Copyright 1996(c)

                            OLD DOGS
                         by Del Freeman

     Christmas always reminds me of my last intimacy with fear. As
I outfit myself for the annual photo with grandchild, I remember
it again. It was 1976 when a social-worker held my life and my
sanity in his hands.  
     My aunt, who lived it with me, says some pain is never
forgotten. She says it becomes an old dog sleeping in your soul
that you occasionally kick to see if it still hurts. 
     Twenty years later, I can still feel the rightful indignation
I felt when an HRS worker summoned me to a meeting. He wanted to
discuss a report of child abuse -- against me.
     Well, that, of course, was insanity. I adored my behavior-
problem daughter. We'd run the gamut of shrinks and medical
specialists and learned, according to the high-credentialed child
psychologist, this too, would pass. My daughter was given the
requisite Ritalin prescription of the decade, and we attended the
Child Guidance Center. I was June-freakin-Cleaver. There were
people out there who were really abusing children, for God's sake.
Who was this wacko?
     You know those movies where the nice next-door neighbor brings
you over a baked ham when you move in? Then he begins to turn up
in odd places and times, and one day you find him standing in your
living room wearing dark, wrap-around sunglasses? That's who he
was. 
     The daughter continued willful. She resisted the shrink's
solution of 'quiet time'; shrieking the neighbors into a certainty
she was being ill-treated. 
     I accepted a new job and bought a new, used car for
transportation the 12-mile drive one-way. I took some time off to
spend with my daughter, and we opened the door to a uniformed
policeman and a female HRS worker who said they had come for my
baby. 
     In panic, I dialed attorneys, reaching none. I was torn
between not relinquishing my child and fear of a scene that would
traumatize her. I decided it would be best, for her, to encourage
her to go. It could all be straightened out quickly and easily, I
thought.  
     Scared beyond words, thinking only to get her back, I began
to weep and pace. An attorney-friend chose that time to return my
call, saying I should have insisted on a warrant. I called my aunt,
who was appalled. She and my uncle immediately called HRS and
volunteered to keep my daughter, offering their opinion of this
absurdity.
     In Court, the florid-faced judge heard crooked-moustache
out and turned to me. "Anything you say can be used against you,"
he told me, effectively scaring me silent. He gave my six-year-old
to my aunt and uncle while I was investigated. Clearly, I was
guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of a child-protector such
as he. Months later, crooked-moustache was to brag of his influence
with this very same judge.
     I started my new job, internally hysterical, aware that I must
appear anything but. My new, used car turned out to have been
wrecked and stuck back together. In mid-June, I was driving without
air to keep it running, and wore out a set of front tires every
three months. During the 30 days the Court gave HRS to investigate
me, I drove my daughter daily from Mandarin to Jacksonville day-
care and back, 40 miles, twice a day. It seemed a perfect time to
harm if that was my intent, but the Court was unconcerned. This was
my punishment for smart-mouthing the establishment, and I
determined to do better. 
     I gave HRS every detail of my life. In private, I wavered
between cursing them, and pleading for compassion, forgetting and
forgiving that they ill-judged me. All I wanted was my baby. 
     I tried not to let the new boss see how crazy I was with
worry. He nonetheless began to look at me funny and wonder if I was
'having a personal problem' -- the curse of all advancement, and,
possibly, continued employment.
     I saw my future slipping away with my present. The stress was
unimaginable unless you had it; unbearably indescribable if you
did. I reached bottom sitting on the side of the road along
Southside Boulevard, crying piteously with a flat tire and no
spare, on my way to 'visit' my daughter at my aunt's house. A
policeman stopped, took me to fix the tire, then put it back on. 
     After thirty days, crooked-moustache said he couldn't 
recommend a hearing to return custody, because he hadn't finished
investigating. I knew, from contacting various references I'd
supplied, that he hadn't started. 
     My aunt questioned him intently on his reasons, and when he
had gone, still resolute, she said maybe it was time to hire a
lawyer I could ill afford. 
     The lawyer's concurrence that I 'didn't seem like a child
abuser' left me elated beyond any reasonable reaction to such a
judgment from a complete stranger, particularly one on my own
payroll.  
     I remember being so paranoid I called my aunt from a pay phone
that couldn't possibly be tapped, to tell her the lawyer had judged
me a non-abusive-type. Still sane enough to ridicule my own
paranoia, I was nonetheless helpless in its grip. I don't know if
she was surprised to find me so pitifully grateful to have my
character validated by somebody outside the crazed circle, but I
was. I don't think I realized how far over the edge I was until
that moment.   
     My lawyer called me at home that evening with a hearing date
in mere days. 
     "What did you say or do, that I didn't?" I asked him.  
     "I said, 'Hi, I'm a lawyer,'" he answered. 
     A last-minute glitch forced a final interview with crooked-
moustache, and I'm ashamed to say I had gone so far into fear's
madness, I begged my aunt for accompaniment.
     They take your child and it makes you crazy but you don't want
them to think you're crazy or they won't give your child back, so
you try to act sane. An old dog that mean -- you want to stand far
back when you kick him.
     I was afraid of the system which let this guy at me, but I was
more afraid of his corrupt power. I insisted on a new worker, and
after one visit, he closed the case, saying he knew the crooked-
moustache.  
     The State Attorney's Office, which mandatorily follows-up,
did likewise, by phone, saying they, too, knew or knew of him.
     The attorney who represented HRS against me, now a Judge,
confided later that he knew crooked-moustache was power-mad when he
stomped out in indignantly after being kept waiting ten minutes.
Knowing that, he either did not concern himself with the validity
of charges, or did not see it as his concern.
                               ***
     Today, when little arms hug me again and a little voice pipes
up, gloriously infinitum, I nudge that old dog aside, gently. I
don the outfit to go and be happily double-chin photo'd with my
wondrous granddaughter, in a Christmas-red hat covering a head
filled with memories of an old dog to mean to die.

                               END