Life Synopsis

A Man Could Not "Kidnap" His Own Child Back Then

When I left my first husband in 1970,

he snatched our 2-year-old and told me not to take our

paid-for car out of town.  Suddenly, I was childless and without a vehicle.

Although I contacted a judge in an effort to get my baby boy back, I was

told that "A man cannot kidnap his own child."

Six months later, when I wanted to

join the Army to make my life better,  the Army wouldn't

let me in unless I first filed an adoption petition, so I

would eventually have no dependents. So my first husband

and I filed a petition that neither one of us planned to

finalize. A short time afterwards, when my second

husband finally was free to marry

me, he got drafted and sent to Germany, right before my

second child was born. So when she was 6 weeks old I took

her to Germany, and the Army paid my new husband two dollars

the day we arrived in Germany. The money situation got so

bad that I had to go to work and quit breast-feeding my

baby. Taking care of my new baby girl, I yearned for

my son who had been taken from me by that first husband




on Mother's Day, 1970; so I wrote my first

husband's mother, who had had my child for two years by

that time and told her I was going to fight to get my son

back whenever I returned ot the States. When she didn't

answer, I wrote the Rusk County courthouse, and they sent

me a copy of my little boy's adoption. He had a new birth

certificate that didn't even have my name on it. I was five

thousand miles away when I found out that my little boy was

no longer legally mine.


So I got very depressed and visited a psychiatrist

because I was in Germany and as an Army dependent, my

medical care was free. After all, I had lost my little boy

because of my own stupidity. I had a right to be depressed.

Fast forward 2 years later. My second husband announced

that he no longer loved me, because I had "lost my

mystery." So I VOLUNTARILY got treated for depression.

During my stay in the hospital in Galveston, I was

kidnapped at gunpoint by a man who later confessed to

killing eleven young women and girls. After I got out of

the hospital, my lawyer told me that I probably would not

get custody of my daughter because I had a psychiatric

history. So I voluntarily gave up custody of my second

child to my second husband's parents. So I had had two

children by two marriages and didn't have either one of my

children.

But my daughter wanted to be with me

so I filed for custody and married a man I had only known

for nine days. I went to court when I had only been married

twelve days. The judge told me to come back the next year

and said he would change the custody arrangements if I was

still married to that new third husband. But my third

husband never went back to court. I didn't see my daughter

for SEVENTEEN years. although my first husband's mother

eventually let me see my son. Then after my son grew up and

graduated college, he married this MEAN woman who told me

that she never wanted me to meet my biological

grandchildren because she was scared of me since I had

"lost" two children. Eventually, my daughter came back to

me. But I've never met my biological grandchildren, and I

haven't seen my son in over 20 years. Life sucks that way

sometimes.

 But God did give me consolation. He

gave me a wayward stepdaughter who needed help raising her

five half-Black kids.

And I have had a life filled with so

much love that I rarely even thought of those two

biological grandchildren I've never met. And when my third

husband had a stroke, I did what I thought was the right

thing and cleaned his paralyzed rear end for four years

until he died of kidney cancer.

Through all the chaos of my life, I

did manage to graduate college, after attending it for ten

years. And I worked twelve years, so I get retirement now

and social security.

And I have an amazing fourth husband

who has two paid-for houses and a shop, and who can do

anything with cars. The reason I'm telling you all this is

that I wanted to show you that your life hasn't been nearly

as eventful as mine. I've even been homeless a couple of

times. And there were many times when I had no running

vehicle. So I've survived a lot of crap, and you can, too.

It's never as bad as it seems. God always has his hand on

us.