Category Archives: absent fathers

The Slog

This is the third of three posts, the first and second are here. If you started reading this blog for the prison theme you may be wondering, what does any of this have to do with Vince going to prison? I don’t know if it does—you tell me.

—

And so I informed people of my decision, which I had known from the moment I’d found out I was pregnant again: I would give the baby up for adoption.

I told Judy, the Catholic Charities social worker, and her eyes lighted up. “I do have a few reservations,” I told her about what I had learned about adopted people in my Abnormal Psychology class. Judy laughed lightly and handed me a clipboard with forms. While I was signing them she said, “We have to trust that God knows what’s best for us. Even if it’s painful—especially if it’s painful, we just have to put ourselves in God’s loving hands.” I thought this was muddled but made a mental note to try to pray in my spare time.

I told my college advisor. “My due date is right before finals but I promise there won’t be any interruptions in my attendance.” She looked a little stunned and said, “We’ll understand if you need to take some time off.”

“No, no—that won’t be necessary,” I cut her off. I didn’t want them to cut me any slack. I would graduate on time. The whole point of this plan was to do what was best for all three of us, so I needed to graduate and get a job.

—

The other point of the plan was to keep it all hush-hush. I would stay away from the family, my friends, and the whole neighborhood where they all lived. If my grandma called and asked if she could visit me, I would make an excuse to keep her away. It would only be for six months, right? It wasn’t as extreme as the case of Margie, a girl I knew in high school, who went through her whole pregnancy and adoption while living in her family’s house. None of them ever talked about it. Now that was weird.

—

So there Vince and I sat, alone, on his first birthday. I had called The Creep and invited him but he had “some really important business” to take care of. In other words, a drug deal. I only saw him once again in the ensuing 36 years.

I did what you’re supposed to do for a baby’s first birthday. I made a cake with one candle and let him eat it with his fingers and smear it all over the place. And I cried…and cried.

Then I stiffened myself and plunged my feelings way down into the deep freeze and didn’t feel anything again for a year. That’s the thing about avoiding negative feelings—it makes you unable to experience positive ones, either.

—

Life went on as before. I trudged through the snow to the daycare, studied furiously, and cleaned the house as though I was in boot camp. As happened during my first pregnancy, perverts tried to pick me up at the bus stop, in stores, in the elevator of my building.

The student who had pressured me to have an abortion was disappointed when I told him I was going the adoption route. “That’s…I’m sorry, but that’s just selfish,” he said. “That poor kid,” he said, staring at my belly.

Sometimes students I didn’t know would try to strike up a conversation.

“When’s your baby due?” they would ask brightly.

“April,” I would respond flatly, giving them fair warning that proceeding with the conversation would be a mistake.

“Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t really care, since I’m giving it up for adoption.”

This would result in sputtering and something like, “You’re so brave—good luck!” as they backed their way out of the room as fast as possible. I hated that line—“You’re so brave.”

Now that I had set my course I didn’t second guess it, but if you had asked me I might have said I was just being practical.

The Choice

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This is the second in a series of posts, starting with this one.

—

I was unmarried and pregnant with a one-year-old baby, on welfare, living in public housing. I was 19.

I had just started to feel better about myself and the future. The first pregnancy had been due to carelessness. This time it was due to birth control failure. It was painful knowing people thought I was stupid.

I had just gotten rid of my pet rat, Smiley, because I couldn’t afford to feed him. If I couldn’t afford to feed a rat, how could I afford to feed another kid?

—

I had gone to a doctor because I was exhausted. His name was Charlie Brown, believe it or not.

I figured he would say I was anemic.

He laughed a yucky laugh when he saw the look on my face.

“That’s what happens to girls like you.”

“What?” I was confused.

“Girls who sleep around shouldn’t be surprised when this happens.”

“But it’s the same father.”

He glanced at Vince as though he was a cockroach.

“So the father is white?” He lowered his voice. “I know some people who would pay handsomely to adopt this baby.”

If a doctor named Charlie Brown said this to me today, I would punch him in the face, then sue him. Instead, I thanked him mechanically and never returned.

—

In spring semester I would take Statistics, English Literature, and part two of Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Abnormal Psychology. My favorite class was Pathology. The Hennepin County medical examiner taught it; his name was Vincent which I took as a good sign. It was basically one long gruesome slide show—or should I say, sideshow. There was the guy who had been decapitated when his snowmobile ran into a barbed wire fence, a baby born without a brain, and a glistening, five-foot-long tapeworm with eye-like markings. I loved it. I didn’t want to drop out.

