Well it would seem to me if you have come this far, you are still reading my story. This next part begins after Jack and I came home from our honeymoon. Before I do that, I want to go back little bit. As I said in the last chapter, Jack proposed to me on Valentines Day. What I didn't say was that two weeks after he proposed to me he received a call from Child Protective Services in California. His son Jack Jr. had been removed from his mother's home due to drug and alcohol abuse. They wanted him to come and get him. So we went to our kinship group and they raised the money needed to go get him and we set a date for March 15. Just before we headed to Santa Cruz Jack's daughter Angie, called and told him she wanted to come live out here also. We decided she would live with me and little Jack would live with his dad. So on March 15, 1990 we headed out to Santa Cruz, CA and picked up the kids.
It was an adjustment for me to have Jack's daughter live with us. She had been raised in a home with very little supervision or discipline. In fact when we went to get her she was living with a girlfriend becuase she and her mom couldn't get along. She had been coming and going whenever she wanted for several years. So trying to get her to live under my rules was not going to be easy. You could say it was a battle of wills (hers and mine) at first. She was basically a wild child but what she really wanted was to be loved and accepted. When Angie came into my home the first thing she did was steal my heart. She had a lot of problems as far being obedient, but I look back on those days now and can't believe how much she made me laugh. (Oh, the stories I could tell....) She was a girl who had been through so much rejection and never felt totally secure about herself. So on one hand she went around with the attitude that she was no good and didn't care what others thought about her and yet on the other time she was a child crying out for love. I wish I had been better equiped to handle her at that time, but since I had never dealt with the type of rebellion she was giving me and her dad, I was not. She and CJ became best friends and she quickly became a real sister to her and Kacie. But as summer approached we could tell Angie wasn't happy in Arizona. Around June she started begging to go back to Santa Cruz.
Shortly before Jack and I got married Angie decided to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night with my daughter CJ. For some reason, God woke me up and told me to go check on the girls. When I went into the bedroom only Kacie was in the room ironing. I thought this strange since it was after 1:00 a.m. I walked fully into the bedroom and saw that the two girls were gone. I asked her where they were and at first she didn't want to tell me where they went, but finally, I convinced her that it would go better with her if she did. It turned out the girls had gone to a party at my nephews house while his parents were out of town. When they found out they had been caught they came home. Due to the other dicipline problems we had been having with Angie we decided to go ahead and send her home since it was what she really wanted. We did this the weekend of July 4th. The hardest part about letting her go was that she wouldn't be with us on our wedding day. And I wasn't sure when we would get to see her again.
Jack and I were married on July 20. We had a beautiful wedding with all our friends and family. It would have been perfect if Angie had been there too. (And my sister DJ who couldn't come because she had a new baby at home.) We left the next day for a three day honeymoon in San Diego. (I love the ocean!)
After Jack and I came home from the honeymoon we had to begin the adjustment of living with each other. But the kids also had to learn about living with a dad (and a dad they had to obey) and Jack Jr. had to learn to live with a mother who was drug free and sober. It was a pretty crazy household. We also had the battle with the three little guys. Both Jack Jr. and Adam had been the only boy in their families and now they had to share that spot. Also, Jack Jr. and Sandy had both been the babies of the family but now Jack Jr. wasn't. So here was this little boy who had lost his mommy, his position as only son, and his spot as the baby of the family. And he had been uprooted from the only state he'd ever known. He was a very angry and confused little boy. To top all that off, he was also a cocain baby (his mom did cocain during pregnancy and while nursing him), so he had a lot of learning disabilities to deal with. I thank God that he always had teachers who seemed to really care about him and who understood. But between the three little guys, Jack and I thought we would go nuts! They were constantly bickering and fighting.
Sometime in September we got a phone call from Angie. She had been put in a foster home and hated it. She wanted to come back and live with us. At first her dad said no because of all the problems we had before when she was here. But then I talked to her and she started crying and . . . well, what could I do. I was always a sucker for tears! So Angie got a plane ticket and booked a flight home.
Boy what a shock when we went to pick her up! She was a platinum blonde! (Today, even Angie can't believe she did that to her self!) We enrolled her back in highschool with Kacie and hoped for a peaceful home. It seemed to work out for a while.
In December we got a call from Jack's eldest daughter Michelle. Her mom was in jail and she wanted to be with us for Christmas. So we talked with the kids and they were all willing to have mom and dad take a part of their Christmas gift money and buy Michelle a round trip ticket.
