The Crack Babies

I am brooding over an incident that occurred recently between Aunt Faye and I. It's been over 20 years since I've spent more than a week in Maine, and now that I have a beautiful daughter, I wanted my wife and I to spend a year or more here so that my wee one could get to know my side of the family, especially my aging grandfather. We got a rental near by, but spend a lot of time at Grampy's. My kid loves him, and it's lots of fun to see them laugh and play together.

Everything was fine until my aunt and uncle came up from Northboro, Massachusetts. They have two granddaughters, Megan and Kara that now live with them due to their parents being drug addicts. Their father is in jail as of this writing for repeated petty crimes to get drug money, and their mother doesn't want the kids. However, my Aunt Faye is not too happy to be "stuck" with these two skiddish messed up kids. Not to mention that she raised a junkie, so why the courts made her legal guardian is beyond me.

Megan is 10 and demands a lot of attention. Very overweight and depressed, this kid has seen it all, and fears everything. Kara age 4, is not potty trained, and is very violent and unpredictable. The two kids are often found beating one another senseless, and need to be watched all the time. Aunt Faye is a total stress case. Having just fought off breast cancer, lost her boy to drugs and prison, most of her time is spent working and worrying. Her husband, Uncle Tim is a burned out alcoholic. I've never been in a vehicle with the man without a Budweiser between his legs. He's a medical mess with colostomy bag, and bad temper. They also have a little dog that they never house broke. The whole time they are visiting, the dog just pees and craps all over the floor, and they just clean it up like it's normal. What the heck? Can you say, white trash?

At any sign of trouble, one can hear from miles away Aunt Faye's shouting. She seems stuck in this mode, and is ferocious. All day during her visit, at any provocation from one of her two girls, she can be heard shouting, "Shut the fuck up!" "Get the fuck outta the way!" "You are such a fucking bitch" and anything else with the word "fuck" in the sentence. Remember, these are young girls she's yelling at...

Once when I asked Megan about school she told me her best friend was also named Megan. Aunt Faye interrupts and says, "I hate your name because it's your slut mother's name, I wish you were named anything else but Megan!" ...which pretty much stopped our little conversation. Faye really seems to hate this kids, but acts like it's her duty to care for them.

OK. My wife and I are very granola California types. We are both work at home computer geeks, educated, and rather meek in disposition. After 8 years of marriage we decided to have a baby, got a midwife, and had the child at home all natural. Three years later my wife is still breast feeding our beautiful daughter. We have never had a baby sitter, and have been with our child every day since her birth. We do get a bit worn out at times, but we love our child. My Aunt Faye is by far the worst human being we have ever exposed our daughter to, and it's difficult to be at my grandfather's home when she visits.

One day when Aunt Faye was microwaving some instant French toast for her girls, she made some for my 2 year old, and I asked her for about the millionth time to not give my kid any instant crap foods. We feed her organic foods, things like real French toast, you know, bread dipped in an egg and cooked on a griddle... so of course Aunt Faye explodes into a "Fuck you" fest directed at me while my 2 year old daughter is in my arms. I then ask her to please stop screaming the "F word" around my child, which in reply, she walks up to my face and shouts, "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!"

My daughter squirms out of my arms and races out of the house, across the field, down the path to the lake where her mother is to get away from this mad lady. I am in awe that my aunt would have such disregard for my kid. I hurry off to follow my crying daughter down to the lake so that she is not alone along the wooded path. I tell my wife what happened, and we just decide to stay the day down by the lake in the small family cabin, and avoid my grandfather's house at the top of the hill.

Suppertime comes and we go up the hill to join the family for our meal. Hamburgers are being made outside on the grill. The kids are playing, everything seems OK until Kara finds two pairs of sharp scissors in her box of toys, and gives a pair to my 2 year old. Being the only adult that is watching the kids (everyone else is inside the house doing dishes cleaning up) I go over and say, "Hey you guys cannot run around outside with scissors", and ask for the scissors. Kara gives me the scissors, but says that she is allowed to play with scissors. I say I doubt that she is allowed to run around with scissors, and regardless, as long as I am around no one is running around the yard with scissors, end of story.

She runs in screaming to Aunt Faye, who laughs and says, "Oh I forgot those in the toy box, I want those scissors, you cannot run around outside with scissors, they are for sitting at the table only." So far so good, we agree on something for once. She tells Kara to go get the scissors and bring them to her. I give Kara the scissors but instead of doing as she is told, she runs off, hands a pair back to my 2 year old.

