The Next Hurdle

Although the decision to allow Daughter to eventually go live with her father was a difficult one, it is only the beginning in a long series of hurdles that the decision puts in my path. The social worker mentioned one thing which won't be easy at all, and in my head another hurdle popped up immediately.

The issue is with telling the boys that their sister has decided that she doesn't want to live with us and that I have decided to allow her to leave. They love their big sister, a fact which is often illustrated by their natural gravitation towards one another when the camera makes its appearance. They want pictures of themselves together. Another thing that is very obvious in these pictures is that Daughter is very big, and that the boys are very tiny beside her. She is their Big Sister and they love her. She loves them too.

I don't know how the boys will feel about Daughter moving away. I am sure they will not be happy about it. I am not anticipating any requests to have her room or her computer. I am anticipating tears. These kids have been through a lot and they have been through it together. They were moved across the Atlantic no less than four times between 2005 and 2010. All of the moves except the first one involved moving away from one parent or the other. That's a lot to deal with. And they dealt with it together. Separating them now seems so terrible. I mean, separating siblings is sad to begin with, but even more so for me because of what the children have been through.

For now, I have not thought about how to break the news to the boys. I feel I need some professional advice in order to be able to do it properly. I am sure the social worker and I will talk about this.

Another huge hurdle, even scarier for me than the one just described, is telling my family, especially my sister. It would be an understatement to say that my sister and the children's father have a history, and a nasty history at that. They have a mutual dislike of one anther. Neither of them are ever willing to forget anything, so their dislike is based on the cumulative shortcomings they see in each other. Bottom line, my sister sees him as a bad person and a bad father. She doesn't want to see him within ten miles of the kids, and when she finds out I am letting Daughter go live with him, she is going to blow a gasket. I wonder if she will disown me as a sister.

Granted, my sister is right. I don't know who in their right mind would allow that man to raise a child. Obviously, I am not in my right mind. For reasons I have exposed in previous posts, I am very nervous about what will come of Daughter. I am trying to be positive and trust in her inner goodness to prevail, but I do wonder which of her values will be compromised as a result of living with him. I know this makes me seem high and mighty. I don't mean to come off as trying to say that I am a perfect parent, but I do believe I have a clearer idea of how a child's spirit needs to be nurtured. As I have said before, I felt trapped into this decision. I could almost say it is not my own. I just don't see any other way out of this situation.

Telling the rest of my family will not be a picnic either. Generally, I avoid discussing the children's father with them because that results in immediate anger and outrage. They are so quick to jump to the worst conclusions and are quick to judge. I'm not saying they are far from the mark when they behave this way, but it is still hard to hear and puts me into a very difficult position because I don't want the children to hear anyone talk about their father in this way. Sometimes I think I am the only one in this family who recognizes that a child needs to have a positive image of both parents in order to have a positive self-image. I learned this the hard way when my husband kept putting my family down to me after we got married. I tried to explain to him that every time he said something bad about them, he was putting a part of me down and that hurt. He just didn't get it. He is a very opinionated person and is not in the habit of keeping quiet about his opinions. It is the same way with my family. I hate to see the nastiness and hatred surface when the subject of my ex comes up. It's not nice to see.

I will have to tell them, though, and sooner than later, because Daughter feels no compunction to keep quiet about her victory over me, about the fact that she will soon get to move away. If my family finds out from her, it will be worse. Also, if they argue with her that there is no way I would let her go, they may turn nasty about her father and say things she doesn't need to hear. Not to mention they will be that much harder on me for not having told them in the first place. So I will have to tell them soon. I just have no idea how to go about it.

It is quite exhausting even to think about all this. I have been on sick leave for so long, I am in no shape for jumping such hurdles right now, but I am going to have to do it, and soon.

This Was Not The Solution I Was Expecting To Find

As I have mentioned before, my relationship with my daughter has been strained, at best, since she came back to Canada after having spent a year overseas when her father kidnapped her and her two younger brothers. After the year she spent there, she came back a different person. She had received a thorough brainwashing and was convinced that nothing that was in any way, shape or form related to me was any good. She was like a horse with blinders on, like someone who has tunnel vision. All she wanted was to get away from me and get back to Hungary.

Understandably, this was heartbreaking, but at first I thought that all she needed was time. I thought that all I had to do was to be myself and she would remember that I was her mother and the love would return. The relationship would be all right. I just had to show her that everything she had heard about me over a year was untrue. I was convinced that the difficulty would pass and that she would become my daughter again.