Michelle came a few days before Christmas. So our first Christmas together we had all seven of our kids together. (I'm so glad we did because since then, we have not had all seven kids together at the same time.) It was a crazy household but it was fun. The girls had a few fights as girls do, but nothing we couldn't handle. The worst fight they had was on Christmas Eve. I can't even remember what it was about, but I remember how bad Jack felt. It really depressed him because he wanted everything to be perfect. I knew it was just girls bickering and I tried to make him feel better. I told him the girls would be over it by the morning but he wasn't so sure. But just as I predicted, the next morning the girls were all friends again so we did have a good Christmas after all. A few days later we had to make that dreaded trip to say goodbye to Michelle. I remember how hard Jack cried when he got out of her sight. I had wished I knew the words to say to make him feel better, but there were none. We didn't know when we'd see her again or what would happen in her life.
In February Kacie and Angie started having problems with some girls in school. Because Jack and I were inexperienced with teens we didn't know what to do. They were skipping classes and not doing their school work. We were in contstant contact with the school Vice-Principle. They ended up getting into a fight with some girls that were in a gang. (Or at least that is what we were told at the time.) The girls begged us to home school them because they said they feared for their lives at school. So being the naive parents that we were, we agreed. Unfortunately the homeschooling never took place. I got hired full time at my church and Jack was so busy with the little kids that it just never happened. So instead the girls went and got jobs at a car wash.
We began to see a lot of rebellion in Kacie and Angie. In fact I started to suspect they were using drugs. (I found out later that they had been smoking pot.) Both girls were getting to be very hard to handle. They were constantly arguing with us and disobeying us. We did what we thought was best. We began to tighten the reigns on them. They were grounded all the time from phone and/or friends. Their bedroom was orignally a garage but the former owners had build it into a great big room. It had it's own door to go outside. They started sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, so we fixed the door to keep them in. Then they started sneaking out the windows so we put locks on the windows. My husband is a diabetic and has to have special foods available to him. The girls would refuse to eat what we had prepared but would sneak food out of the fridge in the middle of the night. This might not have been so bad except they were eating the very things my husband needed when he would have low blood sugar! So after many threats he finally had locks put on the refridgerator. It seemed that the tighter we were with them, the worse they rebelled. It was not a pleasant time. Meanwhile CJ was staying out of trouble because she had a new boyfriend who was over all the time.
This day will alway be imprinted in my mind as the day my world crashed in. Jack and I had gone to church that evening for a special program at church for the kids. Kacie and Angie stayed home. The program got done earlier than expected and we decided to head on home. I remember saying to my husband that I hoped the girls were behaving because we'd be home sooner than they expected us. (It seemed like every time we came home anymore they were getting busted for something!) Well, when we walked in the front door we saw guys fly out the back door. I looked out the arcadia door to see if I could catch them but they were gone. However, they left something behind. A couple six packs of beer! The girls told me the boys were old enought to buy the beer so my husband and I called the cops. After the cops arrived it turned out the boys were underage. The officer said if I was wanting to press charges against the boys, I would also have to press charges against the girls. Well, we didn't want to do that so my husband said instead he would just use some good old fashion discipline on them. So after the officer left, he made them both bend over the automan and we spanked them. They just laughted at us and said it was no big deal, but apparently it really was. Because sometime that night the two of them called a friend and ran away. I didn't know they ran away until later the next day. They always got themselves up for work on their own so when we didn't hear them in their room we assumed that is what they did. But at one point I went into the laundry room which was just off their bedroom and thought things didn't look quite right in the bedroom. I looked in and realized that their clothes and personal items were gone. I was devistated. It was the first time in my daughter Kacie's life when I truly didn't know where she was or if she was safe.
We called the police and reported them as missing. But because of the number of kids running away on a regular basis, we knew there wasn't much the police could do. Besides we weren't sure if they were still in Arizona. We thought Angie might have found a way back to Santa Cruz and took Kacie with her. I remember sitting on my couch at night looking out my bedroom window watching every car that drove by. I prayed that each one would have my girls in it and that they were coming home to ask for forgiveness. But each car just drove on by. I don't know how I was able to get through the next few days. I do know I cried a lot! In fact my husband was really worried about me because it was the first time he'd seen me this way.
On Monday morning my husband received a call from his ex sister-in-law in Santa Cruz. It seems Angie had called her and left the phone number of where they were staying. I had a girlfriend worked for the phone company and she was able to get us an address. So late Monday afternoon, my husband, myself and the police went to the apartment they were staying at. They weren't at the apartment when we got there but all their clothes and stuff were. Tthe cops drove around the neighborhood and found them running away. The girls were so mad that they had been caught.. My daugher Kacie had on an outfit that looked terrible. It was very short, very skimpy and very revealing. She had hickeys all over her neck. Angie was dressed in her normal clothes but she was furious. In fact the cop had her in his police car and my husband had to calm her down before they would even release her to us. After we got them home we decided that the two of them needed to be separated. As my husband put it, "Alone they were weak, but together, they were an army!" So it was decided that Angie would go and stay with Jack's sister Erin. The first thing Erin did was get her back in high school. Basically Angie became Erin's responsibility. It wasn't easy for Erin because she had two little girls of her own. At first it seemed having Angie with Erin was working great. She helped with the little girls and did chores around the house. She even was earning an allowance and keeping up her school work.
