How They Spent Their Summer Vacation

Here we are, in the summer of what do we do with two teenage boys whose life has been a lot like Jacy Dugard: they've been cut out of the world and encouraged to eat crap and play video games. True, they have not been impregnated twice and forced to live in tents in the back yard. But still. . .

The boys remembered with pleasure visiting their grandfather and step-grandmother in upstate New York, at their little farmette. They have turkeys and a pond and a garden and lots of space and fresh air. So, arrangements having been made, off the boys fly from San Jose to Chicago, where they will change to a smaller plane and fly to Syracuse. They have never flown without an adult before.

In Chicago, their flight is delayed. And delayed. And then canceled. They are given hotel and food vouchers. They hit the cell phones, everybody at every end of this looming fiasco is mobilized. Some blessed human, related to a co-worker of my son, who is huddled in her storm cellar, waiting for the end of the tornado warnings, volunteers to pick the boys up at the airport, feed and house them overnight and return them the following early morning, all of which she does. They then spend another 12 hours at O'Hare. The younger boy is fried and wants to go home. The older boy seems to be enjoying the challenge. Neither one of them, I just want to say, is wearing baggy pants or women's underwear. They do - finally - get to Syracuse. The next morning, there are strawberries and sunshine and swimming and laughter in recalling the airplane adventure.

Meanwhile, back in the home state, their mother is trying to convince the judge who issued the orders that it's time to revert. She wants a joint custodial schedule, no evaluation, no supervised visitation. This is appropriate, her attorney argues, because a psychiatrist has written a letter attesting to Mom having organic brain syndrome (which is?), known by this shrink because she's been treating Mom off and on for ten years. But nobody in the family has ever heard of her before, and Mom is not the type to keep secrets when she can get so much more mileage by flopping it all out there. Mom also has a letter showing she has been discharged from rehab. There's a reason, and it's not that she has completed a program. It's that she doesn't admit she has an addiction problem, so they can't help her. All there, in the letter.

What Mom hasn't done is go into an in-patient program or arrange - in timely manner - for an evaluation, as she was ordered to do. She had told the boys, while trying to talk them out of traveling east, that they would be back with her after this court appearance. Ain't happening. Next?