—

I went to see a social worker at Catholic Charities. Her name was Judy.

“You could give the gift of life to a childless couple!” she exclaimed. I had an image of her as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, drooling and flapping her little claws over this baby. This white baby.

I didn’t care about helping some rich couple who probably lived in the burbs and had a foosball table in their basement.

“I don’t want Vincent to be an only child,” I said. My siblings and I didn’t always get along, but I imagined being an only child as very lonely.

“You can always have more children,” said Judy, “when you’re married. You’re certainly fertile!”

—

My psych instructor gave a lecture on “high risk youth,” the new buzz phrase. There were certain early experiences, like being beaten, locked in a basement, or put up for adoption, that caused youth to become drug addicts, criminals, and psychotic.

“Statistics show our prisons are full of men who were abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents—usually single mothers on welfare.”

My best friend from high school was adopted. I thought about the times I had seen her mother belittling her. “You’re so fat! Are you going to wear that?” What if I gave this baby up for adoption, which I now understood was an act of abandonment, and his new parents abused him?

—

I told some of my classmates and they urged me to have an abortion. “At this stage it’s just a clump of cells,” they reasoned. This was true, but I couldn’t have an abortion so soon after giving birth. I couldn’t explain it. I just couldn’t do it.

“Don’t be a tool of the pro-lifers!” the one male student in my class said. That was a valid concern too, but I had to set it aside. Choice meant choice, right?

My mother didn’t tell me what to do. “If you go through with adoption,” she said, I don’t want you anywhere near the family. It’s got to be our secret”

The Dilemma

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Vince has mentioned in his blog that he would like to write about his brother, so I should probably get out ahead of that.

—

It was 1979. Nine-month-old Vince and I lived on the 18^th floor of Skyline Towers, a subsidized 24-story high rise overlooking Interstate 94.

I had just started my second year of college. In the spring I would earn my two-year Occupational Therapy degree. I would be able to get a job and get off welfare, maybe even move out of public housing into a quaint little brick four-plex with wood floors and a stained glass window. That was my dream.

Here was my routine:

5:30 am: Get up, shower, feed baby Vince

6:00 am: Strap Vince into the collapsible stroller, put on the old beaver fur coat I had found at the Salvation Army and the moon boots I bought new after saving all summer. Sling my backpack full of text books over my shoulders, and head down the hall to the elevators.

6:15 am: Exit the front door into the winter morning darkness. Cross the parking lot, then the pedestrian bridge over I94 where the wind was always biting. Push the stroller across the athletic field on the other side of the freeway (extra hard if there was fresh snow on the ground), then walk two blocks to drop Vince off at daycare.

6:30 am: Pry Vince off me, ignoring his crying and screaming. Ignore the guilt. I had to do this to get ahead, to better our lives. Walk two blocks to the bus stop.

6:45 am: Catch the 21A to Minneapolis. This is a slow bus that stops at every corner.

7:30 am: Catch a second bus that drops me off a block from school.

8:00 am: First class. Study and go to class all day. Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, Abnormal Psychology, Medical Terminology, and Fundamentals of Occupational Therapy.

4:00 pm: Repeat above, only backwards. Sometimes necessary to stop at the grocery, which slowed things down considerably because I had to haul the stroller and one of those little-old-lady shopping carts.

6:00 pm: Arrive home, make dinner, feed Vince, clean, pay bills, make phone calls, etc.

7:30 pm: Put baby to bed. Thank god he is such a good baby and loves to sleep. But I still like our routine of reading books, singing songs, and rocking.

8:00 pm: Study for a couple hours, in bed by 10.

—

Then I found out I was pregnant again. I had been using birth control and breast feeding. Taken together, these were supposed to protect me against getting pregnant. Lucky me, I was one of the one out of a hundred or whatever who did.

—

I’ve written about the guy Vince and I call The Creep. Why had I let The Creep anywhere near me after Vince was born? Because I felt obligated. He was Vince’s father, after all, and my boyfriend. Even though he was terrible at both, I was a doormat. I can hardly believe this was me—it feels like it happened to another person.

—

I loved being a mother. But how could I keep up my schooling with two babies?

