Parenting Out of Control

My name is Tiffany Zurich. I am a thirteen year old girl who attends Calbel Middle School. I spend most of nights at home while my mother goes out with her friends. She is not much older than me. She is only a couple years older, thirteen years older to be exact. It is six o’clock in the evening and I am very hungry. I have not eaten since ten o’clock at school. I ask my mother for something to eat but she gives me the same answer she always does.
“Tiffany, you are old enough to walk to the store by yourself and buy something to eat. You do not need me to tend to you anymore.” My mother said.
“Well mom, you have not tended to me in quite a while. You are always worried about yourself and what you can do for fun. Sometimes I think you forget that I even exist.” I said this to her as I listened to her on the phone with one friend of hers.
“No, I have not forgotten about you. It is just that I have a life to. I will be leaving for the night as soon as I find my keys.” My mother said this as she ran around the house searching frantically.
“Fine leave me see if I care. You are just a horrible parent and I cannot deal with it any longer.”
“I am not a horrible parent. I told you that I just have a life too. I am leaving now. Good night.”
“I decided to call my grandpa. He does not live very far away only about ten minutes down the road. I told him all about what was going on and how my mom left me without feeding me dinner. I asked him if he would come pick me up.”
“Yes my dear I will be more than happy to come pick you up. You can just stay with me for the night and I will get you something to eat for dinner.” My grandfather Roger told me this as we were on the phone.
“I will be ready in a half hour and no, you don’t have to do that I will get myself something to eat for dinner.”
“No, don’t do that. I want to get you dinner and spend some quality time with my granddaughter.”
“Alright then let me go get my stuff together so I am ready. I hung up the phone and ran up the stairs. I started to pack my things in a small bag that was on the floor when the phone rang again. I went to the phone and answered it. My grandfather was on the other line again. He told me to pack clothes for more than a few days because I will be with him for a while. I said okay and then he told me he was here.”
When I got in the car door my grandfather said “Where would you like to go eat? We can go anywhere it is your choice.” Grandfather said this to me as I was placing my things in the back of the car.
“Anywhere is fine with me.”
After we were done eating dinner we went back to my grandfather’s house and I got all of my things situated in the spare bedroom since I would be staying with my grandfather for a few nights.
“By then it was ten o’clock and my mother must have been home. I wonder if she even cared where I was at.”
I decided to call her just to see if she even noticed that I was gone. When she answered the phone I could tell by her voice that she was frantic. She asked where I was and my response was why do you care? After she explained how scared she was and that she wanted me to come home I felt bad, but I was not going home. I was tired of being treated with no respect.
From one room to the other room I then yelled to my grandpa. “Can you come here for a quick minute? My mom wants me to come home. What do I say to her?” When he heard this he was furious he came into the room in a hurried rush while screaming.
“You are not going back to that house. You will not go back there until your mother turns her act around. You will be staying right here with me in my house. That is the end of this discussion if your mother does not like it tell her to take it up with me!” That is what my grandfather had to say about that.
I do understand where he is coming from, but then again he is in some ways wrong. That is my mother and if she wants to see me she should be allowed. The more I think about it though I really do not want to see her. She has made the first thirteen years of my life miserable so I guess that is what she will do for the rest of the time I am with her. I never did anything wrong to her so why does she treat me so poorly? She was not mistreated when she was a child she had a good life, so why would she want to make mine so horrible?
Well my mother would not stop calling me to go home so my grandfather got involved. He called her and said “Listen here Susie I will be keeping Tiffany with me and that is the end of it.”
I do not think my mother liked that response too much but oh well, she could not change it.
The next day after I arrived home from school we went to my house to get me more clothes. The few outfits I had packed the other night would not be enough for my stay. I may be with my grandfather for a little while longer than originally expected.
When I walked into the house I could not see a thing. I could make out the image of my mother sitting alone in a corner of the living room crying. She had only a candle lit and the rest of the house was pitch black. It was kind of spooky to be in the dark, so as soon as I got upstairs I flicked on the lights.
As I walked in my room I grabbed my neon pink suitcase out of my closet. I then walked over to my drawers and closet and packed my clothes from them into the suitcase rather quickly. I knew grandfather was waiting in the car outside and he is very impatient.
On my way out of the house my mother looked up and said “I am sorry, really sorry. I never meant for this to happen. Come here and give me a hug good bye.”
