Crazy Christmas

By Christmas of that year, my daughter Grace seemed to be following Mary's example and was starting to withdraw from me as well. Like with Mary, I had always had a very close relationship with Grace. And also like with Mary, I was never told why my relationship with Grace was now ending. She had stopped coming over to my house altogether and was now staying at her mom's house exclusively. We still talked on the phone, occasionally, and she would talk to me if I walked over to her mom's house to see her. But she was returning fewer and fewer of my calls and making less and less time available to be with me. But even worse, she would no longer hug me or tell me she loved me and I didn't know why.

A few days before Christmas I drove over to my ex-wife's house to drop off a Christmas present for Mary (I had already given presents to her sisters.). I knew I wouldn't be able to give Mary her present in person, but I wanted her to have it anyhow. And even though she now said she hated me, that hadn't changed how I felt about her or how I was treated her. My oldest daughter Josie was home for Christmas, and all three of my girls were now acting in way I had never seen them act before.

I was walking across the lawn toward the house when Grace came outside to greet me and noticed I was holding a gift in my hand. When she found out the gift was for Mary, she became extremely upset and started crying, uncontrollably. I asked her what in the world was wrong, and while wiping back tears, she tried her best to explain:

"Dad, why are you bringing Mary a Christmas present? You know she's just going to rip it up and throw it away because she hates you. You're just going to make her even madder at you. Why would you do this to her?"

She was convinced I was only giving Mary a present to make her hate me even more and to create problems at her mom's house. It was impossible for her to believe I could be doing it for any other reason. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I was getting worried that something very, very wrong was going on over here. I tried to reason with her.

"Grace, it's normal for a father to give his daughter a gift at Christmas. That's all I'm doing."

But this made her even angrier, and she cried even more, and it now seemed that, in addition to being frightened of Mary's rage, she was horrified to discover that what she had been told about me might actually be true — that I was some crazy man who took pleasure in tormenting his own children. And I think the shock and sadness of her realizing I was no longer the father she had known, is why she broke down and cried that day. I was shocked as well to find out there was nothing I could do to change this image she now had of me. If I disagreed with her, it meant I was even more sinister and was now trying to trick her. There seemed to be nothing I could do to make her think otherwise.

Josie had been watching all of this from a few feet away and came over to where Grace and I were standing. She seemed as upset and confused as Grace was and uttered some half-hearted defense of me — either because she wasn't sure what the truth was or because she was afraid she might get in trouble for defending me in her mother's front yard. She meekly told Grace,

"I guess it's okay for a father to give his daughter a gift at Christmas." She wasn't sure about this, though.

I looked at the two of them like they were mad, or like I had just landed on the wrong planet. Something was wrong — real, real wrong — and for a moment I wished I was on the wrong planet. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. These weren't my girls. They had never acted like this before. Was somebody making them acting this way? I had to find out.

I then remembered that Mary had a social worker (hard as this was to believe), and even though I didn't know who this was, I was determined to find out, and find out what was going on with my girls. I left the gift and went down to Social Services.