I loved babies. But how could I be a good mother to two of them?

I loved college—I was the star pupil in my class. But how could I keep it up with two kids?

—

I told The Creep. He looked like a badger caught in a snare.

“I spose we have ta get married then, huh?” was his response.

I don’t know what I had wanted from him, but it wasn’t that.

I told my mom. She was furious.

“This will kill your grandma,” she said, and she wasn’t exaggerating. My grandmother had run into the bathroom and thrown up when I’d told her I was pregnant the first time.

I told the head of my school program. She looked so disappointed.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, not expecting that I’d have any answer.

Jew Be a Verb

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ANNE

A story line throughout the third season of Orange is the New Black is the character Cindy’s conversion to Judaism.

The corporation that runs the prison is cutting costs by purchasing brown, lumpy slop in giant bags that they pass off as food. One prisoner figures out that the frozen kosher meals are pretty good, and soon a group of prisoners are claiming to be Jewesses in order to eat kosher.

When the prison notices the uptick in kosher requests, it sends in a rabbi to suss out who is a genuine Jew. Cindy, who is Black, begins to read up on Judaism. At first she just wants to pass so she can keep eating kosher. But then something grabs her, and as she studies she becomes serious about converting to Judaism, and well, this is one of the few happy endings in the series. It wouldn’t be a happy ending to born again Christians, and we Jews aren’t in to converting people, but I am moved when anyone finds meaning.

I heard in this scene many of the same things that led me to Judaism. Like Cindy, I was raised in a faith in which pretty much Everything was A Sin, and fear and guilt ruled the day. You didn’t ask questions, you did what you were told by the men who ran the show, some of whom were molesting your friends. If you sinned, you went to this same man to ask forgiveness and it was granted by him and after I mumbled three Hail Marys.

—

I think there’s a perception that Judasim is just like Christianity, except without Jesus. It’s not.

In liberal Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews in the world, there is no hell and little emphasis on sin. The idea is to do the right thing today, because it’s the right thing—not to avoid hell. If you screw up, it’s your responsibility to make amends to whoever you have hurt and to make your peace with God, if you even believe in god, because a lot of Jews are atheists. Confused? Well in Judaism it’s your responsibility to study, ask questions, and wrestle with all the big issues to figure out what makes sense for you. No one tells you what to think or do. Rabbis, who include women and gays and lesbians, are teachers and have no authority to forgive you.

Judaism doesn’t prosthelytize. We don’t care if you agree with us or not; we don’t care if you are a Christian or a Buddhist or a pagan. Just don’t try to convert us, thanks.

Instead of using the word charity, we talk about justice. It’s not an option, and it’s not about writing a check. It’s about doing, fighting, and pursuing justice. These principles are one reason why I’ve been able to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from all sides.

Of course there are plenty of Lutherans and Catholics and pagans and agnostics who are also motivated by social justice.

There’s more, but like Cindy, the main thing that attracted me to Judasim was an inexplicably strong feeling of recognition. Like Cindy said, “I feel like I found my people.”

After I had studied for several years with a Rabbi and a group of fellow seekers and yes, learned elemental Hebrew, I converted—which is a five-minute ceremony. My mother attended the Friday night service in which this took place. Just before we left for synagogue, she said, “I guess it makes sense, you converting to Judaism, since your father’s family was Jewish.”

What!? She had known I was studying all along. She didn’t have any details, and since my dad died 47 years ago and we’re not close to his family, and I have no time or patience for family tree research, it will just remain a question mark.

When I told a rabbi this story once, she said that she hears stories like this often, and that there is a theory that all the Jewish souls lost in the Holocaust have sought refuge in the people who are converting, whether they’re in prison (Cindy) or are unwed teenage moms living in subsidized housing (me, nearly 40 years ago).

It’s Been A Good Run

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VINCE

For personal reasons, I have made the decision to move on from this blog and start out on my own. I have no idea where or when I will start back up, but I do promise to make it soon. I just need to figure out how to start a blog, and then start it. I think first I will write in my journal for a while, then begin again independently. Obviously I will keep everybody posted (pun intended) on when and where you can find my new blog. And in the mean time, you can follow me on Facebook. Vincent Maertz is my name if you don’t already know.

Thank you for all of your support over the last 17 months. It has meant a lot to me that people actually like reading what I write. Your comments have not gone unnoticed. You can look forward to reading more about the next phase of my life as soon as I find a new format, and build up a little material. Until then, be good.

