I’m nine years old in my dark purple pajamas, huddled in the back of a police car with my little brother, Dennis. It stinks of plastic, cigarettes and stale pizza.
“Put on your seatbelt,” I tell him.
I don’t want to give the officer a chance to yell at us when he comes back. I’m cold and scared, but I don’t let my brother see.
A second police car pulls onto the dark road, and I can just see the shadow of my mother in the back.
An officer opens the driver’s side door and plunks his heavy frame behind the wheel. “Buckle up, kids,” he says, not looking to see our belts already fastened across our laps. “We’re following your mother to the station.”
I hold my brother’s hand on the drive, and when we get to the police station, the officer leads us into a room with rows of plastic chairs and a woman sitting at a long desk towards the back. My mother isn’t there.
“Have a seat.”
The officer steps over to the receptionist and whispers, pointing to us. The woman nods her head.
“Your mother will be with you soon,” and with that, he turns on his heel to leave the room.
It’s cold in here, too. We left without our jackets.
The little hand on the clock moves. It’s 1:07am.
Dennis climbs onto one of the plastic seats and curls into a ball, so I sit beside him with an arm over the back of his chair.
“Mom will be here soon,” I tell him, wondering if that’s true.
We wait in the empty room for hours. Dennis falls asleep, but I keep myself awake by swinging my legs and humming loudly.
It’s 4:33am when Mom’s friend Joyce arrives. I wake up my brother and together we stand near her, not knowing what else to do.
A door at the far side of the room opens, and my mom enters with an officer on each side. Mom’s eyes are red and her hands are shaking like they do when she needs a cigarette.
“Don’t let this happen again,” one of the officers says to my mother.
Joyce hugs mom and holds on for what seems like a long time. “We’re having a sleepover at my place, kids,” she says finally, in a fake cheerful voice.
***
That’s how I learned that no one was going to take care of me, but me.
I was a latch key kid with a single mom in the Eighties, after all, left home by myself when I had the chickenpox. I cooked Kraft macaroni and cheese for my brother and me when my mom worked weekends.
The belief that I had to take care of myself drove me to be strong, resourceful and independent, but also felt completely alone in the world.
Thoughts like this that seem true become beliefs, and then we use those beliefs to make sense of the world. The world I created was tough and lonely, but survivable, as long as I worked hard and never asked for help.
What I didn’t know when I was nine – hell, what I didn’t know when I was forty – is that I was never really alone.
If I talk to my nine year-old self in the back of that police car, I would tell her what I know now:
You’re okay.
You’ll get through this, like you’ve gotten through everything, because there’s something bigger looking out for you. It’s always with you.
I’d remind her of the Footprints in the Sand poster and how Jesus said, “During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints…it was then that I carried you.”
Even then, little Stephanie. Especially then.
Yours in love and play,
Steph
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