image description: a very pretty girl with an L.A. cap, a pierced nose, a black tank top, luminous hazel eyes, and lots of freckles, is looking straight at the camera. Behind her are various people on the Venice boardwalk, including a couple of women with a child in a stroller. This is Wayward Eldest Daughter Kat.
She calls me collect from jail, freaking out, saying, “now, mama! Get me out now! Get me out of here! NOW!”
Mind you, she is in Santa Monica. I am in Wisconsin.
In the almost three years I’ve been blogging Kat has taken on mythic stature, this oldest child of mine who spent her teenage years in a fury of slammed doors, bad behavior, and heart-ache. I often have to search just to find something good to say about her, some piece of goodness that allows me to sleep at night, like the way she once kept a job for three whole months, or the time she didn’t do any drugs for a whole week.
And so it goes. She’s under observation, detoxing in jail, calling collect, making promises, going into angry tangents, scared, withdrawing, not knowing what the fuck is going to happen to her next.
She’ll see the judge on Thursday. She’s a cute girl who looks pitiful when she cries–that might still work in her favor.
My new year’s resolution: keep being honest about how truly weird life gets. And if she gets out, and you’re ever on the boardwalk in Venice, or at the drum circle, or by the graffiti wall, and you see her, tell her that her mama loves her. And the rest is up to her.