As I walked over to my mother I started to feel as if in I was going to cry. I held back the tears and I hugged my mom in the same tight grasp way she was hugging me.
Outside my grandfather started to beep the horn in is Lincoln. I looked at my mom and said “I am sorry but I have to go grandfather is ready.” As I pulled away from my mother’s hug I could feel her holding on, but I had no choice to stay I had to go.
I have a feeling that when I left my mom cried again, but this is her fault that I can no longer be with her. I mean all her fault, if she would not always have to leave me home so that she could go out this would have never happened to us. Sometimes separations are hard but they have to be done in order to fix a problem that is occurring times and times again.
When I got in the car my grandfather said “So what did your mother have to say my dear? Is she ready for you to come home yet?”
My response back to him could not really give him a straight answer. I really truthfully did not know if she was ready for me to come home yet so I said “I really do not know. She seemed pretty upset when I walked in. She told me that she was sorry and she then gave me a hug. That is most I have got in a very long time from her though so I guess that it shows something.”
My grandfather not happy about the answer I gave him said to me “I still cannot believe that the daughter I raised acts like this. I thought I taught her better than that.”
It has been a few months now and I got a call from my mother the other day, she told me that she had started to change her act. When I got off of the phone I went downstairs and told my grandfather about her phone call. He told me that he would call her later and have a talk with her about this.
Later that night I was doing my homework when I got called down into the living room. When I walked in I was surprised to see my mother sitting there along side of my grandfather. He told me they wanted to talk to me and then just went straight into the conversation without even telling me what it was about first. The words he said to me struck me right at the beginning and were stuck in my head all the way till the end of the conversation. I just kept running those first shocking words he said to me to myself as I sat there and listened to him talk for another good ten minutes at least. He said “Sweetheart I think it is time that you go home with your mother now. She has seemed to change her act and is ready for you back.” I was honestly shocked to hear him say this. I never thought I would hear those words leave my grandfathers mouth and I was not sure if I was ready to hear that from him just yet.
“My love, I am so sorry for all of the bad times I have made you have but I promise you that I have changed. Please come home.” My mother saying this to me made me regret the things she has done to me even more so then before. I just cannot take being mistreated; I do not like it at all. I deserve better than that.
I looked into the pale blue eyes of my very fragile and pail mother with her long blonde hair clipped back and I said “Yeah, I know what you mean I am sorry for all of the bad times you have given me too.” I think that by saying that I hurt her feelings but I did not really care at that moment.
After all of that commotion went on I asked if I could have a moment with my grandfather. They told me of course and my mother left the room. It was just my grandfather and I in the big open living room with just a short breath separating this very curious question I had to ask him. I looked at him straight in the eye and said “Are you sure this is the right thing? Do you truly believe that my mom has changed her act? You would not agree to something that may end up hurting me, right?” When he answered my question with a confident yes that he was sure that this was the right thing and a no he would never agree to anything that may let something happen to me. I then said thank you for everything and went to pack my bags.
After everything of mine was gathered I gave my grandfather a hug and left the house to get in the car with my mother.
On the way home my mother looked at me and she said “Listen Tiffany, I am very sorry about the last few years of our life. I did not mean to make them so miserable for you. I was a bad parent, but I have changed my ways. I have learned in these last few months that I have spent without you how much I miss you and that I need you back. I could not take another day without you at home. If you do not forgive me I completely understand.”
I looked at her very closely, and took every word she said to me into deep consideration. I could tell that she meant every last word that left her mouth. Not wanting to hurt her more than I already did I looked at her and said “It is okay, I forgive you now. I know that you did not mean to do what you did. Sometimes things happen and we need time to fix our mistakes. Not everyone is perfect.”
My mother then looked at me and the words she said to me brought tears to my eyes. She said to me “The most precious gift I have ever received was on August 25, 1995. The day you were born. I could never stand to not have you in my life you are my, everything. Since the first time I ever laid eyes on you I knew you would always be my beautiful daughter that I was proud to have. I can’t wait until that day when you do something to make me extremely proud and I can stand up and say yes, that is my daughter Tiffany Zurich.”
My answer back to her was “You are the best mother I could have asked for. I should be grateful that I was born to such a phenomenal person like you. Not everyone gets so lucky. ”
As we walked in the house we decided to call it a day, but before we headed to bed we both promised the same thing to each other.
We promised right then and there to each other that we will take the time to make the rest of our lives that we spend together more than great and appreciate everything that we have because you never know when something you love might be taken away from you!