Fighters
Without Prejudice
Nothing makes you feel as satisfied as seeing wrongs righted and people happy, and knowing you had some tiny hand in their sucess, nothing.
I have always been a champion of the underdog and do as much as I can these days but not to my detriment, anymore.
I love helping people and will give generously of my time to get a result. But if they are not making half the effort they can forget it.
My Doctor said that too, he said these days he just tells it like it is and I can imagine after forty years of telling people to take heed of their health and they dont, he gets a little fed up.
I'm like that too, I think you are happier when you are older because you know yourself better. You know what you can achieve and what you have achieved, what makes your heart beat twice over, what fills your heart with natural sweetness, and who you can be. Step outside of the "Comfort and Convenience, the kiss of death," and be something more.
I want to revisit Camp Eden's goals and see how I am doing and I have to examine it with truth or it won't be worth it. I examine myself every year anyway as I am sure most thinking people do, examine my life. my goals. That will come closer to the New Year and I'll leave that for another time.
I laugh looking back at some of the goals I had years ago, then, I just had 1 grandchild, a boy, and a spoilt little darling he was. Our revered child Kyle, who always thought he had 5 mothers and was often confused as to which one of us 5 little ladies was his real Mother.
Like a lost cartoon character,
"Are you my Mother?"
He pretty much knew Yvette was, but Debbie ran a close second. Their mutual adoration of each other was limitless and still is. It wasn't always so. he turned feral on us all last year and we had to jump in boots and all to save him and it was a very rough ride for a very long time.
We had to go to the dark side so many times for him, but he was always worth it, and I guess he still is but he knows Nan just keeps an eye on him from the background and knows I will bite his head off if he misbehaves.
I can't even view that time without feeling the surge of anger and terror and frustration that we felt at that time. Kyle, the responsible oldest boy of Yvette's flipping out. A late rebellion ? A lashing out at his Mother ?? A hatred and loss campaign against his girl friend who had broken up with him for excellent reasons.
Although it was her fault too both of them too young and silly and irresponsible and even now he feels the tug sometimes. She was an orphan and he always has had a thing about abandonment. Even when he was sure he no longer loved her, he felt like he was her protector and family. it was a double edge sword. and first love hurts.
So when he and she broke up, he decided he was going to hate the world and off he went like a rocket into the Stratosphere and he rebelled and hurt and lied and was addicted to gambling and we saw his struggles and we knew he was headed for disaster.
A train on a one way track of destruction. His journey. His fault, and he didn't think it was serious. He kept robbing number plates off cars and putting them on his. As out of the chaos he hadn't paid his registration. So he and two younger boys did it.
We shook our head at the company he kept and tried to talk to him but no one was listening. He hated me at that time and I hated him. I wanted to scream at him or pound him and it nearly came to that many a time.
He played a game with the Police and ran or hid and then did something stupid again and back they would come to look for him. Yvette and I decided we couldn't do anything with him and she was of the ilk that he had to learn by his mistakes.
And then the world went belly up one day in late September 2010. And as ever the big dramas creep up on you, you who are watching the world from your front step and only wanting Collingwood to win and a relaxing afternoon.
And I mentioned to my visitor, my foster daughter, that we had a garbled message from Kyle's dad saying something about he thought Kyle had been locked up. Mara had grabbed my arm in alarm as I had made no big deal of it, (Simon, Kyle's Father, no great shakes in the communication game.) He was either "Off his guts" on drugs or off his guts on alcohol, mumbled and shrieked and rambled.
We grabbed Alena and went to the Police Station in Dandenong and were not allowed to see Kyle. we were told he was in the rec room with the other "lads" watching the match and we werent.
The only person that would be allowed into to see him was his Father, the incomprehensible, Simon.
We thought it couldn't be that bad, he was 20 had never offended before, so on Monday he would appear before the Magistrate and be bailed and all would be fine. No big deal and although we all felt "funny" we turned up on the Monday for the court appearance.
When he was led in we all gasped. Kyle the satrorially splendid was dressed in bottle green trackie top and bottoms and looked "rough".
But we decided all would be well even though the solicitor we had seen was nowhere to be found. Simon was, he was there off his head on "something" and he had been the only one allowed to talk to the Solicitor.......... the absent solicitor.