Vincent Maertz

A Break from Breaking Free

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ANNE

Vince says he’s hit a wall with the blogging, and I need more than 10 minutes notice to come up with new material. After over a year of blogging and nearly 200 posts, I’d say we’ve earned a break.

We’ll be back. If you haven’t yet binge read the thing from the beginning, start here and click on the right-pointing arrow at the bottom of each post to proceed. Feel free to share with others, and thanks for reading.

Dear Vince

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VINCE

This is another one of my treatment assignments. My dear mother has been waiting for me to publish this for a while since it’s actually written by her. Well, sort of.

It was written by me during a phase of treatment in which we were learning about the ripple effect. Not quite like the butterfly in China causing a hurricane in Iowa. Or whatever. This is more like how my actions, however insignificant they may have seemed at the time, affected my friends, family, and society. The assignment was to write a one page letter from a victim in our ripple. I chose my mom pretty quickly because I believe my actions have had the greatest effect on her over time. It wasn’t supposed to be hurtful or degrading, but simply state, from her point of view, my actions and how they made her feel. It was well received by counselor and peers, but I still don’t know if I really hit the mark. I guess I’ll find out soon. I wrote it from the time just after my arrest for my current charge. Here goes:

Vince, I haven’t seen or heard from you in so long. But for now at least I know where you are and that you are safe. When I heard you were arrested I can’t say I was surprised but I was still sad and hurt. On the other hand I was grateful that you might have another chance at recovery.

In your nearly five years of sobriety, you shined. You were always a favorite with the kids in both our, and our extended families. They looked up to you. They admired you, and loved you. We all loved you since the day you were born. Then, without any warning, you disappeared. For the second time in a decade, you fell off the face of the earth. Because of your history, we knew more or less what was going on. And from our experience we knew that any attempt to communicate with you would have been shot down.

After a couple years, the second time around, you showed up and said flat out you were using again and if I wanted to be part of your life I needed to accept that. Well, I did. It was tough. You drank so much and so openly with your friends but you seemed happy. But every time I would bring up the future, or school, or family, you shut down and didn’t want to talk about it. So I stopped bringing it up.

Then after eight years you were gone again. The closest friends you have ever had couldn’t tell me where you were. They were just as confused and upset as I was. For a while I was so afraid that you would show up dead in an alley or on the side of the road, but then you showed up on the news, and you were finally somewhere again.

Since then we have become closer than ever, as a result in large part, by you being open and honest about everything with me and more importantly yourself. I’m glad you are excited about being where you are. I hear in your voice and in your letters the same enthusiasm about recovery you had when you left Hazelden and Florida. Me and the rest of the family will be here for you when you get out. You will always have our full support in every way as long as you remain active in your recovery.

—

And that’s it. When I was writing it I recall feeling sad for the first time in treatment. I don’t often feel emotions, and rarely do they make me feel bad but this assignment did just that. Even though that wasn’t the point of it, I thought of a lot of bad times I’ve had with her and because of being high or drunk nearly all of my adult life. I hope you get out of it what you can mother, and I’m sure I’ll hear your thoughts on it in the morning!

For the rest of you. Well my day to day life is a struggle. I don’t have a job yet. I am not worried. My agents are not worried. But I can tell my mom is. I communicate with the world three times a week for an hour at A.A. meetings, through this blog and on Facebook. I do not like talking to people outside of my family or very few friends, all of which I was incarcerated with. Shit. I’m over 700 words. Until next time.

Froggie Went a Courtin’

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VINCE

I just came back from a lawn mowing where I took the life of an innocent frog. It was a cold-blooded murder in the most literal sense. Wait. Are frogs cold blooded? Hmm. I may be wrong but it sounded funny in my head.

I don’t like to kill things, so I felt bad for a few minutes. I didn’t do it on purpose, but when his (her?) severed head was staring into my eyes, I could still see life and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Now that I’ve written about it, I can let it go.

I once killed a deer, for meat, and I once killed a deer with a Pontiac Sunfire. Oh, and some squirrels, which I also ate.

—

After months of no formal discipline, I got an intervention today. That is my sixth in five months, not bad. The guy with the most discipline in my squad has 21 and three Learning Experiences (LEs).

