It was a mentally grueling day. My oldest daughter called from the cab of an eighteen-wheeler she is sharing with a married man. “We’re not doin’ nuttin’” she screamed when I told her it wasn’t right. She tried to rationalize her actions and then fault me for not being happy that she’s working (as a household mover.) We went round and round. I said if his wife knew she would be angry, hurt, and insecure. My daughter retorted that it’s his wife’s problem if she couldn’t trust him. I told her it’s wrong and dangerous footing for them to continue like this - people don’t plan to fall in love, they don’t plan to…

It was a useless conversation, I know. My daughter will be twenty-six years old next month. Young you may think, but she’s seen more road than I hope anyone reading this. I am more than twice her age and I expect it won’t be long before she looks older than I will. By her own choice, she’s been on and off the street for nine years. She carried three babies with little-to-no prenatal care, consumed alcohol and drugs while pregnant, and gave the first one to a stranger. Each time I have offered to help her get on her feet, to care for the baby while she worked, or attended school. Within weeks after each birth she was releasing custody to me, the only way I would take them. That’s because I knew if I didn’t have legal guardianship, she would use them as a pawn for manipulation. Thankfully, she’s been neutered. Yes, I know that’s not a term used for women.

Today’s conversation: I asked her how she could think I could be that naïve. She screamed some more and I hung up. She called back wanting to know if she could move back home and get a job. Nine years and she says she wants to move home. Nine years of so many men she can’t name them, teeth rotting from crack cocaine, living without routine, responsibility, and regret? Only she knows if she even knows.

Can she come home? No. It’s plain, but not so simple. I told her she needs more help than I can give her. She needs resources and services more than I know exist and how to get them. She must know they exist. Countless volunteers work the street everyday trying to help people get out of homelessness and on their feet through job training, counseling and housing. She needs them. They know what they are doing. They understand the addiction of homelessness better than I do. They can probably peg the ones who will remain in the lifestyle and those who want to rise from the ashes. I fear my daughter is the type to remain in the pit. Her situation is everyone’s fault but her own.

Today she wants me to get her into rehab. I asked her how I could do that. “Make some phone calls.” I asked why she couldn’t call, “Because I’m in friggin’ El Paso that’s why!”
The screaming continued and I said I was on my way to a meeting: a true statement. She called three times in twenty-minutes. She forgot I said I would be in a meeting. She left voicemails.

“You’re always saying you love me. Now’s your chance to show it. When I need you, you won’t help me. You’ve never done anything for me. I don’t see why I can’t move home and get a job. I’ll move out in a month.”

Nine years without a high school education. Nine years unemployed. Nine years just hanging out. Nine years panhandling. Nine years using government services to pay travel expenses to get from another state back to Texas. Nine years of walking into an emergency room for healthcare. Nine years is a long time to go back and look for the little girl she once was.

It was a mentally grueling day.

Instead, we have been playing Skip-bo (cards) for three days stuffing our emotions with buttercream iced cupcakes, careful to keep what little conversation is not about the game, on-the surface, where it is “safe.” DNA in our family apparently means, “do not ask.” Uncomfortable in a crowded elevator where everyone pretends to be a lone traveler I am compelled to break the silence if only a comment about the weather. My sisters: strangers to me, seemingly at peace in an environment of pretense intensifies the awkwardness.

We live hundreds of miles apart. It’s not the physical miles, birth order, nor the years between our ages, that emotionally separates us. It is an invisible inpenetratable wall built of stones. Rough, cold, hard, slippery, sharp, painful rocks.

When is it and how is it we begin to shelve feelings pushing them aside for so long we become strangers even to ourselves? I want to live in reality where I can feel something, whether it be sweetness or sorrow - to know that I am alive, lest my own heart become of stone. If we could only take those rocks, sledgehammer in hand and begin to break them apart one-by-one, there would be no wall to isolate us.

Sara and Granddaddy (my husband Steve) left for McDonald’s. Actually I was shocked he suggested they go, he hates the place. What we won’t do for our grandchildren. Her Daddy met them at McDonald’s and later, Steve returned home with a look of “you won’t believe” on his face. He relayed his story:

“As soon as we walked in Sara tried to take off to the playscape, but I made her stay with me. I had no sooner gotten our order and placed the tray on the table when Sara knocked my cup of water over. I went to get extra napkins to wipe the water and just as I returned to the table Sara had opened the packet of catsup for her chicken nuggets and…”

The bells began to toll. The magic of a princess in royal gala abruptly ended like coachmen morphed back into mice. There, seated in the molded plastic seat in McDonald’s where a princess had been, sat a little girl in a red-spattered dress.