The child returns.........

The 19 year old child has returned to the nest.......pet rat (blonde) named "Alice" with her...(augh!) After having a quiet breakfast with just my husband the phone rings and it's my daughter, with trembling voice," Mom....When can I come home?" at first the question caught me off guard, I'm thinking why is she asking me if she can 'Stop by'...then I rewind the question in my head and realize she is really saying "Mom ..Can I move back home?" I ask if she is alright because I can tell she has been crying, and she says "Yes" I then ask because of her one word answer, (a trick us Mother's are clued in on early)"What happened"...silence......."Can you talk"........"No" is her response, I say come home right now! we hang up.

Then the "WARRIOR" in me kicks in, I call right back........"Do you need me to come help you get your things together?".......... She says still sniffling, "Please" I quickly grab the cell phone, my truck keys and tell my husband better get some bail money together, because "MOMMA" is gonna hurt someone if someone hurt one of her babies!

The house she moved into was her friends house, who's parents are going though an ugly divorce, the parents live in different houses now with the kids alone in the main house but the Dictator of a father still shows up at the house from time to time and since he doesn't have the wife to push around anymore he goes after the children and their friends.....I guess yesterday morning was my daughter's turn. He was lucky he left the house before the speed of light because that's all it took for me to get there.

I can't tell you how many times when those kids were growing up, the Mother and the Father would get into it and the police would be called and the kids were always asked is there a safe place you can go while all this blows over (Parents fighting) and a squad car would show up in my driveway for the kids to be dropped off here. My home has always had an open door policy when it came to being a safe haven.....I knew what it was to grow up in a sometimes happy sometimes violent home......alcohol related of course....and since there was no pattern to my Fathers alcohol addiction there was no way of guessing what was coming next...it was always coming,  but we just never knew when.

I was not happy when my child told me this was where she was moving into, but she was almost 19 and we all know there is no stopping a child at that age....and a lesson or two or three learned along the way can hopefully stop her from making a bad decision later in life. She lasted exactly 1 month and two weeks out of the nest.

Now there is a not so small matter of a "RAT" being in my house............anybody want a rat?????????????