friday june 2 2006

I'm still not recovered from the throat infection. So that was another feverish night, with the feel someone has put glass in my throat.

Thami and Nyo had the first two hours free from school. So they had planned to go together.
Nyo got very disturbed when it turned out that Thami also had the third hour off.
He went to school protesting that he would be too late and had to stay late, because he wouldn't be in time at school when he went alone. Etc etc.
I heard him muttering and complaining when he already was outside the garden... Hmmpffffff...

So I had the mobile phone with me all morning, expecting to get a call from school that he had had an anger attack again.

In three weeks they'll go to an amusement park with the groups of Thami and Nyo.
A great chance to go somewhere they've never been before.

To Nyo it's just another disturbance.
I tried to get him interested by going to the site of the amusement park and going through all the things to do there.
He got a bit more quiet when he saw it wasn't all about speed and noise.

Still, I'm not sure what to do.
I expect problems in the bus to and fro, so Jim has to go with him. But wouldn't that put Nyo in an awkward position?
Jim says he can go to the amusement park by himself, but that's almost impossible without a car.
I don't want to keep him at home again... but what else can I do?

What a difference with the girls.
Djenné came home telling that they would go in a few weeks to a huge playground. She was very glad and already made plans.
I wish matters were always that easy.

On top of it all a letter came in with confidential on top.
Thought it was the recipe of the psychiatrist and opened it.

It was a letter from a social worker.
She worked with Jim's mother and his mother had told her she was very sad that she didn't see Jim and the children.
She was contacting us without his mother's knowledge.

In the letter she asked questions that sounded very agressive: like what it must mean to the children that we were witholding their grandparents.
The questions she asked where the same we asked ourselves and Jim's parents, so they're not new.
But this lady (if you can call her that), worded them very agressively and the whole letter was a clear image of what she was thinking: that man is a no-feel one and doesn't care about anyone else.

Well, Jim is someone with a spectrumdisorder, but that doesn't mean he can't use his inetlligence and he hasn't learned some behaviour, and sure I haven't kept silent in getting him to keep a relationship with his family, even though it was pretty clear they didn't like me at all.
They wanted Jim to marry the girl of the backneighbours, and no-one else.

The whole letter was written like she knew it all and we were the bad guys.

In fact Jim's father didn't want contact at all, and he forbid his wife to have contact.

When he was dying Jim went with the oldest children.
Later he took the girls too.
He kept contact.... so either that social worker misunderstood when Jim's mother expressed regret over the past, or Jim's mother has memory issues.
(My gram had them too, but in her own way. And she knew she was manipulating the world by telling my mother she didn't recognise her, and by warmly welcoming me.)

Well, whatever the reason is that social worker got her attitude, and the letter caught me at a bad moment.
A lot of old pain whirled up.
Flashes of the wedding, when I was kneeling before the Maria statue and his father made an ugly remark, memories of the time we got the children and tried to phone Jim's father and mother to get the family relations OK again, talks with my dad.
Jim's father wasn't completely normal.
He always observed the people he knew like a private detective.
Many family members didn't want contact with him, because he could look into their house for hours, follow them on the streets, and make up his own stories about their behaviour.
He even barged in a conversation an uncle of Jim had with a teacher, because he thought the uncle was having an affair.

His paranoia also stretched to his own wife.
He followed her to physiotherapy, and when she came out 5 minutes later he accussed her of having an affair and he treated her like dirt for a long time.
She didn't stand up to it... maybe learned not to in the past, but it was terrible to see what was happening and I told him to use his common sense or go with his wife to physiotherapy to see that coming out 5 minutes late didn't mean anything.

He disliked me and maybe was attracted by me, as he couldnt keep his hands off me.
Starting at the shoulder his hand would go lower and lower, and many times I had to slap his hands away and tell him straight in the face not to touch me at all.
The only thing I could was telling Jim and have him stay near me all the time.

I don't really care what such an unknown social worker thinks, but I do care she maintains a professional attitude.
In her letter she told things about Jim's mother we don't need to know and we doubt she has permission to tell us, and she verified the adress with a friend who lives here, whereas she should have verified it at the council or with a social worker here.

So it feels bad... and sad.

I phoned Jim to let him know.
When he came home he said the same things as I had written down in a letter to that woman.
But he has to decide if he wants to send it.

he asked his mother after his father's death if she regretted staying away from us, and she said "no". Which has hurt us a lot.
Denying the existence of your grandchildren isn't nothing.
Maybe he has made her think, because according to the social worker she regrets it now.
Well... we have to see how to react....

thursday june 1 2006

wednesday may 31 2006

monday may 29 2006