Little did I know how deep the brainwashing went. Daughter wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. She ignored my existence. She locked herself up in her room. When she absolutely had to, she answered me in one-word sentences. No matter what I tried, it was no good. I knew deep down I had lost her and I didn't know how to get her back. In the process, I was losing myself, too. My self-esteem plummeted. I had thought that I was a good mother. Now, I didn't feel like a good mother at all. I felt like a failure. I felt myself regressing to the person I had been before I left her dad, the person who had plastered on a happy face and smiled even though her heart was breaking. I was good at that. No matter what their father did to me, I smiled and made sure the kids felt that everything was all right. I wanted them to feel secure in who they were, in their family. For a long time I kept up these appearances until one day I realized, I was raising them by myself anyway, why should I stick around and live with all this stress? That is when I moved out, and found that I could raise them myself, as I had done before, but now the stress and tension were gone from my life. I flourished. I was the happiest mom in the world. My smile wasn't fake any more.

When I finally got Daughter and my two sons back after a year of court procedures, I was so ecstatic that it took me a while to realize that Daughter was not the same. So I was stuck plastering on the smile for the boys again, while I racked my brain for a solution to regain my relationship with Daughter, who seemed to be waging a cold war against me.

How can I not have made a good enough impression during the first nine years of her life that none of it stayed with her? She didn't show an ounce of emotion or attachment to me. I tried everything I could to let her know how much I loved her. I tried to plan all kinds of activities based on her interests. I remember when we traveled to different cities, how she had been so happy to go up the CN Tower in Toronto, to walk in the Vieux Quartier du Québec, to visit beautiful churches and eat in the revolving restaurant in Montréal. Sure, she was happy, but it had nothing to do with me. She was enjoying herself with her brothers, but she never once thanked me. I felt like she was using me and I felt like such a loser.

Meanwhile, her father brought out the big guns. I can't even get into all the manipulation that went on when he talked with her. So many times I wanted to put an end to it. My lawyer said that I had every right to limit their telephone conversations because even though Daughter was living with me, she was always on the phone with him. She would withdraw to her room, out of earshot. But I wanted to be a good mother. I didn't want to cut her off from her father. After all, I left him because I couldn't stand to live with him. I brought the children with me because I couldn't stand to live without them. It wasn't because I wanted to take them away from him, even though essentially that is what I did. I just wanted MY freedom, and I sincerely believed that the children would be better off away from all the friction and conflict.

But although he was half a world away, her father still influenced Daughter immensely. Essentially, she became his informant. Every little thing that happened in our home was reported to him. He blew everything out of proportion, magnified it a hundredfold, then sent the child welfare people to look in on us. Eventually, I relented and had internet installed at home so instead of talking to her father privately on the phone, Daughter could only Skype with him on the computer in our kitchen. It seemed like a good solution, but it was actually so much worse. In essence, I had him here in my kitchen every time he Skyped with her. I found myself tiptoeing around so he wouldn't hear me. I didn't speak. I waited for them to finish talking before I took out a pot or a pan or anything that could make noise that would tell him what I was doing. It was a terrible feeling.

No matter how badly I wanted to have a good relationship with Daughter, she was unresponsive. I would spend hours at night staring at pictures of her, of her beautiful smile, and it broke my heart because I knew that her smile had nothing to do with me. It had to do with anything BUT me. She wasn't smiling at me, she was smiling at the camera so she would have the pictures as souvenirs of the things she had done and the places she had seen.

The thing that broke my heart the most is thinking of how Daughter was living here while she wanted to be elsewhere with all of her being. It pained me so much to think of her stuck in a place that she didn't consider her home, living only for the day she could escape. She often cried in her room because she was homesick for a home that wasn't mine. She probably felt like she was living with a stranger because she didn't ever take a step in my direction. I wondered if she wasn't lonely for the mother that she wasn't letting me be. It broke my heart and in the end I conceded that I would have to let her go.

Eventually, she would be old enough to choose for herself where she wanted to live, and if she left like that, there was no way she was ever going to come back, not even to visit. Despite all my misgivings, like what kind of person she would grow up to be without my guidance, without my modeling good values for her, without my being there to influence her to be open, loving and accepting of people, I came to see that even if she didn't turn out to be the lover of her fellow man who I had wished to help her become, she would at least be happy. And that is all that, as a mother, I really want for her right now. If my daughter is happy, why should I gripe over the fact that she only wants to wear brand-name clothes or turns into an uncharitable snob? (Because I really do fear for who she will grow into in her father's custody.)

