Chapter Two How, How in the World Did We Get Here From There ?

Chapter Two

 

How, How in the World Did We Get Here From There?

 

“… a progression of outrages.” 

--- Bob Edwards, Host,

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, 14 September 2000,

in referencing events in Europe in the 1930s leading up to … that Holocaust.

 

True I was to all my loves.  Not my lovers, mind you.  But to the men with whom I thought I really was in love,        I was unquestionably loyal.  There were only three.  In addition to my father, AmTaham True, and my three sons,    of course.

 

And, of sons, of children, how could a mother ever lose custody of them?  Even in the ‘90s?  Society, including judges, civil court judges, quickly and slickly conclude that there’re only three reasons a mother loses her kids:  she’s a whore or she’s crazy -- or she’s both.  Ever.

 

But those same judges, those men, they know more.  That there’s really a fourth reason, almost all of the time, and not the other three, that’s the real reason behind why a mom loses custody:  she’s pissed him off.  And he has the status and the money and the supporting backing to get her for it.

 

After all.  That’s what they’d do.  In his place.  Those same judges, lawyers, cops, legislators, professors, entertainers, board presidents, CEOs, municipal and university administrators, international diplomats … doctors.  Hot shots.  Big times.  The pillars of the community.  Pillars.  Were they themselves the fathers divorcing and’d been pissed off by their wives, their ex – wives, these guys hold all the power cards down at the Good Ol’ Boys Club.  And they would play ‘em because … they could.  Trump.  It is that simple:  they could.  And it’d kill her.  Legally.

 

What whoring, hysterical yet soccer – , car – pooling mom once but not now, married to one of these guys, do you know has the status and the money and the societal support to appeal and appeal and appeal … and eventually … prevail?  Let alone, any time to.  Time away from her whoring chores and her crazy - making duties?  Now that her kids are gone.  To fight and to fight and to fight and to fight for her babies.  I know none.

 

‘Course that’s because they’re out there working two full - time jobs.  Or maybe one full – time and three part – time ones.  There are that many hours in a week’s time, ya’ know.  These many jobs, in addition, of course, to their already full – time prostituting and madwoman careers about which the former husbands had made damn sure the mediators and the custody evaluators and the judges were so well aware. 

 

As evidenced by his earlier court testimony.  “Evidence,” those judges purported.  “He said.  She said.” 

Made his, what he said “evidence”.  Because – he said so.

 

And he got her again when he got child support.  Because – he  could.  The pillar could. 

She’s dead.  She’s dead now.  For sure.  Legally. 

 

But.  Just to make absolutely certain of his kill, damn sure of it, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier secured for my coffin

one last, locking nail.

 

*     *     *     *

 

I believe it the job of a parent to teach one’s children that complete peace of mind and true and lasting happiness comes from – and only from – inside the child herself alone.  This is, after all, a basic survival mode.

 

And every parent, to have been accountable as a parent, must see to it that her child is brought up to the age of independence, legal independence, knowing how to – and very, very importantly, believing that she is fully imbued with the depth of strength and substance right then, right then at the age of 18 – to, if fate dictates, fully and happily live life lovingly to the end of her days … solo.  Why then are parents, especially mothers worldwide, and especially mothers of the western world in both halves of the 20^th Century, still so unaccountable and so derelict in this, their Spirit – mandated duty?  Why do they still, nearly everywhere, continue to hammer the knife deeper and deeper into the kid with the dictum that she couldn’t possibly survive, let alone, be happy – unless she is coupled.

 

That, that state of affairs, “You’re nothing without a man.  You’ll fail straightaway.  You’re absolutely worthless, you are.  Well, I mean, without a man to take charge, ya’ know.” – That was the ‘there’ that both Dr. Edinsmaier and I had gotten to here from.  The message from my mother to her three little girls.  From the horse’s mouth.

 

*     *     *     *

 

In Quaker Meeting for Worship is a Friend named Yanira whom I admire a lot;  she has qualities in her personality and in the content of her character in her 20s I didn’t know women were ‘allowed’ to have, and I have already reached some, as you know, into my 50s.  I had even properly and vigorously rebelled as a teenager and am a veteran of Woodstock, a trait for which I’m held in awe by my Boys and their friends.  Still I listened hard to Yanira when she broke silence one First Day to recount the feeling her brother, whose name I’ve never known, has.  Yanira and her brother were raised all of their lives in a Quaker household.  As such, they have only ever known there tolerance and acceptance of their thoughts, independence in their choices and their comings and goings and been expected to know when and why to take a stand.  And had parents who, no matter what the kids did, no matter what happened to the kids – no matter what, had parents who knew where their loyalties needed to be placed and actually went ahead and placed them there.  No matter what.  No matter what happened Yanira and her brother had parents who believed in them – and did so, believed in them, just as they were.

