to help her to save herself as we wished we could have...and it all took a toll on all of our lives...
My son became a Karate Master - a black belt - and bought his first dojo. He, a gentle artist who never even liked team sports, became a master warrior and a patriarch who has "saved" many young people for decades from the path his sister had taken... Her older sister finished college, and 'accidently' became pregnant. She went on a retreat, and decided to keep the child, as she was old enough to support him. He became a wonderful grandson, and sees his 'other' side of the family in the Midwest every few years...my husband and I divorced. After seven years of War, we didn't know each other... Peace is something else again, and, in peacetime, we had little in common any more...we had won a War together, and we had paid the price.
We saw the boys as often as we could when they were young. I made them all the furniture for their bedrooms, which they still cherish. They grew up with many, many problems that their therapist parents had trouble coping with. Neither of them are doing that well, but they, and their parents, are part of our Family, and are with us whenever the Family gathers, whenever they want to be with us...
Long ago, I snapped a picture of my daughter's mental breakdown, and called it her 'Poltergeist'. I was joking, but Evil is very, very real, and finds its place in fertile ground among mankind. My child was it's prey. The War was won. The war debts are paid. The Poltergeist has moved on, I'm sure, to other prey. When he appears, ever, in my life again, he will not touch my Family. not ever again.
This, I Vow.
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