We had been told that the worst Judge to get was "Higgins, the hanging judge", he apprently had lost a son to a heroin overdose and was "grim".
So of course we had Higgins and an off his face Simon as the main character witness and we still thought it would all be OK. Kyle grinned haplessly at his girlfriend Mladenka and ruefully at us.
He was appearing for himself under his Fathers advice and I started to have a bad feeling about the whole thing.I had done legal as a Mature Age Student and knew that a young man who represented himself was likely to get jail. But then that couldn't happen and I just shrugged that stupid feeling off.
Jail, he was given jail and was sent straight there. He didn't look back and was led away. Alena and Mara verbally abusing the Judge and were nearly arrested for contempt.
We were beyond shocked and made it back to Alena'a and Mara, Alena and I decided to help and get organised. we rang old and new friends and decided we needed to get him out, had to. Even the parents, Yvette and Simon deciding he would not survive in Mainstream Jail.
At the same time my neighbour Keith lost one of his teenage sons to drug overdose and he was younger than Kyle and dead.
We heard rumours he was going to "get got" at in jail. the sins of the Father visited on the Son. And one ex prisoner commented if you were going to "get got", it was prime pickings in jail, easiest place to "get got". And of course, Carl Williams had just been bashed to death in Maximum Security.
We had to work fast and hard. we quickly decided to raise money for the best Legal advice we could afford and rang around for donations. lots came on board and we had it very quickly. Kyle's friends, family, us, Mladenka and even his nieces and nephews and brothers came on board. Kids offered their pocket money.
The only fly in the ointment his Grandfather who he had worked for that year. Stating he was broke and could not even come up with a hundred dollars, calling Kyle, "Useless and a "Loser", his Mother, his daughter, Yvette was also "Useless" and so was I. His ex wife. That's normal for him. I'd be shocked if he ever said anything else.
We brought Debbie on board and she was reluctant at first, looking after Kyle when he was 17 for a year at the cost of her own family, and he seemed to keep disappointing her and all of us. But he was 20 and about to be 21 and he had stolen number plates, big deal !
Well, it turned out he had heaps of charges, not just one as we had thought. the younger mates had taken off of course, abandoning Kyle to his own fate. That was to be expected and we knew it was all Kyle's fault and so did he.
He rang a few days later and was in the MAP, or Melbourne Assessment Prison and we took a long ride in their, loads of us, on the train. And after all the checking, he had been moved that day to The MRP in St Albans. No one calls to tell you if a prisoner has been moved, you get the idea that it's your fault for being associated with such a "low life", anyway.
He had been moved to The Melbourne remand centre, that looked like a huge American style prison, with razor wire and guards in the car park.
I was the first and only person allowed in at MRP and had to go through all the searches and security checks and he took ages to come out. He didn't think anyone was coming in to see him and he had no money to make the necessary phone calls.
I sat at a table towards the back of the big cafeteria, watching the other tables and thinking,
Please God, get him out of there"
All the others were older men and cool Kyle strolled to the front counter, than strolled over to me, not breaking stride.
We hugged and it was very different to me screaming full on his face of a few weeks ago, sensing not seeing what was about to happen.
I asked him,
"Why?"
The answer came straight away,
"I didn't think it was serious, I wanted them to catch me, I guess, and it all seemed a big rebellion at the time.
"It's all my fault", he said.
"I don't expect people to help me",
he was overwhelmed at the shows of support, from his brothers and his friends and the darling girl Mladenka. But I told him we had to get him out. And the bravado dropped.
Then he told me he wanted to kill himself on the first night in "Lock Up" The Dandenong cell used for alcoholics and all concrete even the bench you sleep on, no blanket and he was so cold. he really wanted to die that night.
he said The MRP was "all right". food was good, but at night he looked up at the little square of night sky and knew he was in prison. and cried and wrote Yvette one letter a day
He told me of the others, mainly done for drug trafficking, the young ones, usually asian and quite wealthy. And the Old Lags, who you had to watch as they would dob you in for something to curry favour with the guards.
