Category Archives: radical attachment disorder

Writing with Invisible Ink

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Now that I have seen the diamondback rattler in the domain of children I see him again everywhere–the darkness notched between sidings and foundations, lassoed water hoses resting in the sun, tree branches in the grass, all become the skin and flesh and memory of the foolish man who held just the severed head of his deadly foe too close to human skin.

We keep the most dangerous pets coiled in emptied potato salad containers, hastily labeled with words too awful to write down in anything but

Invisible ink.

Ghost Child

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To be clear you are all grown up now and living somewhere as I try yet again to excise what you have done to us all from pictures of beautiful children.

You were

You are a dangerous male child

But what you will be

Is mountains told to throw themselves

Into the Sea.

Mark 11:22-23 NIV

[22] “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. [23] “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.

Swept out to sea

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I can’t help but stare at the picture of this family swept out to sea. I know what it is like to attempt to parent children from “hard backgrounds.”

And yes, I have often tried to assuage my deep grief about the damage caused by my adopted children by telling myself that we have survived (so far).

None of this is fun to talk about, but I did talk–sometimes unsparingly, because I hoped that if people heard our story they could do something to prevent tragedies like ours.

More than the average mama, I can put myself in the shoes of these mamas, and I have two things to thing to say–

  • Why weren’t the children removed from the custody of the Harts in 2011 when there was a child abuse conviction?
  • And when a mother chooses to murder her children all the rosy adjectives no longer apply.

Just: a story of the lost and found https://www.amazon.com/dp/1468123459/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_JPNWAbDZT3TR5

Winter Storm

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Over my shoulder I hear the PBS lady tell my sons about blizzards, how they are just snow storms unless the wind is strong and fast. Here in Texas we have driving rain, not driven snow, and it is the percussive light which wakes the dogs in the night. Poised for a fight. Hurricanes have the eyes of Quint’s soulless sharks as they roll across the landscape of childhood and wakefulness I will momentarily regret the home I left in fear. Regret what I did not leave there. Regret what I did, but not the winds. The winds around the eye, the deceptively calm eye, of every storm that changes the landscape

Of who we once were.

Darling-I-Count-Sheep

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This started as a break up but ended with old friend, Wakefulness here in the dark, in the storm

It was a dark and stormy night! But it was the dogs that kept me up

Dogs of the past

Dogs of war

That dog whose name* I can’t remember who re-enacted classics like The Prince and the Pauper.

When names and sleep elude you, there are sheep. They start out chalky, outlined, and two dimensional, but they elaborate

In depth, complexity, and general fluffiness, but also about the weather, dogs barking at night, and all the ways it was and wasn’t my fault this chance we took hurt so much.

*Wishbone

Signs of Famine and Pain

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Like most people I was appalled and distraught to read about what the Turpin siblings had to endure for nearly three decades. I will continue to grieve for them and pray for healing, justice, and recovery.

But I am angry as well. I am angry because despite (perhaps partially justified) calls to lay this abuse at the doorstep of homeschooling, there were so many people who interacted with the Turpin family, who saw at least some of the signs of abuse and yet no one ever reported anything.

At least two of the children went to public schools….

no one reported anything.

Neighbors saw odd behavior…

no one reported anything.

The children went to a doctor or two at some point in their lives…

no one reported anything.

Former neighbors found hard evidence of abuse and animal cruelty…

No one reported anything.

This is not the first time terrible crimes have been perpetrated by caregivers, ostensibly behind closed doors, but it is remarkable that the abuse intensified in severity and lasted so long because

No one reported anything.

Yet we hear them all now.

Note: if you suspect abuse or neglect you can make anonymous reports either by withholding your name or by relying that when you give your name to authorities your identity will not be shared in an investigation. Not one person who lived in proximity to the Turpins risked anything by making an anonymous report about signs of neglect or abuse.

If you suspect abuse, report

She Storms

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She storms in the kitchen finding bits of things to stop her mouth, wish it could stop the words spilling out. How could so many well-dressed people have their heads so firmly wedged up their

Freezing asses?

Fists should swing toward imaginary foes while the real ones all live among us, work at Walmart, never liked that effing little dog.

The Winter Swimmers

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They are out there somewhere still, three, sometimes four, figures and a dog who has long gone, gone past the snake on the path, gone past all the wounds of time, leaving snapshots of a good dog all the while the children howl full wind

They knew no shelter from the start

Miles of lonely nothing

No stones, bread crumbs, or birds to

Guide them back

Home.

Preaching to the dead

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First, pick my chasuble with care: war paint, cowgirl boots, stretched-out pale-pink tutu from the racks upon racks at the resale store, brand-new for the girls who did not need them anymore,  all donated to science or the graveyard where I go to pace and splutter out some fractured  litany about a beat-up pickup truck, iterations of a lost father, lawn furniture strewn  above the tree line, the same forgotten first name of both Sikorsky and Stravinsky, and this jittery alter-ego who swings wild, shouts loud, raises hell as though bones and memory and words could be as easily strung together as that-to breath life into the dead as they fit their joints and hinges back together, back to life, the way an ordinary man rises from his bed, rubs his eyes, dons his pants and his shirt, walks out into 

Light

The Countries I Have Lost

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A country, just like a single old-left-foot-house-slipper can be metonymous.  This-for that, quid-pro-quo, how-did-I-ever-lose-you?-metonymous. Hit me at 2 am, sharp intake of breath too hard to connect it all with proper punctuation metonymous.  I once accidentally cut your hand in a car window metonymous.  When I met you I thought you were the crazy one metonymous. Lost in Pittsburgh a million years ago metonymous.  With you the reason for years of silence had to be different metonymous.  

The countries I have lost all have proper names, stable addresses, no missing slippers.  Us-and-them, before-and-after countries cheerfully conventional, intentionally respectful, naturally leery of the once-familiar mendicant whose metonymic wholes have been for good or ill

Irrevocably set free.