 

So why, as Yanira says is now happening, is her brother angry and complaining recently?  Other adolescents and young adults think that these are the type of parents to only dream of having.  His anger is over not being given, he calls it, ‘protection’.  About not being prepared for or insulated against how he would be received by persons not so generously brought up.  His anger is over not being given the tools as a kid to deal, he feels, with how most other people realistically seem to relate.  That is, with other folks out there not being so accepting and loyal at all.  Not like their parents.  Not at all.

 

What do the insides of a young man whom I don’t even know have to do with me, where I came from and how I am where I am today?  Why do I understand his anger?  I feel exactly as he does – but for the opposite kind of upbringing.

 

As a tiny child, a little girl and a big girl, I was only ever taught to be dependent, very dependent on men.  I was nothing without a man to rescue and take care of me and certainly had no discernible purpose if it weren’t to attend him and to bolster and raise him up – as well as, of course, whatever children he happened to want to be known as having sired with me. 

 

O, it was okay with my mother, even nearly mandatory because of the prestigious status of it, to become myself the so – called ‘all’ that I could be as far as a career went.  Preferably the more intellectually difficult and demanding the out – of – home endeavor, the better and sweeter the glory of it to promenade in front of her family members and friends.  But, first and foremost, I was brought up to remember that above all else, my lifelong purpose is to defer, be soft and always, always to depend.  In the English language, these are my mother’s favorite verbs.  And so the purpose to my life could best be attained obviously by not just marrying – say, for instance, because I was happy or because I was in love or because of some such other fool thing – but by marrying ‘well’, of course.

 

Yes, I know.  This is an ages – old story, a story that has been true for nearly all women worldwide for decades and centuries.  So where does Yanira’s brother’s feeling fit into this particular part of the same old story?

 

Well, what I didn’t learn, what lesson I never was given by either parent, ever … was what to do to ‘protect’ myself, what to do to prepare myself for the aftermath.  That is, for when after that man that I am so dutifully dependent upon and have been so soft and deferent to through so many years and tribulations no longer wants me in his life.  Mehitable and AmTaham True never taught me what to do for when, of all the acts of barbarism, terrorism and torture, that man, for whom I’d borne the three most brilliant, beautiful and perfect babies in all the history of the entire world, could possibly ever scheme up to hurt me with:  For when that man no longer wants me in Zane’s, Jesse’s and Mirzah’s lives.

 

The feeling Yanira’s brother describes is exactly mine:  How, I ask you, how do I realistically stand up to a pillar – of – the – community, physician ex – husband who not only dares to, but so smoothly does, take away all forms of contact between me and my three Sons, a man whose nonchalant, matter - of - fact chicanery before a state’s district court judge three times and its court of appeals judges twice and its supreme court justices once, convinces them to chose that there apparently exists somewhere some legality that allows them all – all these judges – to reign this same terrorist and bizarre no – contact contract down upon Zane, Jesse, Mirzah and me.  Nail Legion True in that coffin now.

 

Never before, nowhere in the history of the State of Iowa had any of its courts ever battered, tortured and terrorized children and their mother – or a father, for that matter – with this unparalleled legal conduct. 

 

That is to say, where there had been such overwhelming evidence – evidence legally found – of birthing, bonding, nurturing and love between a noncustodial parent and children, no Iowa court had prohibited contact between that parent and those children ever before.  Until Herod Edinsmaier, M.D., came before its courts. 

 

Two Iowa appellate judges, a woman and a man just newly appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals a couple of months before the 1994, ten – minute hearing, dissented.  The insecure two, trying I suppose to somewhat distance themselves from the others’ battering, torture and terror, came up with actually a rather scathing if powerless, six – page dissention about which we shall hear more later.  Suffice now for one sentence of it to be quoted wherein Judge Barry Crowrook joined in affirmation to that which Judge Pansy Shawshank penned, “Totally terminating the visitation between a noncustodial parent where there is substantial bonding between the noncustodial parent and the children is … without precedent.” 

 

Dr. Phyllis Chesler writes about me – and a few other pariah – like mamas who were made noncustodial ones before me – in her tome of the early year already of 1986, Mothers on Trial:  the Battle for Children and Custody, on its page 186, “ … ‘intimates’ such as their own mothers, refused to support them OR ACTIVELY … BETRAYED THEM.  ‘My mother blamed me for everything,’ Bonnie states.  Sharon recounts, ‘My mother was terrified.  After all, why did I want out of a marriage when she hadn’t left her marriage – and her marriage was worse than mine? My own mother wasn’t secure enough to support me, her child!’ ”  How incredibly common, how true of 1950s mothers of the baby – boomer babes, their own daughters!  How incredibly true of Mehitable True.

 

So.  How do the Boys and I protect ourselves from and survive the destruction wrought by such a man, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, who crafts such control over and instills such fear into his dependent – all – her – life ex – mother – in – law, my own mother?  That she, my own mother, would so swiftly and seemingly just as matter of fact – like set aside where her loyalty should belong – with her own child, with me – and place it all, instead, with that holocaust – producing pillar who long and loudly proclaims back to her about her daughter and to all the World as well, “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!  MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS!”