Working with our social worker hasn't brought us any closer together, not until the social worker said it was time to think about letting her go (something I have been secretly admitting to myself, but had been terrified to voice out loud.) This week, we had our first session where we tried to talk to each other. I must say that Daughter didn't have much to say. She did have questions, mostly about why I left her dad. We both came out of the meeting with tear-stained eyes and I had a migraine headache for the rest of the day, I had cried so hard. But, ultimately, I communicated to Daughter that I would let her go, not because I wanted her to go, but because I didn't want to continue to hurt her by forcing her to live with someone who she didn't feel she loved.

I must say that I am rather proud of how I handled yesterday's meeting. Daughter had a lot of questions about her father, and a lot of the answers to those questions would have forced me to say bad things about him. I replied as generally as I could, without going too much into the specifics, and sometimes I outright said that I was not going to tell her what she wanted to know because it would force me to say bad things about her father. I have always told my children that one of my values was to not talk about someone behind their back, especially since they were not there to defend themselves, and I was rather glad to have a chance to show Daughter that I actually practice what I preach. I told her that I thought it was wonderful that she loved her dad, that it was important for her to do so, and that I didn't want to mess with that. And I also made it clear to her that I was letting her go because she wanted to go, not because I wanted to be rid of her, and that she could always, always come back. It was probably pointless to say this since she has no intention of coming back to live with me, but I wanted her to know this just the same.

Daughter's departure is still a ways off, but it is looming over me like a big, black cloud. I have asked her to at least finish off the school year here, but I recognize that she will have to be in Hungary by September for the beginning of school. I want to at least have the summer with her, which is important for the boys too. But she wants to be in Hungary by her birthday, which is at the beginning of July. I hate to think about it. I wish time would slow down.

Despite my growing feeling of doom and failure, I do have one positive thing to report. Since I told daughter that I would let her go, she has begun to open up to me a little. Today she was downright chatty, and whereas in the past she would clam up the instant she realized that she was actually talking to me, today she went right on talking. It's almost as if she had years and years' worth of stuff she had to say. It was actually kind of funny, and heartwarming in a bittersweet way. I hate to think that I have to lose her if I want to find her, but I am trying hard to think of this as something to be thankful for.

Mothers and Daughters

I know there are many books written about the relationship between mothers and daughters. I've never read any of them. I didn't feel the need to. I have a very good relationship with my mother, and from the moment my beautiful little girl slipped out of my tummy, she and I were one and life was pretty darn rosy... Apart from the fact that she didn't sleep through the night 'till she was about two. But that I am willing to overlook... My baby girl had the silkiest blonde hair, the brightest smile and the cutest habits of any baby girl on Earth. I swear. She was at home with me until she was 18 months old, at which time I went to work and she went to daycare. I wanted to give her every advantage possible in life. I taught her sign language before she was old enough to talk, and when she started daycare in a Montessori institution, I studied up on what they were doing with her during the day and created a continuation at home. Truly, our apartment was a miniature daycare center. I bought Daughter mini cutlery and she was cutting and eating her own pancakes by the time she was two. I saved old boxes and jars so she could practice opening them and unscrewing the lids. I bought her safety scissors and acrylic paint. I let her wash the dishes - anything that was neither breakable or sharp she washed herself, standing on a chair at the kitchen sink. Life was absolutely wonderful. She knew she had my unconditional love and she returned it in kind. We were The Girls. We did everything together. When her baby brother arrived, Daughter proved to be an excellent big sister. She gave him kisses, made him a collage with stickers to put by his crib, and of course genuinely loved him.

Our relationship blossomed as Daughter got older. I started teaching her letters and how to write. This was pretty easy since our mother tongue, Hungarian, has just one way to pronounce each letter and just one letter for each sound we pronounce, with only one exception. Daughter was soon writing little stories and learning to read. When she started to learn all this again in French, she had figured the system out and had no trouble with the fact that there may be several ways to write the sound o in French. (au, eau, ault, aut, aux... you get the picture.)

