Rockabye Baby

This is something that has happened in my life, while all else was

going on about Gloria. I wrote a poem And Then There Were Eight,

about my grand daughter Kelly giving birth to Brittany Marie.

She gave birth on Sunday and I heard from her every day. I was down

with some kind of stomach flu, and unable to go up to see her, I couldn't

have if I wanted too. I had promised her I would be with her, but she

understood.

On Tuesday, they let her go home. I received a call from her , telling

me what a beautiful baby she had, and how happy she was. This was about

6:30 PM. I wrote a longtime ago, a piece about Kelly, My Special Kelly, I think it

is called, because Kelly is mildly retarded, and bi polar. She has been in group

homes since she was about eighteen, she is now 32. She ran away from home

and got in with some wrong people and was taken in as a ward of the state.

I have seen her often , as one of the women who took her into foster care

brought her to see me, and she worked at Price Chopper as a bagger for many

years. Somehow she fell in with a guy much younger than her, and of another

race, not that that matters, but this fellow was mentally ill too, in a different

way than Kelly used alcohol and drugs, and bi polar , and while in a group

home got her pregnant. She was beaten by him and very afraid of him,

as she said he was going to get full custody of the baby when it was born.

She got a restraining order on him from family court and even so, he was

able to frighten her. She ended up in a Battered womens shelter until the

baby was born. She is still there.

That night she came home, about 9:15 PM, I got another hysterical call from

Kelly,CPS had just came and taken the baby from her, saying she was an unfit

mother, I mean only home for about 6 hours with her baby, didn't have much

time to do anything too wrong. There were also attendants there. But the father

called CPS on her. I told her to call her case worker in the morning. I heard

from her the next afternoon, and she said she had to go to court on Friday

at noon. I told her not to worry. I am so naive I think.

I was still not feeling well, and a few minutes before she was to go into court

I got a call from a CPS worker. She was very nice, and Kelly had given her

my name, I had seven minutes to make a decision. She wanted to know if

I would take Kelly and the baby into my home. With a hasty heart, I said

yes. I don't know what else I could have done. That night Kelly called me

and told me she was so happy. I told her there would be rules and she would

have to take care of the baby and help me around here, I thought we could

be like a little family, and Billy loves Kelly too, and he was all for it.

A bit later that night, I got a call from one of her sisters, who asked me why

I wanted to steal Kelly's  baby. Now, I tried to explain it all to her, and she

said she didn't even know Kelly had had the baby, these six girls, are messed

up by a bi polar mother. Never do they get together without someone getting

hurt. I explained how it all happened, and then I guess she called Kelly, and

a few minutes later, Kelly called me and said she hadn't made a decision as

to whether she wanted to live with me. I said fine.

By this time, I had thought about what I was about to try to do, and decided

as much as I wanted to do for Kelly and Brittany, I didn't want to be the hub

for people walking in and out of my house. I got another call from CPS, and

they said Kelly was not sure she wanted to come and live with me, and wanted

to know would I just take the baby. I became the mother of Billy when he

was fourteen, and I was 76, and that has had it's moments. I thought I don't

think I can be the mother to a newborn at 82. So I told them I had now

changed my mind. I am the bad guy now, as the baby is going into foster

care for 15 months to see if Kelly can manage better. They are afraid she

won't be careful enough holding her head, that kind of thing, and she will

get supervised visits 2 hours every two weeks.

All the girls showed up at court, all wanting to adopt just the baby. They

all have their own lives, plus children, and not home to supervise a new baby

all day . CPS told me they were going to put her in foster care temporarily,

and that the boy, Dan, would not be able to go near the baby as she is

protected by the restraining order too.

I may never see my number eight great grand daughter, it is sad. I feel

bad for Kelly, and while I wanted to do something I really knew would be

probably more than I could handle, if someone else hadn't put their finger

in the pie, and got Kelly thinking I wanted to steal her baby, I might just

now be rocking a baby, loving every minute of it.

God looks out for all of us, I think this time he looked out for the baby

and for me. Kelly will be all right, she didn't want to give up her independence

to come here , that is what she said. I haven't heard from her, but I know I

will, because she loves me and I love her.

I rocked her as a baby.