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Bittersweet Sunday

A young woman will spend Mother's Day merely visiting her child, but the 22-year-old is on the road to staying clean.

By SHERRI DAY
Published May 6, 2005

SOUTH TAMPA - Crystal Davidson says her life is fodder for an afterschool special, ripe for telling on the eve of Mother's Day.

The script would include her days as a stellar student.

The plot would turn on her rampant drug use, which began when she was 12 with prescription drugs, followed by marijuana, ecstasy, methamphetamines and LSD.

At 16, Davidson moved out of her mother's house in Sulphur Springs and set up house with her grandmother across the street. When her grandmother died, Davidson had the run of the place.

Two years ago, she started using heroin. But few people outside of her family knew of her addiction.

She opened her heart to a man who told her he loved her. Nineteen and lovestruck, Davidson had always dreamed of having a baby, getting married, being loved.

The relationship soured two months after Davidson got pregnant. She discovered her boyfriend was unfaithful. She kicked him out and vowed to take control of her life.

Davidson had already stopped using drugs. Now someone else's fortune depended upon her choices.

She gave birth to Tatum Elise in February 2003.

For a while, Tatum was enough. Enough to keep Davidson from heroin during breast-feeding. Enough to encourage her to get a job.

But six months after Tatum was born, Davidson returned to drugs and her attempts at rehabilitation failed.

Davidson lost custody of her daughter in January. Tatum was close by, in her mother's home, but so far away.

For Davidson, the forced separation from Tatum, now 2, was the beginning of her latest walk back to responsible living.

"What I was doing was wrong," Davidson, 22, said in an interview this week. "Every day, I miss something. She's learning something new."

Hers, she says, is a classic story of a good girl who made bad choices.

"I won't have Tatum on Mother's Day," she said. "It hurts."

Tatum is one of 424,514 children in Florida being raised by someone other than a parent.

Some of the mothers, like Davidson, are drug users trying to quit. Others are mentally ill, or incarcerated, they abused a child or failed to protect their offspring from violent attacks, social service professionals said.

In Florida, 258,952 children live with their grandparents, according to the Florida Kinship Center, a University of South Florida agency that helps nontraditional parents. Nearly 86,000 children live with relatives other than their biological parents, the agency said.

The rising number of children who live apart from birth mothers has pressed a new generation of "mothers" into service.

"We have grandmothers and great-grandmothers that thought their child rearing years were over," said Tracie Merritt, Florida Kinship's statewide coordinator. "Then they step back in and (realize) that times have changed since they raised their children. It's an adjustment."

Christine Townsend, 46, is one of those women. Townsend's children are in their 20s. But when her daughter died three years ago, Townsend opened her home to three grandchildren. She had already taken custody of a child whose mother was in and out of prison.

"It's really tiresome," said Townsend, who lives in Riverview. "You have to struggle trying to get money to take care of them. You can barely keep food in the house ... I didn't look to raise them, but I wasn't going to let them go to the state. I couldn't do that."

At the Child Abuse Council, social service agents teach mothers parenting techniques.

"A lot of the mothers that we see have been abused themselves and, at this point, are just passing on to their own children what they received," the council's executive director, Paul D'Agostino, said. "They come to us because they do want to get custody of their children back."

Merritt cautions against looking down on any of them.

"I hate to paint a negative portrait of these mothers because I'm not them, and I haven't walked in their shoes," Merritt said.

For four months, Davidson's full-time responsibility was reconstructing her life. She spent five days a week in classes, therapy and substance abuse programs at Hyde Park's Centre for Women. There, she was forced to focus on the root of her problems.

Sadness. Resentment. Anger. Loneliness.

Now in the aftercare program, she is taking steps toward independence.

Life without her old demons. Life with Tatum.

"She's in the process, and she's further along than many other women at this point," said Trish Mandakunis, the program manager of Project Recovery at the Centre for Women. "We always tell them that you're never done. Recovery is a daily process for the rest of your life."

To succeed, Davidson's counselors have told her she must discard all reminders of her old life. So far, she has bid farewell to the obvious ones.

Old friends. Her job in a head shop. Driving past the house where she used to get high.

She also said goodbye to the less obvious ones.

Aluminum foil, used to cook heroin. Credit cards, used to get cash to buy it. The house that knew her old, familiar friends and habits.

She's creating a new life with a new boyfriend in a Palma Ceia apartment.

Davidson has returned to work, this time doing clerical work for her father's painting and construction company. She visits her daughter three times a week and dreams of the day she will be allowed to take her home.

She has a court date May 20 with a judge monitoring her progress.

In her new home, Davidson has worked to create a sanctuary for her daughter. Tatum's room is swathed in pink paint and stuffed animals; her bed has a Disney headboard and footboard shaped like a castle. It's a bed fit for a princess in a room crafted by a would-be doting mother.

Davidson envisions a summer filled with trips to Disney World, Busch Gardens and Chuck E. Cheese.

One day when Tatum is older, Davidson plans to tell her daughter how she stumbled, how far she fell. She has thought about what she will say to those who would judge her.

"I have lied," she said matter-of-factly. "I have used drugs. I have done bad things in the past. But I still have to go on with my life. I can't let what other people think of me bring me down."

On Sunday, she plans to visit Tatum and hold her tightly. She will give her own mother a card, perhaps flowers, and think of the day when she can welcome Tatum home.

[Last modified May 5, 2005, 01:31:12]