Mary Calls Me from the Hospital

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Later on, during the summer of 2011, I got another call from Mary. This time she called me from a hospital where she had been taken after a car ran into her while she was riding her bike. She said she was crossing the street and didn't see the car coming and it slammed into her and sent her sailing across the pavement. Luckily she survived. It was the first I'd heard about her accident. Her mom hadn't called to tell me about it even though Mary was living with her at that time. I guess she didn't want me to know anything about Mary, even something like this.

State and County Connection – Part 2

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Mary Wouldn't Have Wanted a Social Worker in Her Life

The fact that Mary would seek out a social worker at this time in her life is extremely difficult for me to believe. Of all the people in the world, she would be the last person I would expect would want a social worker in her life, or, as in her case, back in her life. This was a time when she would have wanted anything but this — when she was trying to exert her independence and show the world she had grown up. For years the only thing Mary had wanted was to prove to others she didn't need these people in her life anymore, and she was proud of her achievements primarily because she had accomplished them without social workers. These were the people she had wanted to get away from more than anything else. 

State and County Connection – Part 1

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I think Trish Reedstrom, the Blue Earth County social work supervisor, planned to take Mary from me ever since the day I scoffed at her threat to make up child abuse charges against me if I didn't sign a form letting her place Mary in a foster home in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Instead of giving in to her threat that day, I took Mary home, raised her by myself, and gave her the kind of life the County was never able to give her. And while Mary was busy putting together her life and living with me, Trish was putting together a plan on how she could finally take Mary away from me.

Mary Calls Me From Oregon

Journal — April 10, 2011
 

Josie called from Oregon. She was at work. We talked a bit and then she told me Mary was visiting her and was sharing her bed and it was beginning to bug her because she doesn’t clean up and she takes up most of the bed.

I said, "Really, how long has she been there?"

"Four or five days."

"How did she get out there?"

"Plane."

I Lose My Job and I Lose Mary - August 2010

     At first it was autumn; there were red and yellow leaves for Betsy and Tacy to scuffle underfoot. Then the leaves were brown, then they were blown away; that was in the gray time named November. Then came the exciting first snow, and this was followed by more snow and more. At last the drifts rising beside the sidewalk were higher than their heads.

— From Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace    

Mary's Unexplained Changes - July 2010

During the winter of 2010, Mary's friend, Ann, moved in with us. Ann was a girl about Mary's age who had been sleeping in her car because her parents had kicked her out of their house. Mary asked me if she could stay with us, and I told her it was okay until she found a place of her own. We had a small apartment.

I Lose Grace Too

This might have been the last time Grace would allow herself to notice just how crazy and extreme things had become — maybe the last time she would see all this craziness for what it truly was. It was becoming more and more troubling for her to hold two opposing views of her father: the father she knew and loved, and the father that was now being created for her — a person she was supposed to despise. Trying to reconcile opposing images like these, especially of a parent, is too much for any child to have to deal with, and I believe it's what caused her to break down that day and cry — this, and the trouble she knew she would get in if she didn't go along with others' views of me.

Really Bad Bad-mouthing

A few days later, on New Year's Eve, Josie and Grace came over to my apartment to tell me they were frightened by some things they heard their mom saying to Mary about me — bad-mouthing — but now seemingly worse than ever. They used the word "continuously." They were alarmed by what they had witnessed: their mother and their aunt talking openly about me and some money I would be getting, or something like this. They wondered why adults would be talking about these things openly, in front of them.

"Dad, they said you shouldn't be getting this money. Why would that matter to them? Why would they be talking about this?"