Hectic Life

(Above: The first trip to see Chris after 10 years of searching for him. On the left is Junior, Chis is in the middle and Julia is on the right as they race up the hill.)

Okay, so I've been super busy... like always :D. Life has been hectic but good. I am back in college and am going into my 3rd quarter toward an AA in education, working my way to a transfer degree to a 4yr school. The eventual goal is to become a high school English teacher (crazy huh?). I have been writing short stories, working on my marriage and working part-time. It is a pretty full schedule, considering that between us my husband and I have 5 children, but I wouldn't want it any other way. My husband and I have recently found my stepson Christopher. There's a long story behind that, and I think I'll take the time to tell you about it tonight (even though I have a TON of homework to do).

So Chris is my husband Lee's son from a previous relationship and he is only about 3 months older than our son William Lee Junior. In the beginning of Chris's life it was hard for all of us (myself, Lee and Chris's mom Heather) to keep in touch because money was always so tight for all of us. We were all young, 17, 18 & 21 respectively, and we had no idea how to be grown-ups (even though we were all trying hard to figure it out). The lack of money had us moving often and not being able to afford a phone very often. Unfortunately for Chris, (for all of us really) this led to times when we would lose touch for a month or 2, sometimes as much as 6 months. Then there came a time when my husband and I were homeless and we left our children in my parents care to avoid putting them through living in a homeless shelter. At the same time, Heather and Chris moved. It was the biggest disaster that could ever happen to our family, because she had no way to let us know where they were going.
This led to a frantic search on our part for Chris, and it took about 2 years to finally find him again.

It was a hard 2 years, depressing and heartbreaking, fraught with worry and anxiety. We used public records and phone books, directory assistance and even took a few trips to Everett, WA (a trip of about 75-100 miles depending on where we were living) because that is where Heather was from and we thought she might go back. During this time, we moved across the state for a job opportunity my husband had. That made the trip to Everett about 300 miles and more than we could afford to spend. We did not give up trying to find him though, instead I decided to take matters into my own hands and invest 50 dollars that we really didn't have (it was meant for the power bill) in a people search service.

Right there on the phone they came up with several addresses and phone numbers (all out dated unfortunately) as well as Heather's aunt's phone number. We called her that night and gave her a message to give Chris and his mom to have them call us. It was a tense wait, but Heather called us back the next day and for the first time in over 2 years we talked to Chris (he was 4 years old at this point). It was heavenly to know where he was, and that he was okay, but more so to see him! We made arrangements to pick him up and bring him to Spokane where we were living within days. My sister-in-law Dolly and I went on a shopping spree for clothes and bedding (as well as a bed) for Chris (Dolly bought it all happily because we were broke).
We had Chris with us in Spokane for almost a month the first time Lee took the Greyhound bus over to get him. He got to know his younger brother Junior and his little sister Julia (it was a little rocky at first because they were strangers to each other again, after all Julia was only a couple of months old when we lost Chris), and of course us.

Lee and I treasured every moment we had with him and though we knew we could never make up for lost time, we certainly tried. We made as many memories as we could, trying to fill the void the missing years had left. We took the kids to Riverfront Park and fed the marmots, we went on picnics and just played together, bonding again. After the first visit, Lee went to get Chris on the bus about once a month for a week, sometimes 2. It was going well... And then it wasn't. I don't really know what happened, but again Heather was gone. It could have been anything, she was living on state assistance and social security, never getting much money, so maybe they couldn't pay their rent (I am afraid to ask why).

We were shocked and scared. Where were they? Was Chris okay? Did he have a place to live? Was he safe? It was the nightmare all over again. This time it would be the worst time, the longest time, the most frustrating and heart breaking time. It lasted forever (or at least it felt like an eternity to us). Time passed and we looked, and looked, and looked. We called every number we could find, including her aunt again. There was still no news, and after a couple of weeks with no word from Heather, we called her aunt back and threatened legal action if she wouldn't tell us where or how to get a hold of her. Nothing worked.

More time passed, and we all spiraled into depression. The kids missed their big brother, Junior even came up with an imaginary friend, his name was Chris. It was heart wrenching to watch the kids grieve for him, and worse because we were both struggling as well. We never gave up hope, and we kept on looking, but everything we did led back to disappointment. After 2 years we got a letter in the mail from the state of Montana informing us that they were going to with hold money from my husband's pay checks for child support!

This was exciting news because that meant that we at least knew which state Christopher was in, and we had a place to start the search fresh. We did online people searches in the state of Montana for them, but we could find no evidence of Heather ever having a phone, lease or utility bill in her name there. This in and of itself was not surprising because her only source of income was state assistance and most of those places will only give you an account or lease if you are employed. Heather had always depended on her boyfriend to put things in his name for them, and we knew that. We searched his name and came up with some possibles, but not the right guy.

We paid for yet another professional search, and were excited to find a Montana address for them, but no phone number. We were hesitant to proceed because we had no idea why she had left the last time, was she angry with us for something? Or was she worried we were going to try to take Chris away from her? If it was either of those reasons and we sent her a letter (we couldn't come up with the money to get to Montana on the spot) then she would know we knew were they were and she would run. So we waited, and while we did I started searching the big social networking sites (myspace, facebook & twitter at this point) again for any sign of either of them (Chris was 14 years old by now), and so did Lee.

One day he stumbled across Heather's myspace page even though it was a few months old, her only activity on it was from the day it was created. Still we both sent her messages and friend requests in the hopes she would decide to check it. She never did though. A few more months went by and we debated the pros and cons of just showing up on their doorstep in Montana, we had even decided to go for it with our tax return in February. Then one day Lee tried one more search of facebook and found Heather's page. We tried not to get our hopes up, there hadn't been any activity on it in a over a month, though she had actually used it frequently before that. Taking this as a sign that she might log back into facebook, Lee sent her a friend request with a message asking her to call or e-mail and giving her all of our contact information. Then we waited.

We waited an excruciating 2 days, then 3. Then Lee had the idea to contact her friends. He sent out friend requests to anybody that had directly commented on her wall, and scrolling through her friends he found her stepfather and her mother. He sent requests to them both with the same message about having Heather get into contact with us. We waited some more, positively obsessed with facebook, Lee's e-mail and cell phone, constantly checking to see if she had gotten in touch. It was unbearable, then Lee had the idea to go back to our original method of search, he called information. From her facebook page, we were able to ascertain where Heather's mom lived. He called information in that city and found several numbers. The first one he called was the right one.

After 10 years, we knew where Chris was, and how he was, and we knew that Heather would be calling in the next couple of days to talk to us. Even without hearing his voice again, or seeing his face, it was a very emotional time for us. We were afraid of how Chris would react when we did talk to him the first time, would he think we had abandoned him? That we didn't love him, or even bother to look for him? Too our great surprise, the same day we talked to her mom, Heather called us. Needless to say, we were over the moon with excitement and happiness.

We are getting to know Chris again, talking to him on the phone every couple of days and visiting as often as we can. We live in the Shelton, Washington area which is north of Olympia, and they live in the Everett, Washington area so it's a long drive to visit. The drive is about 120 miles, but hopefully we won't have to make it very often any more. Once Chris gets comfortable with us again, we hope he will be willing to come home to us to spend weekends and part of school breaks. The one thing I do know for sure is that now that we have finally found him, we will never lose him again. For one thing, he is old enough (he is almost 16 years old) to know how to find us again if something should happen and we lose touch again. For another thing, we have all of his grandmother's contact information and she always knows how to find them.

So our hectic life is starting to find a normal rhythm and our fractured family is now whole again. This time it will stay that way.