Crises and Honeymoons Ending

“How did your mother sound when you called her,” I asked Sverre over my glass of chardonnay.

“So happy. Her voice was almost unrecognizable, she's been under so much stress. She sounds like she does when she's not worried, and that's been a long time.”

“Let's get out the idea to go to the hytta with them sometime...I'd like to meet this woman. I don't think I've ever seen your mom not in some crisis ever since I moved here nearly three and a half years ago.”

“She's been under so much stress in the past three years, it's insane.”

We're coming down from the most stressful eight weeks in our marriage yet. Not like we're not used to crisis-mode. In the past three years from the moment I moved to Norway, Sverre's uncle lost a very fast battle to cancer leaving a bereaved and shell-shocked wife and small daughter. My mother-in-law spends one day a week at her sister's, providing Sverre's aunt an evening out with her friends and some time to relax and vent to friends while she and her daughter cope with the loss of the man in their life. Shortly after his death, Sverre's grandmother, the grand matriarch that knitted this close family together, began a long, slow battle with stomach cancer that she lost in degrees. She was buried while we were in California for Christmas last year.

It seemed that this year was the time for grieving, for remembering that bright, blue-eyed, solid woman who was a grandmotherly anchor always prepared with good coffee, Belgian chocolates, and cream cakes whilst never tolerating a non-intelligent, close-minded perspective in her home. Sverre's grandmother was a civil-rights minded liberal before the idea permeated popular culture. This year was our time to acknowledge her passing, to come to grips with the changed lives of Sverre's aunt and cousin, and to come together again as a family.

And then we went to Spain in October.

When I flew home from our trip to Spain, I left Sverre behind. The original purpose of the trip was a for work meetings (cough, boondoggle) with clients. We went a few days early to have some down time together. When I came home, Sverre's sister started sending me messages. When is Sverre coming home? What time? What day?

Christ, I thought, is it really so bad? Why is she bugging me?

Sverre came home at five o'clock on a Sunday. His sister called at 5:10.

Norwegian child protective services had been to their home and under suspicion of physical abuse on the part of my brother-in-law, my niece had been removed. My sister-in-law had been taken with her for a short time, before being released, though not allowed to return home,and my niece was being placed in emergency foster care.

And thus, the bell tolled on the end of a generation's youth in this family.

Norway has a lot of good things going for it. It's hard to turn your nose up to excellent maternity care, maternity and paternity leave, free health care, unemployment benefits, and an economy with around 3% unemployment. But there is a dark side to the “nanny state.” It is the state that feels that, in the best interest of its youngest citizens, any and all actions are excusable on the slightest of pretenses.

Norwegian child services does its job all too well. The scope of their power, and the weight they have in the legal arena is frightening. My in-laws had recently moved to a small town. Child care is subsidized by the state, but Norway doesn't do too well keeping up with the boom of children this generation is delivering with adequate kindergartens. Waiting times are long, and my niece waited almost six months to enter a kindergarten. On her first day, she began to tell stories, and messages of concern were sent to child services. These had to do with “Daddy is mean,” “Daddy and mommy fight,” and the child care workers asked my niece about a mark her mother has over her eye. “Yes, mommy has a bruise over her eye,” she said. They never asked my sister-in-law, if they'd had, they would have found out that mark is a large birthmark she's had since birth.

In short, a lack of communication and a misuse of power led to a near three month struggle to get my niece home. It took us two weeks of arguing for appointments and inspections of our home to get our niece into our custody—conveniently labeled “voluntary.” I have to come to realize that in the Norwegian legal system, “volunteer” means the same thing it does in the United States military.

“I didn't volunteer, I was voluntold.”

“Voluntary” covers a range of sins. We never received support as a “foster family” because we volunteered to take custody, although returning our niece to our family would spell immediate removal and placement in the official foster system. My sister-in-law “volunteered” to go to a women's crisis center because to say no would mean her child being removed from her, which happened in the end.

When our niece was transferred to us, after weeks of fighting, she was delivered by her emergency foster family. This had me on edge for several issues, mostly because I think it's not necessary for a foster family to meet immediate members of a child's family. Frankly, it's none of their damn business. But this happened, and we were too afraid to object. The foster family immediately launched into how they felt the transfer happened too fast, that they'd grown close to her in the time she'd been with her. Sverre looked at the “foster father” making these claims and coolly answered, “You feel it's too fast...we feel we've waited too long.”

They asked permission of the child protective services to come visit her on her birthday, the following Sunday. Permission is granted, and we were informed after the fact. That morning, before the family party, my hands shook as a I chopped food and later tried to get her clothes over her head. They had asked to meet my niece's mother and were granted permission to do so, and we were informed after the fact. My sister-in-law paced the living room like a caged animal when she wasn't playing dolls on the floor. “I can't meet these people,” she breathed in English, her worried eyes flashing over her daughter's head, between expertly answering excited questions with a mother's attentiveness.

“I know,” I said. “I know, but we have to. I can't do anything about it.”

They came, they gave her clothes (immediately thrown to the side) and a toy. When it was time to leave, she leaned over my niece's head, brushed aside her bangs, kissed her forehead and cooed, “Oh, my poor little girl, who is going to kiss your forehead before you go to sleep now?”

If looks could talk, the Fuck you, lady would have shaken the rafters.