He had certain people who he avoided and he said you just had to go along with things and sa " Yes Boss", a lot. I told him to hold out hope and we would have him out for his 21st and had no idea how we were going to do it. In the end he did 6 weeks, before we could get him out on strict bail conditions. Just before his 21st Birthday.
And within 2 weeks he went out and did it again, all over again. And we went nuts.This is a no holds barred family, or used to be, so there used to be loads of yelling and screaming and slapping and hurling objects, door slams.
The girls are passionate as am I and we were losing it. And losing the battle with him. It all seemed hopeless He had intensive counselling and corrections visits and he and Mladenka had decided to move out together. She leaving a strict Serbian culture family with a nightmare of a violent drunken Father.
So Deb took it on mostly, I had left home for 5 weeks and set up camp at Deb's the better to get Kyle to all his appointments and "stuff" of which there was much. Doctors visits, three different counsellors, one for his compulsive gambling.
We made him ban himself from Crown and local venues. We were on a big learning curve ourselves, educating ourselves in the behaviours of addicts and what a chaotic world it is. The compulsion is a bad behaviour and along with it comes other bad behaviours, lying, stealing, the ultimate dark side.
We caught him in the simplest of lies, time and time again, a certain immaturity going with the bad behaviours. We kept him housebound and he would be itching against the conformity but liked the routine.
Each day he had to achieve certain tasks and then was rewarded, We took his phone off him for a week and that just about killed him. Andrew Debbie's husband came on board as a positive male role model, we eventually freed Mladenka from her worse than home situation. She was to become a huge part in Kyle's recovery.
We also had ex girlfriends of his trying to contact him and we had to fend them off with ruthless intensity. Suddenly Kyle having been in jail (remand) was a cause celebre and to silly young girls an aphrodisiac for some odd reason.
Kyle couldn't explain it either but at first was happy to go along with all the wrong attention but we soon put a stop to it. We had to "dog", his very footsteps. George my brother heard about it, reading about it through our very guarded comments of support to each other on Facebook. He provided the most immense support. we couldn't have done it without his sensible business like approach and his kindly Uncle support.
Kyle had to enter in to the world of men at last. A job we females could not do and he had to be trusted and respected and work.
So it was head down and bum up and he had so much counselling his head must have been spinnng, but it helped, slowly, so slowly at times it felt like we were wading through quicksand, being sucked under at more lies and getting a toe clear of the muck if we were lucky.
We went to the best and we went to the worst to help him. At times he hated us, individually or collectively, the feelings were reciprocated with passion. Deb luckily worked at Berry Street with kids that are at the end of their rope and societies.
She was able to handle him a lot better than we could and with more patience and understanding, which she would relay to us and we would calm down, take deep breaths and then enter the fray again. The most surreal episode coming for me when I was at a wedding and was on the phone organising "protection" for Kyle, inside with a former prisoner who was able to help.
But I then toasted the lovely couple that my son In Law and I had brought together years before, had a great time and was handed the bridal bouquet by Mara, who had rugby tackled a woman to the ground to get it off her, handing it to me, saying to the other hapless female,
"You don't need it, you're a lesbian. SHE needs it", meaning me.
I am looking at the wedding posy as I write this and it always makes me laugh to know how it arrived here. Same colours as mine when I married, red and white.
"The lesbian" and her lover are having a commitment ceremony next year, so it did work for her.
Kyle started jobs and finished them. he had an Apprenticeship in Spray painting and gave it up for his part time job at Liqorland, which then became full time. Mladenka lives with him in a unit and he can just walk across the road to go to work. I saw him yesterday and gave him a little hug and said
"How's things?"
He looked at me full on in the eyes,
"Good" and I knew it was. It took heartache and pain and every single part of our being to help him and not give up. Debbie and her family refusing to give up when it all got too much. me too. Yvette as well by then.
Thinking back now, I would not have done it any other way, he received no record, nothing to say that he had ever been in Remand for 6 weeks. But for us as a family it was a major achievement, coming together and stopping at nothing to reach our goal, freedom for Kyle.
I am always proud of my girls for their persistence and care and at moments we were all ready to sit down and burst into tears, but don't as it just wastes our time and leaves us drained for days.