An intervention is basically a military gig, not a rehab intervention like you might see on TV. Mine was for not sleeping under one of my two sheets. It’s very petty. If I do it two more times which I won’t, I will get an LE.

—

I redeemed myself today for killing the frog. I saw him/her just in time while I was pushing the Frog Killer 2000 over the grass, and helped him along into the garden. Oh, yea, there were two of them. So if I ever kill another frog, I’m even.

—

We’ve been working lately in CD on the “ripple effect” of our crimes. Well, most of us have. The guy who shot at somebody several times but missed still claims his offense has no victim.

I never denied that selling drugs hurt society, people’s lives, families, and of course the children. I’m sure the money given to me for meth could have been better spent on food, clothing, and shelter.

My criminality has affected my family as well. I didn’t directly try to bring harm to them, other than stealing some money from My Mom years ago, and borrowing money more recently without, so far, paying it back. But I see my Mother, now in her 50s, still beautiful, energetic, kind, and unbelievably patient, without a husband, and I wonder if I am indirectly or directly responsible. Is that where the shame took hold? Am I such a black sheep that she didn’t even bother?

She’s had boyfriends over the years but they didn’t stick. I see myself in the same boat. 37 with no wife and kids, no girlfriend waiting for me out there. Maybe together, we emit a powerful toxic odor that that repels potential mates. Hmm…I hope not.

The point is, even if I am not responsible for her mating habits, I am seeing that my choices affect more than just me. And it can ripple a long way out. I’m not just staying clean for me, I’m doing it for the whole pond.

[ANNE: My heart sank when I read this. Vince is in no way responsible for me being one of the 7% of American women my age who have never married. Take out the lesbian women who couldn’t marry, and I am part of a really small club. I always wanted to get married. I assumed I would. I wrote a blog post about dating years ago that demonstrates the effort I put into finding a mate.

Like a lot of things, it’s complicated. I wasted my 20s and 30s—the years when most people marry—on Kermit and other alcoholics, abusers, and just plain jerks. Then I took a break from dating to figure out how to stop doing that. Then came Vince’s lost year, when I was too distraught to think of anything else. Then, the older you are, the harder it is to meet people. So it was a combo of bad choices, bad timing, bad luck and yes, Vince was a factor but far from the only one. Being single is far from the worst fate, so now I claim my spinsterhood as if it was my plan all along.]

Prison News Round Up

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ANNE

I am leaving for Berlin in two days, so I’m going to review a pile of prison-related articles that I’ve accumulated—over a period of one weekend—that’s how often prison is in the news. I’ll give you the downers first, then the positive ones.

Ohio is having trouble obtaining drugs used to execute people, so the Ohio DOC has obtained an import license from the Drug Enforcement Administration to buy sodium thiopental and pentobarbital from overseas. Wow. Where overseas, I wonder? They “decline” to name the countries. I’m thinking China, North Korea, Iran, or Yemen, since these are our fellow members of the death penalty club. In case that doesn’t work, Ohio legislators passed an “execution secrecy law” (I am not making this up) in hopes it would get small-scale drug manufacturers called compounding pharmacies to sell them the drugs. These are unregulated companies that have been in the news for sickening people with contaminated pharmaceuticals. But hey, if you’re trying to kill someone, who cares what the quality of the drug is?

In Wisconsin, there is a prison guard shortage that has prompted two correctional facilities to call in guards from other institutions and pay overtime. So let me get this straight—we pack our prisons full of nonviolent drug offenders, which costs us taxpayers an arm and a leg, then we have to pay overtime to get guard coverage, which costs us more. Great system!

Which leads me to this editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Finding solutions for overcrowded prisons.” I like the opening line: “Either Americans are the most evil-people on Earth or there’s something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system.” They mention something that’s news to me: “It’s a stretch to suggest that the bloated prison population is due mainly to the sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders. It’s not. Most of the increase comes from locking up greater numbers of thieves and violent criminals and keeping them behind bars longer. Even if all nonviolent drug offenders were set free today, the prison population of 2.2 million would drop to only 1.7 million … Still, on the margin, granting early release to nonviolent offenders and shortening sentences to better match crimes seems a sensible step….”

This information is new to me, and I wonder why I haven’t read it elsewhere. Everywhere else, the narrative is that, if we just release all the nonviolent drug offenders, our prison population will be drastically reduced. But if there are more violent criminals in America than elsewhere, maybe we are the most evil people on earth.

