Separating Children From Their Families, Part 1

In the early 1970’s I was working as a caseworker for the county department of social services (also known as the welfare department) in my Appalachian hometown.  My assignment was an Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, caseload.  The AFDC program, in effect from 1935 until 1996, provided federal assistance to children whose family had low or no income.

I don’t recall how many families I served, but it was enough that making home visits to each family was hard to accomplish.  I would read the file on the family and if it appeared that the adult caregiver(s) and the children were doing well (even though they were living in poverty), a phone contact might suffice—if they had a telephone.  

However, several days a week I drove the back streets of my hometown or the mountainous county roads to make home visits to the families on my caseload. Typically, I would check on the well-being of the children, see what services the family might need, and try to match their needs with community resources. 

In my early days as a "welfare worker"

While I worked for social services, a few families took an inordinate amount of my time. The challenges might be a large number of children in the family; adults in the home who had mental health or other health issues; or I suspected that the children were neglected. I returned repeatedly to these homes trying to monitor the situation and to promote a healthier environment for raising children.

During the two-plus years I worked my AFDC caseload, I went to court one time to ask that the courts remove children from a mother’s custody.  This single mother had at least eight children. I worked with the mother for months but she never made much of an effort to comply with the department’s suggestions. The house was filthy. I remember the interior walls had food stuck to them. It appeared there had been a big food fight at some point but no one bothered to clean up afterwards.  A loaf of bread and peanut butter and jelly sat out on the table all the time and the children would wander by, fix something to eat—if they were tall enough to reach the table--and keep moving. One of the younger boys in the family frequently had cuts and bruises on his arms and legs, and occasionally his face. When I asked what happened to him, he said one of the older children had hit him or pushed him down, etc. 

At the very least, the children lacked consistent adult supervision and guidance. The worse case scenario was physical abuse also was present in the home. The older children missed school frequently, kept home to babysit the preschool children.

I finally made the decision, with the assistance of my supervisor and other more experienced workers in the department, to take the mother to court to gain temporary custody of the 

children. She had a lawyer, or perhaps the court had appointed the lawyer to represent the children’s interests, I don’t remember.  I do remember testifying.  The lawyer asked me about my previous experience with large families. In another county where I got my start in the field of social services, I had large mountain families on my caseload. I also had served as a substitute teacher in the local Head Start program so I had some job-related experience and sympathy with the problems of poverty.

Mother with infant

I felt these children should be removed from the home with the idea that the foster care worker would then work with the mother to help her improve her parenting skills so the children could be returned to her custody.

After the family services judge heard all the testimony and examined the documentation each side provided, he ruled in favor of the department of social services.  When the deputy went to get the children who were supposed to be waiting in a back room, the mother and her boyfriend had fled the county with the children. I remember being surprised because that was the first time I saw that the mom cared enough about her children to fight for them.  The sheriff didn’t try to apprehend the couple. A warrant for the mom was probably issued.  If she were smart, she never returned to this county.  I know I never saw her or the children again.

Exploding Eggs and Happy Toes

The day started off at a leisurely pace befitting one who is retired and who stayed up until 2:00 am.  I needed to do a major grocery store run, but I like to procrastinate tackling this inevitable chore.  I pride myself on stretching the time between trips.  What can I conjure up from our larder, becomes the question of the day.  This morning’s answer was tuna salad.  I’ll just boil a couple eggs, because I have a can of tuna, celery, pickle relish, mayonnaise.  It was going to be a very dull, but sufficient, lunch. 

I failed to take into account the power of social media. 

I put the eggs on to boil.  Ricky leaves to run errands, and I sit down at the kitchen table.  I notice a couple Facebook private messages that have popped up my phone.  I start to answer them but realize it would be much quicker to do on the computer.  The dog and I both retreat to the library, and soon I’m sucked down into that Facebook sinkhole. 

Sometime later Treble and I are startled to hear what sounds like a gunshot coming from the back of the house.  We check it out.  One egg has exploded sending bits of shell and egg white all over the stove top.  I grab the saucepan, put it in the sink under running water, turn off the range, turn on the vent fan (exploding egg is not a pleasant aroma) and start to clean up, helped by Treble who is delighted to find bits of egg all over the floor.  I dump the rest of the burnt eggs, wipe down the stove, spray Febreze throughout the downstairs, clean the saucepan, and think about an alternative lunch. 

Alternative lunch of leftover rice from green peppers and fig bread

All’s well that ends well.  I've learned a valuable lesson.  Never assume you'll remember you have something cooking on the stove.  Set a timer.  Maintain eye contact with aforementioned stove.