I am so glad we got him out and if he ever does that again I am going to remove all of his skin with a razor blade a blunt one and smile, lol, he knows this ha ha
Love nana x
Nothing makes you feel as satisfied as seeing wrongs righted and people happy, and knowing you had some tiny hand in their sucess, nothing.
I have always been a champion of the underdog and do as much as I can these days but not to my detriment, anymore.
I love helping people and will give generously of my time to get a result. But if they are not making half the effort they can forget it.
My Doctor said that too, he said these days he just tells it like it is and I can imagine after forty years of telling people to take heed of their health and they dont, he gets a little fed up.
I'm like that too, I think you are happier when you are older because you know yourself better. You know what you can achieve and what you have achieved, what makes your heart beat twice over, what fills your heart with natural sweetness, and who you can be. Step outside of the "Comfort and Convenience, the kiss of death," and be something more.
I want to revisit Camp Eden's goals and see how I am doing and I have to examine it with truth or it won't be worth it. I examine myself every year anyway as I am sure most thinking people do, examine my life. my goals. That will come closer to the New Year and I'll leave that for another time.
I laugh looking back at some of the goals I had years ago, then, I just had 1 grandchild, a boy, and a spoilt little darling he was. Our revered child Kyle, who always thought he had 5 mothers and was often confused as to which one of us 5 little ladies was his real Mother.
Like a lost cartoon character,
"Are you my Mother?"
He pretty much knew Yvette was, but Debbie ran a close second. Their mutual adoration of each other was limitless and still is. It wasn't always so. he turned feral on us all last year and we had to jump in boots and all to save him and it was a very rough ride for a very long time.
We had to go to the dark side so many times for him, but he was always worth it, and I guess he still is but he knows Nan just keeps an eye on him from the background and knows I will bite his head off if he misbehaves.
I can't even view that time without feeling the surge of anger and terror and frustration that we felt at that time. Kyle, the responsible oldest boy of Yvette's flipping out. A late rebellion ? A lashing out at his Mother ?? A hatred and loss campaign against his girl friend who had broken up with him for excellent reasons.
Although it was her fault too both of them too young and silly and irresponsible and even now he feels the tug sometimes. She was an orphan and he always has had a thing about abandonment. Even when he was sure he no longer loved her, he felt like he was her protector and family. it was a double edge sword. and first love hurts.
So when he and she broke up, he decided he was going to hate the world and off he went like a rocket into the Stratosphere and he rebelled and hurt and lied and was addicted to gambling and we saw his struggles and we knew he was headed for disaster.
A train on a one way track of destruction. His journey. His fault, and he didn't think it was serious. He kept robbing number plates off cars and putting them on his. As out of the chaos he hadn't paid his registration. So he and two younger boys did it.
We shook our head at the company he kept and tried to talk to him but no one was listening. He hated me at that time and I hated him. I wanted to scream at him or pound him and it nearly came to that many a time.
He played a game with the Police and ran or hid and then did something stupid again and back they would come to look for him. Yvette and I decided we couldn't do anything with him and she was of the ilk that he had to learn by his mistakes.
And then the world went belly up one day in late September 2010. And as ever the big dramas creep up on you, you who are watching the world from your front step and only wanting Collingwood to win and a relaxing afternoon.
And I mentioned to my visitor, my foster daughter, that we had a garbled message from Kyle's dad saying something about he thought Kyle had been locked up. Mara had grabbed my arm in alarm as I had made no big deal of it, (Simon, Kyle's Father, no great shakes in the communication game.) He was either "Off his guts" on drugs or off his guts on alcohol, mumbled and shrieked and rambled.
We grabbed Alena and went to the Police Station in Dandenong and were not allowed to see Kyle. we were told he was in the rec room with the other "lads" watching the match and we werent.
The only person that would be allowed into to see him was his Father, the incomprehensible, Simon.
We thought it couldn't be that bad, he was 20 had never offended before, so on Monday he would appear before the Magistrate and be bailed and all would be fine. No big deal and although we all felt "funny" we turned up on the Monday for the court appearance.
When he was led in we all gasped. Kyle the satrorially splendid was dressed in bottle green trackie top and bottoms and looked "rough".
But we decided all would be well even though the solicitor we had seen was nowhere to be found. Simon was, he was there off his head on "something" and he had been the only one allowed to talk to the Solicitor.......... the absent solicitor.