I am quite annoyed at this point. I take the scissors away from both kids, and ask Kara why she didn't do as she was told. She screams "you're not the boss of me" running back to Aunt Faye, I follow her, as I want her to understand endangering herself and my wee one is unacceptable. Aunt Faye scoops Kara up, stopping me inside saying, "You are frightening her!" I say, "I intend to have a talk with her about what she just did." Aunt Faye, says, "I'll deal with it." I tell her, "Deal with what, you were not there." Faye goes, "you don't know what these girls have been through, I'll deal with it." I tell her, "You're not part of this, this is between Kara and I." Aunt Faye says, "These are my girls, and I'll deal with it." I don't let up, I say, "If you were to deal with it, you'd have been there. I'm not going to hurt her, and if I'm left alone to watch your kids, they will hear what I have to say."

Aunt Faye is trying to walk away from me all this time, Kara is clutching to her, looking at me over Faye's shoulder, pretending to cry, while sticking her tongue out at me. I say directly to Kara, "I'm smarter than these people you have fooled, you can't fool me. You did wrong, endangered my kid, and you're going to hear it from me." And that's when Aunt Faye whips around and screams, "You think you're smarter than me?" I say, "well, yes I do, now that you mention it. A lot smarter in fact." That's when she lets go a whole string of "fuck yous" and other aggressive talk. Then I simply say, "and it's just that sort of thing that makes me believe so."

I continue to fan the fire making Aunt Faye more and more angry. I just can't let it go. I go on to explain that all her kid's troubles are her fault, that her boy did not know how to find love because his concept of love is someone telling him to "shut the fuck up" so of course he ends up with a woman that tells him to "shut the fuck up" along with low self esteem, bad relationships, and drug problems. I tell her that she is a monster and is now destroying those two girl's lives, their low self esteem and all of the dysfunction starts with her. Every time she says the word "fuck" I ask her to stop saying the "F" word in front of the preschoolers. I ask her to just start there, stop screaming "fuck".

She tells me that she wishes I was dead and that she hopes to never see me again. I tell her that I will do my best to grant her one of her wishes, because I really don't want to expose my child to her bad behavior. That night they all crawled back into their truck and returned to Mass. The end of another delightful vacation.

A couple months later my mother throws a nice little birthday party for my kid. Three years old. My mom went all out, this being her only grandchild, and a beautiful brilliant one at that. My mom loves her. My kid was wheeling the new mini stroller with a blue teddy bear around the yard, and my mom tells me that she got the stroller for my wee one because she liked the stroller toy that Kara stored in the basement to play with when they visited. Before my aunt and uncle returned to Mass, they hid all the toys way back in the potato bin on a shelf, and covered them with paper bags. I had thought they simply took the toys with them. My mom says for years, they simply put them down in the basement. She thought it was very petty that they went to such effort to make sure my kid could not play with their toys. Then she goes, they will be here for Thanksgiving, what are you going to do?

My head was spinning from the fact that two adults, angry at me, decided to hide toys from my daughter. They were making her a victim or our disagreement. I could not believe how defensive my aunt is, when her stance is that it's her right to scream "fuck" at preschoolers. How could anyone believe that it's OK to do such a thing? And then to go on to hide toys they knew my kid enjoyed... I just looked at my mom and said, "I guess it's just you and the crack babies, we will have Thanksgiving alone at our place".

My mom instantly broke into tears. I followed her inside. I go, "I'm sorry to say it so harshly, I'm just so angry that they are trying to get at me through my little one, how can I risk bringing her around them?" My mom goes, "I dread it when they come here, but she is now taking away what I love from me, and separating the family." I go, "I know, I came back to Maine from California to share the holidays with Grampy and the family, I had no idea what insanity things had gotten to." Mom says, "what can I do, they come every Thanksgiving. Grampy was looking forward to having the whole family together."

I ask her why she or Grampy did not say a word when I was arguing with Faye? I just wanted one other person to say, "Faye, it's wrong to scream 'fuck' in the face of preschoolers", but instead you all kept telling me to drop it and let it go. If you do not put your foot down and let her know that those kinds of antics are not allowed in your home, then you are all just as much to blame. I just wanted one person to help me protect my child from this kind of atmosphere." I tell her we all have to fight for what we want in this life. And until she does so, she'll be having Thanksgiving with the crack babies.