And the one I really want argued out in the comments on the Facebook video: Emma sees her mother four times a year now, ninety minutes at a time, supervised. The woman let her own mother die with her hand on an urn full of wood ash, and let her daughter wear secondhand coats so there’d be rent on a hidden house. I fought those visits for eight months. What changed my mind was Emma saying “She’s still my mom, though. Even if she’s bad at it.” Some people tell me I did the only right thing a grandfather could do. Others tell me I handed a ten-year-old a door that should have stayed shut and called it her choice. Which is it?
If this story got you, share it with your friends and family.
Somebody on your list is wiring money every month to an adult on behalf of a child, and has never once asked for a receipt, because asking would feel like an accusation. Send it to them. Tell them a grocer who counted his register twice a day for thirty-eight years handed over two hundred and eighty thousand dollars on a handshake, and that the tell was sitting on his granddaughter’s shoulders every October.