We had been told that the worst Judge to get was "Higgins, the hanging judge", he apprently had lost a son to a heroin overdose and was "grim".
So of course we had Higgins and an off his face Simon as the main character witness and we still thought it would all be OK. Kyle grinned haplessly at his girlfriend Mladenka and ruefully at us.
He was appearing for himself under his Fathers advice and I started to have a bad feeling about the whole thing.I had done legal as a Mature Age Student and knew that a young man who represented himself was likely to get jail. But then that couldn't happen and I just shrugged that stupid feeling off.
Jail, he was given jail and was sent straight there. He didn't look back and was led away. Alena and Mara verbally abusing the Judge and were nearly arrested for contempt.
We were beyond shocked and made it back to Alena'a and Mara, Alena and I decided to help and get organised. we rang old and new friends and decided we needed to get him out, had to. Even the parents, Yvette and Simon deciding he would not survive in Mainstream Jail.
At the same time my neighbour Keith lost one of his teenage sons to drug overdose and he was younger than Kyle and dead.
We heard rumours he was going to "get got" at in jail. the sins of the Father visited on the Son. And one ex prisoner commented if you were going to "get got", it was prime pickings in jail, easiest place to "get got". And of course, Carl Williams had just been bashed to death in Maximum Security.
We had to work fast and hard. we quickly decided to raise money for the best Legal advice we could afford and rang around for donations. lots came on board and we had it very quickly. Kyle's friends, family, us, Mladenka and even his nieces and nephews and brothers came on board. Kids offered their pocket money.
The only fly in the ointment his Grandfather who he had worked for that year. Stating he was broke and could not even come up with a hundred dollars, calling Kyle, "Useless and a "Loser", his Mother, his daughter, Yvette was also "Useless" and so was I. His ex wife. That's normal for him. I'd be shocked if he ever said anything else.
We brought Debbie on board and she was reluctant at first, looking after Kyle when he was 17 for a year at the cost of her own family, and he seemed to keep disappointing her and all of us. But he was 20 and about to be 21 and he had stolen number plates, big deal !
Well, it turned out he had heaps of charges, not just one as we had thought. the younger mates had taken off of course, abandoning Kyle to his own fate. That was to be expected and we knew it was all Kyle's fault and so did he.
He rang a few days later and was in the MAP, or Melbourne Assessment Prison and we took a long ride in their, loads of us, on the train. And after all the checking, he had been moved that day to The MRP in St Albans. No one calls to tell you if a prisoner has been moved, you get the idea that it's your fault for being associated with such a "low life", anyway.
He had been moved to The Melbourne remand centre, that looked like a huge American style prison, with razor wire and guards in the car park.
I was the first and only person allowed in at MRP and had to go through all the searches and security checks and he took ages to come out. He didn't think anyone was coming in to see him and he had no money to make the necessary phone calls.
I sat at a table towards the back of the big cafeteria, watching the other tables and thinking,
Please God, get him out of there"
All the others were older men and cool Kyle strolled to the front counter, than strolled over to me, not breaking stride.
We hugged and it was very different to me screaming full on his face of a few weeks ago, sensing not seeing what was about to happen.
I asked him,
"Why?"
The answer came straight away,
"I didn't think it was serious, I wanted them to catch me, I guess, and it all seemed a big rebellion at the time.
"It's all my fault", he said.
"I don't expect people to help me",
he was overwhelmed at the shows of support, from his brothers and his friends and the darling girl Mladenka. But I told him we had to get him out. And the bravado dropped.
Then he told me he wanted to kill himself on the first night in "Lock Up" The Dandenong cell used for alcoholics and all concrete even the bench you sleep on, no blanket and he was so cold. he really wanted to die that night.
he said The MRP was "all right". food was good, but at night he looked up at the little square of night sky and knew he was in prison. and cried and wrote Yvette one letter a day
He told me of the others, mainly done for drug trafficking, the young ones, usually asian and quite wealthy. And the Old Lags, who you had to watch as they would dob you in for something to curry favour with the guards.
He had certain people who he avoided and he said you just had to go along with things and sa " Yes Boss", a lot. I told him to hold out hope and we would have him out for his 21st and had no idea how we were going to do it. In the end he did 6 weeks, before we could get him out on strict bail conditions. Just before his 21st Birthday.
