D-day today!

Himself is gone to his home county today, all spiffed up, because today is D-day.

That's what we call the latest twist in his endless divorce, because today is the day it finally goes to court after a couple of years of pointless negotiations with his ex.

Of course, it is probably just the first of many appearances in front of a family court, as we finally, finally, finally start to sort out the Celtic triple knot of a mess that he has been in domestically for the last three years.

Kitty and I are staying in Halifax because today was the only day I could get an appointment for her to get her eyes tested. Her teachers said she was having problems reading; she was telling me that she was getting headaches after English class, I noticed she was reading the computer screen from about ten milimetres away. Finally the penny dropped and I asked her when she had gotten her eyes tested last.

Never, apparently.

Go figure.

So Himself is resigned to his fate; I am hopping up and down in a nervous funk, and Kitty is dreading the glaucoma puff of wind I described when I was explaining what an eye exam would be like.

Happy days all round.

Recently, I had lunch with a senior civil servant here in Halifax who has taken me under her wing to an extent and is mentoring me. I was telling her about my changed domestic circumstances and she told me that the same thing had happened her when she was my age. Except there were three of them.

And they went back to their mother after a year. And it didn't work out and they blamed her. And she felt sad and guilty forever after.

At the time, I said that I was finding the rearing/ mentoring/ feeding/ clothing/ caring aspect of the whole thing challenging but doable. What I was having trouble with was the complete opening up of my heart to a girl I didn't know very well. I have trouble with these things generally. And I was very nervous about it.

And she just laughed and said it would come. Which I have found helpful, as it helped me to stop fretting about it.

And gradually we have become closer.

Then last night, after we switched off an episode of Weeds, Kitty sat down and asked us would it be okay if she went home after school was out.

Home? Forever?

Yes.

Have you talked to your mother about it?

Yes. I asked her the other night.

I swear I heard the moon creaking across the sky, such was the stunned silence in the room.

A series of images flashed across my brain.

The special soft voice she uses with her mother on the phone. The pyjamas, three sizes too big, that she got a couple of weeks ago and wears constantly. The blog I found a couple of weeks ago, written by a girl called Kitty wondering why on earth she had ever left home.

Her sad little voice when she called late Saturday night to tell us her mom had fought with her and left her to babysit four kids until the wee hours yet again when she went home a couple of weeks ago. The pitiful bag of possessions she was allowed to take with her to our home in January. The tears on the phone most weeks when calls home.

The timing couldn't have been worse of course. We pointed this out to her. She said her mother had told her if she didn't come home now, the judge would prevent her forever today.

I pointed out that we had gone through this before and told her that the judge wouldn't do that as she was sixteen and considered capable of deciding by herself.

She stared at her feet for a while.

We asked her why she hadn't talked to us first.

She was too scared.

Too scared.

TOO EFFING SCARED.

We don't yell at her. We don't beat her. We don't drag her downstairs by the hair and throw her out of the house. We don't confiscate her things and use them ourselves. We don't take her Christmas money and spend it on alcohol. We don't read her diary and yell at her some more.

We don't call her stupid. We don't yell at her about her homework, or her marks, or her school work. We don't need to, because she doesn't fail when she's here. Because she's smart as a whip, but there are attention issues. Because she's SIXTEEN.

We don't make her stand in the corner with her arms outstretched to learn manners. We don't tie her to a chair until one in the morning because she can't figure out her maths homework.

We don't call her a fat *****. We don't ground her and invite all the local kids round to use the pool and make her watch from her bedroom window. We don't not even buy her a bra when she obviously needs one, or nice underwear, or clothes, or shoes, or a winter jacket and boots, or gloves.

We don't prevent her from seeing her brother for months at a time. We don't ground her for months on end and force her to do housework (apart from insisting she isolate the weird teenager smell in her room and remove the cause on a weekly basis!) while we go partying on the weekend. We don't put her in charge of a drop in centre for hyperactive kids whose parents go out drinking every night of every weekend.

We don't go partying period. We stay home EVERY EFFING NIGHT.

We don't prevent her from playing basketball because it would mean we'd have to drive her somewhere. We buy her a basketball and go out and train with her every night so she'll be good enough to try for the school team if she wants. And if she doesn't want that's good too. We'll just play basketball for the hell of it. Sprained thumb or not.

Too scared.

I thought her father was going to implode, such was the effort of keeping the tears of frustration inside.

You can go home if you want... we don't think it would be the best thing for you, but we can't stop you. You'll always have a home here.

That was about all he could manage. He went to bed. His heart is broken again.

We stayed up and talked a while. But her mind's made up. I can see it in her eyes. I didn't try to talk her out of it. I just tried to give her some tools to deal with what she's heading back into.

Hold back a little, I said. Keep some of your new mental strength to yourself, I said. Don't showyour strength until you have learned to control it, because people try to break you when they see you are strong. Just use it to keep yourself safe inside your head. But don't let anyone ever tell you you are stupid, because you have proved you are really really smart and responsible and creative.

She's worried she'll start failing school again.

I wanted to say Yes, yes, you must stay here and we will get you through high school and into college and you will have a qualification in four years and then your life will be full of potential in this amazing country and that's what your father and I lie in bed and talk about every night, how we're going to do this, and how great it's going to be to help you, and please please please let us do this for you. But I couldn't. It wasn't my place to say it.

I just said, you will always have a home with us. And we will help you go to college when it's time. And if anything ever happens to your parents, you will always have a home with me.

But you're going to have to keep your room tidy of course.

She finally started to smile again.

Off she went to MSN her friends to tell them god knows what because I don't monitor her private conversations with her friends.

LIKE SOME PEOPLE.

I went to bed and we lay there shattered.

Now I understand. Now I get it. Now, I finally know why people have kids.

Utter, unconditional, trusting love.

Forever.

No matter what kind of a dysfunctional selfish ***** you are.

Tempting.

Very very tempting.

All I can do is comfort myself with the thought that one day they sit there and tell you they need to go and live in a place that's full of danger and threats to them and their self-esteem and their future prospects, and there's nothing you can say or do because they have to make their own choices.

But I can't help but think how unfair it is that I have had to endure that bit without the payback.

Like my friend the civil servant said to me that day over lunch, they worm their way in, no matter how hard you try to stop them.

So true.

Still, she's sixteen. Himself was his usual optimistic self this morning. She'll change her mind, he said.

I don't think so.

The last thing she told me last night is that she's worried about her brother.

She's such a good girl. What kind of parent forces her daughter to come home because of the way she's treating her son?

One who knows that unconditional love will win the day, I suppose.

Now all our hopes are banking on a judge who has to figure all this out in a twenty minute hearing.

Then she might be able to change her mind. And stay in this new family we have built here together.

Somehow, I don't think so.

It's all about the importance of mother love in family court.

Fuck the rest of us.