Forced smiles, an icy goodbye, and then me running down the stairs with a forgotten bag two seconds later with a, “Thank you for what you've done. Goodbye.”

My mom always taught me to be polite, I think she would be proud of me. Before they made it to the front door my sister-in-law and I were on the veranda, clutching cigarettes and fuming in mutters before we had to go in, all smiles and excitement for the Birthday Girl, before Sverre's mother and brother arrived for the party.

There's also that saying, “Looking at a situation with tunnel vision.” It's so easy to get caught up in the drama and enter preconceptions and look for answers, and dig for answers, and try to find the answers you want based on the questions you ask. This has also been a problem we've run into. This entire situation was blown out of proportion, accusations made, and when those accusations proved baseless, the great C(over) Y(our) A(ss) game began. Statements by unqualified individuals about a person's psychological state and fitness abounded, lawyers bumbled ineffectively with documents, hobbled by their ignorance of the people involved and a lack of interest in investing themselves to seeking solutions.

For eight weeks, my niece has lived in my home. My sister-in-law has made grueling treks several times a week to watch over her and visit while I am at school, or just to spend quality mom-daughter time with her. It is hard to have a four-year old in your home, 24-hours a day, in a small city apartment. Tempers frayed on her end, and mine. Tantrums flared, and then when I was recovering she'd get angry, too. We did the best we could, and tried to explain to a very upset little girl why she couldn't go home right now, right now. Why she couldn't play with her cats, and why Daddy couldn't come visit. The adults became impatient with one another, fortunately an evening with Karla over a few beers helped me re-adjust my Judgy McJudgy pants. We toed the line of becoming too close to this charming little girl, and in the end recovered in time to let her go gracefully and gratefully.

This afternoon Sverre and I and my in-laws were called into a meeting. After several feints, we had proved strong and solid. They were backed against a wall, and they knew it. Smiles and good wishes for the New Year ushered us into the room. The general tone was, “Oh, it's so wonderful to have this situation solved!” This ended quickly. We made it clear, with Sverre leading expertly, that while we were not making judgments about the people involved, the processes and powers of this situation were so out of hand that long-term impacts have been made on this family that cannot be erased. For better or worse, we have all been effected; from our niece first and foremost, the catalyst of this, to her parents, to Sverre and me, to the grandparents, down to the other children who have sensed something is not quite right. We enter 2012 a family shaken, yet firm; knitting ourselves together after yet another crisis.

All of the accusations initially made against my brother-in-law had been proven baseless and unfounded. The regime of fear, of threats, of forcing Sverre's family to “voluntarily” give up custody of their daughter, to concede, to scrabble together their wits and hang on to the frayed threads of family has failed. We have stood together. While Sverre handled diplomacy and dealt out criticism, my sister-in-law carried herself like a queen, my brother-in-law handled himself like a man wronged who maintained his dignity. He is a man whose reputation has been irreparably tarnished in his small community after word of the case leaked into the public, but he gave no indication of this. The case workers gushed their admiration for how my in-laws have handled their situation. Polite smiles were returned.

Throughout this process, people have praised Sverre and me, praised us taking in our niece into our home, for changing our lives radically to accommodate her. “It's amazing what you're doing. There's not many who would do such a thing.” I am genuinely baffled by this, it is my opinion that doing what your have to do for your family goes without saying.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some fucking Mother-Theresa-saint type, after all. But I come from a close-knit family, and so does Sverre. Putting up with stress and inconvenience for the sake of a child is part and parcel of what adults--of what families--do. I do think we've graduated from being called “kids” or “young'uns.” I think I'm finally earning my stripes.

Today, when the meeting was over, we drove over to my brother-in-law's mother's home. My sister-in-law told my niece, “You're going home.”

“Am I going home,” She asked, referring to our apartment, “or am I going to my home?”

“Your going to your home,” my sister-in-law smiled, “to your room and to your cats.”

Her eyes lit up, she hugged herself, and breathed out an excited laugh. We loaded into the car and drove the short distance to my in-laws' house. She giggled as we got out of the car, and ran into the hallways when the door opened, shrieking excitedly when she saw her cats. “Kattene mine!” She crowed, and then inspected every room, noting changes as she went. She barreled up the stairs to her room, and all five of us crammed inside as she inventoried her toys, bed, cat, rugs, chairs, table, CD-player, commenting the entire time. When she became engrossed in a game with her father, we excused ourselves and left. We called everyone in the family and exchanged relieved sighs all around, my mother-in-law was overjoyed.

I would like to meet my mother-in-law without the weight of the world on her shoulders. Worrying not only about her sister, her niece, her mother, her granddaughter, her daughter, her son-in-law, her son, her son's American wife...but happy and relaxed. I look forward to some down time, if we're granted that.

The apartment is rather quiet now, the pink Princess castle-tent looking a little forlorn without its resident. The stick horse stares blankly at the ceiling, its marble eye reflecting the overhead light. A glass of cheap Chardonnay sits on the living room table while Sverre holds his beer, talking to his sister on the phone.

“She's asked after us,” he says after he's hung up. “She says she misses us, and wants to know when we'll come to visit. On Saturday, when we deliver her toys, I said. I miss her, too.”

“Me too,” I say.

“But I'm glad she's home.”

“Yes.”