And within 2 weeks he went out and did it again, all over again. And we went nuts.This is a no holds barred family, or used to be, so there used to be loads of yelling and screaming and slapping and hurling objects, door slams.
The girls are passionate as am I and we were losing it. And losing the battle with him. It all seemed hopeless He had intensive counselling and corrections visits and he and Mladenka had decided to move out together. She leaving a strict Serbian culture family with a nightmare of a violent drunken Father.
So Deb took it on mostly, I had left home for 5 weeks and set up camp at Deb's the better to get Kyle to all his appointments and "stuff" of which there was much. Doctors visits, three different counsellors, one for his compulsive gambling.
We made him ban himself from Crown and local venues. We were on a big learning curve ourselves, educating ourselves in the behaviours of addicts and what a chaotic world it is. The compulsion is a bad behaviour and along with it comes other bad behaviours, lying, stealing, the ultimate dark side.
We caught him in the simplest of lies, time and time again, a certain immaturity going with the bad behaviours. We kept him housebound and he would be itching against the conformity but liked the routine.
Each day he had to achieve certain tasks and then was rewarded, We took his phone off him for a week and that just about killed him. Andrew Debbie's husband came on board as a positive male role model, we eventually freed Mladenka from her worse than home situation. She was to become a huge part in Kyle's recovery.
We also had ex girlfriends of his trying to contact him and we had to fend them off with ruthless intensity. Suddenly Kyle having been in jail (remand) was a cause celebre and to silly young girls an aphrodisiac for some odd reason.
Kyle couldn't explain it either but at first was happy to go along with all the wrong attention but we soon put a stop to it. We had to "dog", his very footsteps. George my brother heard about it, reading about it through our very guarded comments of support to each other on Facebook. He provided the most immense support. we couldn't have done it without his sensible business like approach and his kindly Uncle support.
Kyle had to enter in to the world of men at last. A job we females could not do and he had to be trusted and respected and work.
So it was head down and bum up and he had so much counselling his head must have been spinnng, but it helped, slowly, so slowly at times it felt like we were wading through quicksand, being sucked under at more lies and getting a toe clear of the muck if we were lucky.
We went to the best and we went to the worst to help him. At times he hated us, individually or collectively, the feelings were reciprocated with passion. Deb luckily worked at Berry Street with kids that are at the end of their rope and societies.
She was able to handle him a lot better than we could and with more patience and understanding, which she would relay to us and we would calm down, take deep breaths and then enter the fray again. The most surreal episode coming for me when I was at a wedding and was on the phone organising "protection" for Kyle, inside with a former prisoner who was able to help.
But I then toasted the lovely couple that my son In Law and I had brought together years before, had a great time and was handed the bridal bouquet by Mara, who had rugby tackled a woman to the ground to get it off her, handing it to me, saying to the other hapless female,
"You don't need it, you're a lesbian. SHE needs it", meaning me.
I am looking at the wedding posy as I write this and it always makes me laugh to know how it arrived here. Same colours as mine when I married, red and white.
"The lesbian" and her lover are having a commitment ceremony next year, so it did work for her.
Kyle started jobs and finished them. he had an Apprenticeship in Spray painting and gave it up for his part time job at Liqorland, which then became full time. Mladenka lives with him in a unit and he can just walk across the road to go to work. I saw him yesterday and gave him a little hug and said
"How's things?"
He looked at me full on in the eyes,
"Good" and I knew it was. It took heartache and pain and every single part of our being to help him and not give up. Debbie and her family refusing to give up when it all got too much. me too. Yvette as well by then.
Thinking back now, I would not have done it any other way, he received no record, nothing to say that he had ever been in Remand for 6 weeks. But for us as a family it was a major achievement, coming together and stopping at nothing to reach our goal, freedom for Kyle.
I am always proud of my girls for their persistence and care and at moments we were all ready to sit down and burst into tears, but don't as it just wastes our time and leaves us drained for days.
I am so glad we got him out and if he ever does that again I am going to remove all of his skin with a razor blade a blunt one and smile, lol, he knows this ha ha
Love nana x