Still, 2.2 million total prisoners minus 1.7 million nonviolent drug offenders is 500 thousand people—not insignificant. And when you figure it costs (on average) $31,000 a year to keep someone in prison, that’s over $1.5 billion a year.

On the same day, there was this feature article about Damon Thibodeaux, an 18-year-old who was wrongly convicted of rape and murder who spent 16 years on death row before being exonerated and freed, in large part due to the efforts of Minneapolis attorney Steve Kaplan. Thibodeaux had been raped and beaten on a regular basis by his step “father” since the age of five and so he was easily bullied and manipulated into confessing to the crime. It’s a heart-rending story, but it has a happy ending. As I’ve written before, an important element of recovery from anything is feeling that you belong. And Kaplan has gone the distance to help Thibodeaux adjust to life after prison by including him in family and other social gatherings.

And there was this little factoid in The Week: that every day, on average, a dozen people die behind bars. The leading cause? Suicide, in local jails; cancer elsewhere.

Below are some prison-related images. The bully one made me shudder, because it’s how I felt when I was kicked out of Moose Lake for wearing “revealing clothing.” It wasn’t about my clothing; it was a power trip. Related to that is an interview with Richard Zimbardo, who led the Stanford Prison Experiment in which students were assigned to be prisoners or guards. The “guards” quickly became sadistic. “I lost my sense of compassion, I totally lost that,” said Zimbardo.

Next time, the good news.

Starting Life Over / A Life Over

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VINCE

As of yesterday I have a total of $238.90 in my gate saving account. So, double that, and you have roughly what a prisoner makes in a year through our various jobs. The most I made was 50 cents per hour sewing underpants together in Moose Lake. The least I’ve made was here, in Willow River. Divide $2.50 by 16 hours. I’m horrible at math. [15.6 cents per hour]

It’s not much to work with. I’ve mentioned before that half of our pay goes into savings and half we can spend on items that for the most part, are well over retail price. My current paycheck is $35 even, every two weeks. So I get $17.50 to spend on envelopes (61 cents each), shoe insoles ($2.10 for two pair that last exactly two weeks), paper, pens, pain relievers, muscle rubs, and all the stuff we need/use, we pay for. But, our food, bed, heat and AC, electricity are provided at no cost to us, so I’m okay with it.

Happy July fourth. [The blog is several weeks behind real time.] We will have a three-day weekend starting tomorrow (Friday). That does not mean we have the day off. In fact, we work extra hard, so that we won’t want to be incarcerated for holidays next year. Well, that seems to be working for me.

—

Every time I catch myself thinking or saying that I’m tired, I think back to a year ago when I could be awake for days at a time. Paranoia would set in after day three or four, and I would often take thing out of context and think people were out to get me.

I would hear my name in groups of people, or I thought I did. Casual conversations would, in my mind, be people plotting to steal from me or turn me over to the cops. I would flash them an angry face and storm out of wherever I was. This was often when I would go out behind the wheel of two tons of steel.

On day five, the visual hallucinations kicked in. Often I would see the same vision. Snow coming down from a cloudless sky on a summer day. I knew it wasn’t real, and I knew I shouldn’t be out in public like that. But I had to keep “working.” No more. I’m so glad I got arrested.

Actually, I’m glad they sent me to prison. I believe it’s the only way I could have quit. Not just using, but the lifestyle that accompanied it. I had to get away. Most users/dealers just keep on racking up charge after charge. Then end up with 10 year sentences because they showed career criminal tendencies. I took the deal I made for prison time and at the same time let my co-defendant off the hook. Now I’m ready to start life over.

[ANNE: Not everyone can start over, like Vince. As delightful as snow falling on a summer day sounds, drugs and drug crimes ruin lives, families, and communities. Here is just one story about a man who was found unconscious in a hotel room while his toddler daughter wandered crying into the lobby with a soiled diaper and his infant son slept on the floor near his methamphetamine pipe. Meth, which is so highly toxic that people who sell their homes now have to sign statements swearing they have not used or made meth on the premises. How will this father ever, ever get over the guilt? What will social workers tell the toddler when daddy goes away to prison for years? How will the father and son ever make up for the lost opportunity for early attachment? How will the mother and father ever repair their relationship, if they aren’t already divorced? Maybe now you won’t think I’m hard when I say Thank God Vince never had children.]