Unfortunately, our perfect lives had one not-so-great aspect: my relationship with my husband was not a very good one, and on several occasions I had wished that I could just move out with the kids and lead separate lives from him. When our third child came along, we tried to make a genuine effort to fix the relationship because I told him that if things didn't change in a year, that would be the end of our marriage. We moved, he started working for his mother's business, and I stayed home with the baby. The attempt to get along didn't last long. I won't go into all the details, but after a year and a half, I finally left. It took me that long because I had no money to leave, and no real courage either. But there came a point where enough was enough, and I had no choice but to leave him.

Leaving my husband led to the events that have ruined my relationship with my daughter, a relationship that I am desperately trying to salvage. Two years after I left him, my husband took the three kids and left the country. I didn't see them for a year. When I finally got them back, the damage had been done. He had had a year to exert his influence on the children, especially on our daughter, who was 9 years old at the time. He filled her head full of lies about me and things between us have never been the same.

Nowadays, my daughter doesn't answer me when I tell her good night, good morning, have a nice day, how was your day... you get the picture. The only response to my "Have a nice day!" this morning was a frown and a slammed car door. The only thing my daughter wants from me is to send her to live with her father. She thinks that I'm the one who is a kidnapper because I took her and her brothers with me when I left my husband. This is what he told her, but he neglected to mention that I never denied him access to the kids. Not once. It is hard to deal with the brainwashing Daughter has received because I refuse to sink to her father's level and start badmouthing him. I would only go as far as to point out to her that if everything had been so good, then I wouldn't have left. I had my reasons. But now that she is with me and her father is overseas, she idolizes him. He can do no wrong, while I am the root of all evil. It is a frustrating situation to live, not to mention the pain of rejection every time I reach out to her.

I try to give her everything she needs and anticipate the things that she may like. She has shown an interest in cake decorating, and she will soon start her second cake decorating course, learning to decorate with fondant and gumpaste. It is something that we signed up to do together, but I sometimes get the feeling she wishes I weren't there with her. It's getting to the point where I am feeling apologetic about imposing myself on her. This is not the kind of mother-daughter relationship I was expecting to have with her, at least not until she was an adolescent! People tell me it is the same way with their eleven year olds, but I think that Daughter is taking it to a whole other level with me.

Friends and family continue to encourage me to persevere, and say that when she is older she will recognize everything that I have done for her, but I am not sure that she will. For example, when she was 8 she wanted to try horseback riding. I signed her up for a week during the summer, after which she started regular weekly lessons in September. She loved riding and was learning fast, gaining confidence and not letting her stubborn pony get out of hand. Then, suddenly, one day she refused to go any more. She said that I only signed her up because I wanted to ride but couldn't and so I was forcing her. I don't mean to point any fingers, but three guesses as to who put this idea in her head, and the last two don't count. It is true that I rode when I was young, and that I would love to again, but I can't leave three young children at home and take off for half a day to have a lesson every week. I am not complaining. My hope was to have all three kids learn to ride so we could all go as a family. On a side note, we have learned since then that my youngest is allergic to horses, so that idea has been scrapped. There is still my dream that we can all go scuba diving together, but that is a few years off yet, since the kids aren't old enough now and I certainly don't have the money to get them all certified.

But back to Daughter. Once she stopped taking riding lessons, we had more free time on the weekends to do other things, but she was always reluctant to do anything with me. Even if the boys are playing at a friend's house and I invite her to scrapbook with me (she loves scrapbooking), she refuses. She prefers to hide in her room and watch movies on youtube. Anything to get away from me. The situation has gotten so bad, that now we have a social worker who is trying to help us figure things out. I am enthusiastic, Daughter is indifferent about it all.

Where am I going with this? Oh! yes! Today I decided that the next time I go to the library, I am going to go look in the parenting section for a book on the subject of mothers and daughters. If only for Daughter to see that I am reading it, so maybe one day she will allow herself to believe that I really do want a relationship with her, as opposed to what she believes now: that I am keeping her with me just to keep her away from her father, so he will be sad and lonely. She thinks I don't even want her, but she couldn't be further from the truth. I still see the gummy, toothless smiles she gave me as a baby whenever I look at her. I still remember waking up with her on Saturdays and making breakfast together while Dad slept in. I remember all the things we did the summer she was three, when her baby brother would nap for two hours each afternoon, when we would do our Big Girl Things. I do so want to find that place again, where we have fun together, doing things we both love. We are not there yet, but hopefully one day... I'll keep you posted.