It's still a great Friday.  I have happy toes, a luxury at the end of summer.  My annual dilemma is, “Does a woman need pretty toenails with sandal season waning?”  My answer is always yes, so I don’t know why I continue to ask the question.

Treble poses with my happy toes!

Other positives: I still have another whole loaf of the fig bread I made—and it’s delicious if I do say so myself.

Loaf of homemade fig bread

I have two new bottles of Bella Nonnas olive oil, a luxury item that has become an essential in our pantry.

Olive Oil from Bella Nonnas

And our little family has a new game to play this weekend: “How far do pieces of an exploding egg travel?”  “Who can find the piece that went the farthest?”    The current winner is me.  I found an identifiable morsel on the kitchen table, nine feet away from the stove.  And we haven’t even started to examine the ceiling!

My Total Knee Replacement Surgery is a Success

My third bit of advice regarding total knee replacement surgery:  it's important that you prepare physically for your knee surgery.  While I'm not in any way a svelte, hard body, I did start working out about a year before my knee surgery in anticipation of the operation.  I signed up for TRX Camps for Baby Boomers at Willis Knighton, North, coupled with a pool class with low impact exercises done in a heated pool at LSU Health Sciences Center.  I exercised religiously to tighten my core and strengthen my upper and lower body. 

To learn more about TRX, click here

Pete Holman, a physical therapist and certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) at TRX says, "Whatever your fitness goals, this [TRX] workout system can accommodate anyone from senior citizens with injuries to Olympic-level athletes."  I believe I'm proof of the former.

Conditioning made a HUGE difference, but it’s also the reason I cried during my initial physical therapy home health appointment.  I had a drill sergeant PT and he wanted me to engage my quads to straighten my knee.  I thought I was doing it, but he kept saying, “Tighten those muscles, you aren’t doing anything.”  I knew I had built up my quads, and I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do well on the exercise.  Tears of pain and frustration ran down my face as Ricky and the PT watched me.  I later figured out that the spinal block that they used to deaden my knee didn’t wear off completely, for me, until almost 12 days after surgery.  I knew something was amiss but it took returning to normal for me to realize what was wrong with my body in the beginning. 

There is pain with this surgery, but drugs and ice packs help.  I approached my therapy like I did my workouts.  I wore my exercise clothing, prepared a large cup of ice water, and worked and sweated every day doing the exercises whether the PT came or not.  My husband says I’m a compliant patient.  One afternoon I was sobbing as I tried to straighten and bend my knee but I didn’t give up.  My drill sergeant PT, a perfectionist, was rarely satisfied with my progress but when he was absent and another PT came, he told me my first guy was being too hard on me.  PT#2 said I was doing really well and ready for out-patient therapy.  (Actually I liked Drill Sergeant PT and credit him with much of my progress.)  Currently, I’ve had two weeks of out-patient therapy and resumed my pool exercise class.  Next week, eight weeks after my surgery, I’ll have my final PT sessions. 

Now everything becomes therapy, says my TRX instructor who has also had a knee joint replacement.  (Unfortunately, it's too early to return to TRX, my favorite exercise program.)  Trips to the grocery store, going up and down the stairs to my bedroom (I no longer stay in the middle of the living room), getting up from a chair—or, as one of my physical therapists told me, “If it’s physical, it’s therapy.”   

My 8" scar!

I continue on the road to regaining full strength and mobility in my right knee.  Unfortunately, as soon as I make enough progress, I’ll have to get a new left knee joint.  However, if this right knee experience is any indication of what I might expect, I may do it as a Christmas present to myself. 

Total Knee Joint Replacement Surgery Can Be Fun

I never knew getting a total knee joint replacement could be fun.  I’m not saying the surgery, which I’ve heard two doctors describe as bloody, was fun, but I was knocked out so I have no complaints there.  When I interviewed my surgeon before I decided on a doctor, I asked him about infection control.  He told me it was important not to touch the open wound.  I’m not sure what his other patients have been like, but that would be the least of his worries with me.   Touching an open wound, looking at an open wound--neither appears on my curiosity list.  Besides my knee was so protected after surgery with a thick, waterproof bandage, I don’t know how a person would even get to the incision. 

We don’t have a downstairs bedroom so we had to create one for me to stay in, post-op.  In our living room, known at our house as the music room because of my husband’s large vinyl collection, the sofa turns into a bed.  Ricky put a portable memory foam mattress on the thin sofa mattress, creating a comfortable bed.  I packed up lounging clothes and toiletries in a laundry basket, and I was ready for my new quarters.  

