by Catherine Granger
North Carolina, USA
In 1982, both my fiancee and I were active duty Army, and when he gained custody of his three boys, we decided to get married right away. I resigned from the Army to raise the boys. They were ages five, three, and one. I became an instant mom. The following years were a rough adjustment for us all, but there were good times, too.
Eric was the toughest to reach of the three boys. The oldest was the beloved of his paternal grandparents, and the youngest was the easiest for me to deal with. Eric was stuck in the middle, and he and I had many a rough time.
When I was pregnant for the second time, having lost the first one in early pregnancy, my husband was on active duty. I felt very trapped without my former career and not sure where my life was going. I decided to pack up the boys and take off. From Louisiana, I drove to meet my mother at the Houston airport, added her to our van, and headed out to my sister Ellen’s home in California.
It was a wonderful trip. Each morning, I got up about 5:00 a.m., put gas in the van, and loaded the boys into the back of the van, which converted into a bed. Then we drove away. After we reached Ellen’s house, Mom flew back home to New York.
Then Ellen and her three children joined us in heading to New York by van. Every morning, I took the van to get gas, as before. When I returned, either Ellen or I stayed in the motel room to wake the kids, send them to the bathroom, and steer them to the van. The other was at the van settling the kids in. One morning, Ellen came out after I had settled in five children. I asked her where the last child was, and she said she’d sent them all to the van.
We threw open the doors and counted. One was missing, and it was 4-year-old Eric. We ran back to the room: no Eric. We searched the grounds, checked the pool in the middle of the courtyard, and panicked. No Eric.
Finally we found him on the other side of the hotel, standing patiently where the van had been parked when we arrived the night before. I asked him why he was there. He said that Ellen had told him to go to the van, so he did. When I asked him if he was scared when the van wasn’t there, he replied, “No, Mom, I knew you would find me.”
Eric’s confidence in me after all the adjustments he had been through gave me the power to deal with life for years to come, including all three childrens’ teen years. His courage in moving into his new life — shown by those words — inspired me to never stop looking… for they trusted me to find them.
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It would be so easy to criticize the people in this story, but I know that military marriages are very difficult, and this mother made the best decision she could at the time I’m sure. How wonderful that Eric knew he could count on her, I am sure she is and was the kind of mother that an army brat needs, an anchor in the storm. And a stepmother, at that!
Military marriage might be tough, but what she did is kidnapping. Custodial interference at the least.
The story CLEARLY states at the beginning that “when he (fiancé) gained custody we decided to get married” so I do not see how you get that she kidnapped the boy!
Lynn, there’s no reason to assume this was kidnapping: with 3 preschool aged kids, and an overseas deployed husband, the change of pace a trip provides can mean sanity instead of sinking into despair over the same frustrating, boring routine at home.
I can only presume that Lynn Houston misread the article–I’ve read it CAREFULLY more than once, and there’s nothing to indicate that Mrs. Granger did anything improper with the children. The others have elaborated that point so well I don’t need to add anything further to it.
The only thing that could even have been distorted into something “wrong” was that Ellen (not the mom, but the aunt) apparently failed to escort the children from the room to the van, giving Eric room to misunderstand WHERE the van was and go in the wrong direction (even though he thought it was the right direction). And that point could be argued, given that we don’t have 100% of the story.
In all of this unnecessary brouhaha, the big point has not been discussed–I see it as a BIG thing that even with the difficulties Mrs. Granger was having with Eric, she was still gaining his trust, which paid off that morning. Yeah, something could have happened to Eric at the hands of a stranger while he was unaccounted for (a fear I noted, having been a Dad), but the fact remains that nothing harmful DID happen, and again, something BIG that was good happened. And that’s why this story is here.
Since when is a vacation a kidnapping? I imagine that she had the dad’s permission even though the article did not say so. Perhaps the author did not feel that the permission was important to the story
You imagined she had the dad’s permission, but as she wrote the story, “I decided to pack up the boys and take off.” Sound more like a kidnapping than a vacation.