Even though their intentions were noble, my mother and grandmother always seemed to interfere with the plans I had made to handle the situation with Matt. Tough love was hard to implement when your relatives made you feel like a horrible parent for standing firm. I better understand their feelings now that I am a grandparent, but it did not make life any easier at that time.
I should have expected my grandmother to
react the way she did. She loved Matt so much. He was her first great grandson,
given to her by her first grandchild…me! She kept Matt as a small toddler when
I returned to work three days a week and kept him until I stopped working when
I became pregnant with Jeffrey, my second son. Matt was almost 3, so on those
days for two years she spoiled Matt as only a great grandmother can.
She and my mother were always involved in
my boys’ lives. If they played ball, they were there. If they had a program at
school, they were there. They never missed a life event in any of my boys’
lives. All the principals at the schools knew them. If Mama and Nana needed to
get in touch with my boys, they bypassed the authorities and went straight to
the source. They could be found knocking on the doors of the lunchroom or
walking down the halls at the high school. One principal tried to explain the policy of
contacting students to them at first, but he later resorted to just telling
everyone it’s the Hobby grandmothers. My grandmother had sold her home and property
to the Jefferson County Board of Education for the sole purpose of building a
new high school in Clay, so she felt she still owned it.
When Matt finished Bradford, we were
prepared to send him to yearlong program, but he convinced my grandmother that
he could do what he needed by staying at home. He would not follow our rules so
he moved in with Mama because she would allow it. I think she really thought she
could love him out of addiction, but she only enabled him to continue his bad
habits. Her way of handling the situation was to be nosy and ask a lot of questions.
When she did not get answers, she and my mother would proceed to follow Matt
like two old lady detectives. What made matters worse was that they would
report their findings to me.
Of course, Matt had a reason or excuse
for every phone call and every trip to out of the way places. His reactions
became violent at times. I have been called names that I never thought my child
would even say, much less address directly to his mother. I had some training
in staying calm from a teaching experience I had long before the serious
trouble started with Matt. I did not know why God had placed me there at that
time but years later I realized He was preparing me for what was to come with
my own child.
I was working a leave in first grade when
there was a major incident at our school that required intervention from the
state department of education. I was not
involved in standardized testing in first grade, but I had a child with some
severe emotional problems. My problem was that the administration was so preoccupied
with the investigation that they did not have time to concern themselves with a
student who would not or could not follow rules. I was on my own. This child
would taunt me and the other children with his actions and words. He was acting
out in ways I had never seen at the time. When I tried to correct him, he would
go into a temper tantrum, often kicking me and screaming. After some inquiries
on my own, I discovered that he was being raised by a relative because he had
seen his own mother murdered. He was also being abused by another relative. I
immediately felt compassion for him. I was able to stay calm in the face of his
anger because it was not truly him acting out. It was the stress placed on him
as an innocent child that had made him act like a monster.
When Matt would act out toward me, I
would immediately remember what I had found out about my student. Matt, like that child, was reacting to an
outside force. This was not his true nature. His drug use was making him act
like a monster.
Matt could use words that cut to the
core. Once when I was talking to him, my grandmother interjected her opinion.
Matt immediately said, “What do you know, you’re f---ing ninety?” that hurt my
grandmother so much, but she kept quiet. She had a weird way of retaliating her
hurts. She would hold back until just the opportune moment, then pounce on the
perpetrator. She had a fantastic memory.
The next day Matt asked in his usual
demanding tone if my mother and grandmother would go to the store and get his
Mountain Dew and some cigarettes. That was what he existed on most of the time.
He had a sense of impatience and asked if they could please hurry. This proved
to be just the right moment for my grandmother who responded, “I don’t know,
after all, I’m f---ing ninety.” Score
one for Mama!!
Mother and Mama liked to feel like they
were helping, even if they were not. Matt was always having car trouble. He had
so many wrecks yet somehow, he still managed to stay on insurance. The first
car he wrecked was a small Toyota Joe had purchased to travel in to do his
comedy. Matt had managed to con Joe into letting him drive it to school. He
flipped it and totaled the car one day coming home from school. No one was
hurt, praise the Lord, but Joe was not happy. It was the first of many
accidents.
Because Matt did not maintain his
automobiles very well, they were always needing work, an oil change, gas,
tires. Once he noticed a low tire on his way out. With no time to fix it, he
drove my grandmother’s car and asked Mama, Nana, and me to get his tire fixed.
Afraid that the tire would go flat before we got to the service place, we
stopped by the BP service station on the way. I was driving his car and my
mother was following in her car. I pulled into the air pump at the BP and my
mother pulled in the spot alongside his car.
When I got out and examined the tires, I saw
they were nearly threadbare. My mother had already put money in the machine and
proceeded to put air in the tire. She was sometimes very bossy and had a
one-track mind when she was on a mission.
I warned her about the tires and told her not to fill the tire very full
because it might blowout. I had no more gotten the words out of my mouth than
the tire exploded with the loudest bang. It sounded like a shotgun going off.
People came running out of the BP both from curiosity and to see if we were
hurt.
My grandmother who was sitting in
Mothers car, said, “Betty, are you trying to kill me?” Evidently, the valve
stem had whizzed right by my grandmother’s ear like a bullet. The Lord was
looking after us that day because she and we could have been seriously
hurt.
To add to the confusion, a man had come
over and volunteered to help with changing the now blown tire. Matt’s car had a
spare but no jack, so my mother opened her trunk to get hers. When I say it was
a mess would be a major understatement. She did not pay for garbage pickup and
her trunk was filled with bags that she takes to the dumpster when she buys
groceries. There must have been fifty bags in her trunk, besides the usual
items she had picked up from her Saturday yard sales. The man was very polite
and helped us in our predicament.
That afternoon at my grandmother’s house,
my sister-in-law who taught kindergarten was talking about the gunshot they
heard on the playground during recess. The playground was just down the road
from the BP. She said the kids had all
ducked down thinking there was a shooter, and this was even before all the mass
killings. I smiled and tried to contain my laughter. I knew it was just another
normal day for Mama and Nana and I had gotten to be an active participant.
Mama died in 2006 and Mother passed away
two years later in 2008. I am grateful that neither had to experience the
Incident with Matt. They had been through so much of my journey with me. Matt
was fortunate to have two people that cared for him as much as those two did.
As quirky as they were, they loved him with all their hearts. Matt was still living at her house when Mama
passed away. I see now that God had given her the comfort of having someone
with her in her last days. Just before
she died, Mama had asked me to take care of “Little Matt” and her little dog,
Bugsy. Joe and I adopted Bugsy into our home. We cared for Bugsy until his
death and we are still trying to take care of Little Matt.
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