View from my music room bed with bouquet

Treble and me lying on the music room bed

I could have stayed in the guest cottage behind our house, but living in the middle of our music room meant the household revolved around me.  Ricky couldn’t sneak downstairs for coffee in the morning without waking me.  This meant I got served coffee and a breakfast of fresh fruit and some sort of pastry or quick bread in bed every morning. 

This is where I need to say that if you are going to have fun with your total knee replacement, you must first select a caring and knowledgeable partner.  My husband Ricky is adorable and smart and kind.  He is also a retired nurse.  So, when I needed some modifications for handicapped accessibility, he was on it.  When I needed a shot in the stomach every morning for three weeks to avoid blood clots, he was on it.  As wonderful as Ricky was, he came to look forward to his daily trip to the local Walgreen’s.  It seemed like there was always something I needed that we didn’t have.  I quickly stopped apologizing when I realized the trip to Walgreens represented freedom for Ricky each afternoon.

Secondly, you must select awesome friends.  And you have to start years in advance of your surgery to secure these, so don’t wait to the last minute to find the perfect partner or friends.  While Ricky was holding down the fort in those first two weeks, my friends were insuring that we wouldn’t starve.  Good friends in New Orleans sent an edible arrangement of fresh fruit.   

Edible Arrangement

Pork loin dinner

My best friend prepared several meals, and she and another friend from work brought me a goody basket I ate from for days—hummus, banana bread, fresh pimento cheese, flatbread, almonds and dried fruit. My friend and TRX instructor prepared two healthy meals for Ricky and me that actually fed us multiple days.  Long- time friends dropped by for a visit and brought sweet goodies and a gift certificate from our neighborhood bakery.   My former boss and her sister brought me chicken salad from my favorite restaurant and small decadent chocolate cakes.  My across-the-street friend and neighbor came by to visit bringing little goodies each time.  A good friend who had recently moved to another state sent us pizza delivery one night.  My writing group also supplied sustenance-- from pastas to guacamole to gelato. 

One neighbor loaned me all sorts of adaptive equipment.   My sister-in-law wired a bouquet of flowers.  Get well cards arrived each day in the mail.  My sisters in Virginia called frequently to check on me.  Two friends came and stayed with me so Ricky could escape to a near-by town one Sunday to visit friends and attend a benefit for an ailing musician.  I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such considerate friends. 

A good caregiver and wonderful friends are the factors that made my knee replacement “fun,” but tomorrow I’ll talk about what made my knee replacement successful.

A Reason to Give Thanks

Living life or writing about it?  Reading for pleasure or working on my paying job?  Volunteering in my historic neighborhood or chilling in my library?  Taking care of the hundreds of details for upcoming Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas holidays or trying to enjoy all the fun activities that happen in my part of the world in the fall? 

 

These are some of the quandries of my life right now, and probably many of yours as well.  It's not that I don't want to write in my blog because I love writing my posts--it's just that I am pulled in so many different directions. 

 

I'm thankful to have a rich, full life!  In a minute I'm going to walk over to the park where our annual Highland Jazz and Blues Festival will be taking place--five and a half hours of music on two stages, food and craft vendors--a fun time as only Louisiana can do it.  I'll hear some great music, visit with friends, supervise the festival information and t-shirt booth  volunteers I lined up--and basically have a great day, hopefully forgetting about my "To Do" lists.

 

I'll get it all done--and what doesn't get done, probably won't have dire consequences.  Soon I'll return to my blogging.  Until then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving week. 

Those were the days, my friend...

We were young, idealistic--my ex-husband ran the campaign headquarters for McGovern in Abingdon, VA near where we attended college.  I was working for the county and was forbidden from campaigning for any political candidate, but I worked in the next county over from the headquarters, so I figured what my bosses didn't know wouldn't hurt them.  I wanted to be part of the excitement, part of the process.  I loved politics back then.  We worked county fairs and other events.  I can remember trying to convince those good old boy farmers to at least consider McGovern.  We had some success.  Back then there were a lot of Democrats in southwestern Virginia.  It was just over the mountain from the coal fields, and the miners traditionally voted Democratic. 

The southwestern portion Virginia is part of the 9th Congressional District and extends from Roanoke, Virginia, all the way to the Tennessee line.  The 9th Congressional District used to be known as the 'Fighting Ninth,' "because of its taste for raucous politics, which by and large were culturally conservative and economically populist." (To read the National Journal Almanac article referenced in this post, click here.)