Kacie came home a different peson also. She stopped smoking pot and calmed down quiet a bit. I decided to give her an opertunity to prove to us that she was a better person. I allowed her to get her own phone line and we moved her into her own bedroom. I did a lot of things I shouldn't have done because I was afraid she would run away again. But instead of giving us problems, she got another job and seemed to become more responsible. We thought things were getting better. But we had an even bigger shock ahead of us still. One we could never have been prepared for!
About this time I started having a reacurring dream almost nightly. In it we had baby living in the house with blonde curly hair and her name was Rebecca Sue. I dreamed this same dream over and over. Also in the dream there would sometimes be a second child with brown curly hair. She was younger and more petite that the blond baby. I told my husband that if I didn't know better I would swear that God was trying to warn me that one of the girls was going to get pregnant. About this time CJ and her boyfriend were starting to get closer than I would have preferred. I was afraid they might do someting stupid and get pregnant. Since she was only 15 years old and he was only 17, Jack and I decided to take them out for coffee and have a "talk" with them about getting pregnant and the cost of raising a baby. I did a lot of homework on this one so I felt really prepared to have this talk. They listened to all we had to say and assured us we had nothing to worry about. They said they weren't stupid and they were not having sex. Then CJ told us we were really talking to the wrong person. She said Kacie was the one who needed this talk because she had sex when she ran away. (Kacie had told me earlier that she did not have sex and I believed her.) I remembered an earlier conversation I had with Kacie about her period being late. I asked her at that time if she could be pregnant and she said no way. So I told her it could be late due to all the stress from running away. But after listening to CJ I decided t buy a pregancy test and take it home.
Kacie didnt' want to do the test, but since she knew I wasn't going to let it go she finally agreed. After putting the stick in the urine sample, we were supposed to wait two full minutes to see if the stick would turn blue. It didn't even take 30 seconds! It was BLUE!!! At first, when I showed it to Kacie she denied it. Then she said it was impossible. Finally she broke down and cried and admitted it was possible. I was devistated. I thought my life was over! I cried and cried for the next eight weeks. I didn't think we could afford to keep a baby in the house and I didn't want to send Kacie away. My husband finally told me that the only solution was to move Kacie and CJ back into their old bedroom (the converted garage), because it was large enough for both girls and a baby. We also started counceling at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Soon we began to get used to the idea of a new baby in the house. However, the idea of my husband being married to a grandmother and me being married to a grandfather was a little bit harder to get used to. We had a due date of December 7.
I started going to the doctor with Kacie and we got to hear the heartbeat. Then one day the doctor asked us if we wanted to know the sex. We of course said "YES!" He took us into another room where the ultra sound machine was. What a thrill it was to see my grandbaby. I couldn't believe it. Then the doctor looked to see if he could tell the sex. As if on cue, the baby moved and he got a perfect view. When he said she was a girl I thought I'd cry. Then I remembered my dreams. I shared them with Kacie and she decided to name the baby Nicole Rebecca. (Rebecca because of my dreams, Nicole because she loved the name.) We began preparing for our new little girl's arrival. I thought life was again going to be just wonderful.
Meanwhile, my sister was out here from Louisianna for a visit. She asked if she could take CJ home with her for a few weeks. With everything that had gone on we felt it was probably for the best. So the middle of June 1991 CJ headed south. Things were looking good for us again. Kacie had been working two jobs so she could have the things she would need when the baby was born. She was no longer giving us problems, she was going to church and beginning to grow up. We began to relax and think that finally, life was good. But that was only an allusion. In July two things happened. First, on July 4th, Angie ran away again. Only this time she went back to Santa Cruz. Then we got a phone call from CJ. She told me my sister wanted to talk to me, that it was very important. Then, before handing my sister the phone she said, "Mom, remember, I love you!" I had just quit smokig a few weeks earlier, but all of a sudden I found myself reaching for my husband's pack of cigarettes and his lighter. (I'd been having that dream about the babies again...) Sure enough, my sister broke the news to me that CJ was pregnant. I thought I was going to die. My husband and I were furious! She had watched us go through eight weeks of hell when we first learned of Kacie's pregnancy and yet she allowed the same thing to happen to her. We couldn't believe it! The first day after we found out we said she had to give it up for adoptoin. The second day we decided that she could have the baby but we would have to put her in a home for unwed mothers because there was no way we could have two babies in the house. The third day my husband said to me that he wasn't ready to give CJ up because she was too young. (He also had a very close relationship with her at that time.) So he said the bedroom was plenty big enough for two beds, two cribs and two of everything else a baby needed. So it was decided, CJ would come home from my sisters and we would grow into an even bigger family! And we hadn't even celebrated our fist aniversary yet!
To find out what happened next please read part five of my story.
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