Publication Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2004
One more time
One more time
(June 30, 2004) Local grandparents raise their children's children
by Carol Blitzer
ettie Jean Robinson enjoyed her first vacation outside of California until she picked up the phone. Her great-grandchildren were on the verge of being placed in foster care. Robinson had to return home -- immediately.
Robinson, 62, dropped everything. "What am I going to do with kids?" she wondered. Then clarity struck. "I have a big house, nobody's in it. I think God blesses you to bless someone else."
Robinson is one of more than 150 grandparents bringing up children in Palo Alto, according to U.S. Census 2000 data. Close to 500 grandparents are rearing children in East Palo Alto.
Most are caught between myth (grandparents have it easy because the kids go home at the end of the day) and reality (sometimes there's no one else to care for the child, short of government intervention).
In Santa Clara County, 27,000 children are raised by their grandparents, according to Beth Berezovsky, a social worker supervisor with the Grandparent Caregiver Resource Center in San Jose -- a joint program of Catholic Charities and the Department of Social Services.
Add to that another 15,000 raised by relatives, including grandparents, in San Mateo County and you've got a phenomenal number of children growing up outside the "typical" family situation.
Grandparent child-rearing spans all socioeconomic levels, she said. "We have people living in Los Altos Hills, in Atherton, and people who are homeless, who have Section 8 housing, or who live several families in one apartment."
What many have in common is grief. "They all grieve about one thing or another, either the physical death or death of the dream for their adult child, what that child would become when older. It's a grief of what they would be doing with their time when they're getting a little older.
"Many had planned to retire, to travel, take classes, go back to school, whatever, get some rest," she said.
Grandparents assume custody for a variety of reasons, ranging from the death of their adult child to drug abuse, incarceration, teen pregnancy, mental illness or military deployment. For many, it means sacrificing - or postponing - retirement, coping with their own grief issues, learning how to manage the school-registration maze and navigating the intricacies of youth culture to -- yet again -- raise a generation of children.
Oftentimes, grandparents step in before Child Protective Services.
The mother of three, Robinson already had one child under her wing -- granddaughter Natalie, who was 13 at the time -- when she picked up 1-year-old Cleneisha and her baby brother, DeMario.
She hoped the "adoption" would be short-term. "I was hoping Angie (her grandchild and the children's mother) would get her life turned around. ... But, if she didn't, I was open to trying to raise them as long as I could."
Robinson still struggles with her granddaughter Angie. "My relationship with my granddaughter was never good. She was always doing something I didn't approve of. I was always hoping that she's going to do something different. It just wasn't happening," she said.
A couple of years later, Robinson took on Angie's third baby, Jamir.
Raising three children under the age of 5 has completely turned her life around. "There's something to do every waking moment - washing, folding, ironing, cooking, shopping," said Robinson, who lost her husband to bone cancer in 1989.
Adding Jamir was the biggest challenge. "I really couldn't go as much as I had before, but it went by just like that," she said, snapping her fingers. "I know it was different because when he got to school, I went 'Whew, I've got a free morning'" she said. Now she can visit an old friend, help her with her banking or marketing.
Ten years from now, Robinson hopes her great-grandchildren will return the favor.
"At this age, I'm not out to get no kids," she said. "I just did it out of necessity. As difficult as it is, I tell my friends I would probably do it again."
As open as Robinson was to taking in her great-grandchildren, she found it hard to let her granddaughter Angie go. "But, when I weighed her against the kids, at least she's an adult and the kids don't have anyone else. I did want them to be together."
At one point, Robinson reconnected with an old family friend, Gertrude Wilks, at a grandparent support group based at the East Palo Alto Senior Center. Wilks helped start the group soon after taking on three grandchildren of her own.
Wilks assumed care of the children after her daughter, Patricia, died of lung cancer three years ago. At 73, "people said I was too old. I never thought about how old I was. I knew I had a job to do," she said.
Wilks cares for three of her daughter's six children: Jason, 19, La-Pria, 16, and Dorian, 13. Patricia's oldest daughter, 31-year-old Naja Hendrix, helps out.
"We've kind of worked it together," Wilks said.
For Jason, Wilks has been like a second mother all his life.
"I lost a mom but I still had a mom. Everything I know how to do, I could do because she taught me," he said.
La-Pria agreed: "My grandmother was always there to help."
Wilks is used to helping out. When she decided East Palo Alto schools weren't doing a good enough job in the 1970s, she founded Mothers for Equal Education and directed a small private school, Nairobi Day and High School (later named the Gertrude Wilks Academy). She sat on the East Palo Alto Municipal Council and served as mayor in the late 1970s.
"I've been active all my life, but this was a different challenge than what I had experienced or expected," Wilks said.
Certain that others were in the same boat, Wilks helped launch a support group at the East Palo Alto Senior Center for grandparents raising grandchildren. Besides bringing in speakers to discuss legal issues, behavior problems or available assistance, "we provided a sounding board, a show and tell, these kinds of things you're facing and don't know what to do," Wilks said.
"It was really very helpful to me because I was bogged down and didn't know how to handle situations," she added.
Wilks acknowledged her energy level is not what it used to be. When she raised her own children, "I was at the schools every day, at this meeting or that meeting. I did dressmaking and did baking on the weekend, then went to PTA, kept all the jackets up. I could do it all."
Wilks recently developed diabetes and is adjusting to her medications and diet. "Everybody is into the medication and what I eat, what I don't eat. ...They all have been helpful in keeping me straight," she said.
Despite the wear and tear, however, Wilks was proud of her efforts.
"I promised my daughter I'd take care of them," she said. "I've done my best. I don't think anyone could have taken my place."
Katy and John Moore knew they had to step in when their son, Tim, and his new wife, Kesha Richardson Moore, were suddenly deployed to new assignments by the U.S. Navy.
They had only met their new step-granddaughter, Destiny, twice before taking her to their home in Emerald Hills.
The Moores originally raised their three children in Palo Alto, and considered moving back into the community until they found adequate educational facilities closer to their home.
Other challenges emerged when John, a computer consultant, took a job in New York for a month.
"For that whole month I was a single parent," said Katy, herself a full-time employee at Sun Microsystems. "I thought I had no energy but I didn't know what no energy was until I became a single parent. ... My energy went from zero to minus. We'd come home, I'd fix supper and we'd both go to bed at the same time.
"That's the hard thing, not having the energy you had at 35," added Katy, who is 60.
Describing Destiny as "6 years old, going on 12" the Moores find her to be a challenge and a blessing.
"She's big and strong, smart, physically appealing. All her friends like her. She enjoys school, she's keen to do her school work," said John, adding "none of those things are our doing. We didn't get a mostly broken child."
Given her intelligence and spunk, perhaps it's no surprise Destiny has some issues with authority -- first at home, then at school.
"We didn't spank our kids, or do any kind of corporal punishment. We don't with her, but I've been more tempted than with my own kids," Katy said.
But Destiny has learned that "throwing a fit" doesn't get her anywhere with the Moores. "She just doesn't pull the old stuff because it doesn't work," John said.
After six months, the Moores are starting to think about what Destiny's life - and theirs - will be like when Tim and Kesha return.
"I think children are more resilient than we give them credit for. She's grieved for her mom and her dad," John said. "As long as she's getting those basic needs taken care of, getting her hugs, getting tucked in at night, getting read to, it fills it up."
Would the Moores do it again?
"Yeah. I didn't even have to look at John," Katy said. "It's not a choice; that's what family does. You just take care of family, you're there for them."
"If we were told tomorrow that this would be the rest of our lives, we'd deal with it," she said.
Assistant editor Carol Blitzer can be reached at cblitzer@paweekly.com.
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