"As early as 1765 settlements were being carved into the great Valley of Virginia, which bends westward and south toward Tennessee and the Cumberland Gap, " reports the National Journal Almanac.  I know because my ancestors were part of that group of largely Scots-Irish settlers, establishing their homestead in 1782 in what is now Smyth County, Virginia.  The settlers were fiercely independent.  Most were farmers, but many in the more mountainous western portion of the region eventually became coal miners.  This area developed separately from eastern and northern Virginia.

"Politically, this virtually all-white area opposed slavery and was skeptical, if not hostile, to the Confederacy. Out of the crucible of struggle between secessionists and unionists, Southwest Virginia developed a robust two-party politics after the Civil War, with both parties resembling their national counterparts more closely than in the rest of Virginia."  (National Journal Almanac)

This independent thinking at least allowed for dialogue between idealistic recent college graduates and other southwest Virginia voters in 1972.  George McGovern was a World War II hero who now opposed the war in Vietnam--he had earned the right to be anti-war, having experienced war first hand.  WWII was a "just war," and the good people in southwestern Virginia realized that Vietnam didn't make much sense to them, yet too many of their sons had gone off to southeast Asia. Rich men's sons don't fight the wars.

George McGovern was the son of a Methodist minister, and the mountains of Virginia had been the home to circuit riding Methodist preachers who had won many converts. Methodist churches dot the landscape there.  The local college my ex and I attended was a Methodist school.  It's hard to demonize a patriotic war hero who was the son of a Methodist minister, so the people would at least talk to us. 

I can't remember how the district went in 1972.  As I recall, McGovern did better than expected.  In subsequent years, the district has become more Republican in national elections although the long-time Congressman from the 9th District was a Democrat until ousted in 2010 by a Republican who didn't even live in the District!  The 9th district voted narrowly for Democrat Bill Clinton twice, but voted by much wider margins for Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. In 2008, the district went 59%-40% for Republican nominee John McCain. (National Journal Almanac)

But during that long ago summer and fall of 1972, we were hopeful that a thoughtful man from South Dakota might become President of the United States.

Coloring Outside the Lines

Humans are blessed with a singular creativity to see what might be, in addition to what is. Joy and imagination are often paired.  Mystery author, Carolyn Hart described an artist's work:

"....The brightly colored animal figures--pink giraffes, spotted rhinos, lemon tigers--spoke of a world of unleashed imagination, the artist's ebullient recognition that the pulse of life is more than is ever seen by the eye alone, that the spirit of joy colors every reality." (p. 21)

--from Death on the River Walk, by Carolyn Hart

Remember the simple creations of our childhood when purple chickens, red dogs, and animals with the Biblical coat of many colors reigned supreme.

I remember a story told to me by a student when I was teaching at Sinte Gleska College (now University) in Rosebud, South Dakota.  The woman was in one of my education methods classes and she shared this story about her sons.  She said she had one boy who always colored so neatly within the lines, so she bought him a coloring book whenever she went to the grocery store.  Frequently, however, it was her other son who picked up the books and scribbled all over the pages.  Finally the child who colored neatly told his mother, "I hate to color, please stop buying me those coloring books."  The other son, hearing this, said to his mother, "Give them to me, I love them," and proceeded to joyfully scribble outside the lines throughout the book.

It's hard for some of us to color outside the lines with joyful abandon, but we can try, if just for a day.

"...the spirit of joy colors every reality"

These brightly colored dish towels hanging on the clothes line of our friend, Anne Marie, in Provence illustrate to me that beauty is to be found in the everyday pulse of life.

Detecting the Path

Death on the River Walk, by Carolyn Hart, is a Henrie O mystery, published in 1999, featuring Hart's retired Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins.  In this story, Henrie travels to San Antonio, trying to help her old friend locate the friend's missing granddaughter.  At one point her old friend tells her:

"I believe the good God sends us not only angels--often, when we are unaware, he sends us messagers when there is a path we must take, no matter how hard and difficult." (p. 68)

I took this to mean we are often given help in our lives when we need it..  As the saying goes, when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.  However, we must be open and willing to listen to the teacher.

Someone else has observed when God closes a door, he opens a window...but, in the meantime, it's awfully dark in the hallway. 

It requires a great leap of faith to take that first step when it's only a small voice inside you that seems to whisper, "This way...follow me."

 medieval steps and passageway
Serres, France

Open to Wonder

Elizabeth Peters, describes a character in her 1980 suspense novel, The Love Talker:
"Lizzie had a restless, imaginative mind; it was childish in the same sense that children's minds are unconfined by convention, open to wonder." (p. 15)

To live like a child, amazed by the world, living in the moment, exploring and seeking without preconceived expectations--these are worthy aspirations.

Above photos taken at Briarwood, Saline, LA

Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve