Cont'd

(For the whole story, read the following blog ("Just for the 'record'") before this one--I'm not very savvy with this blogging thing yet)

Anyway, Thomas was pulled over for speeding. I don't really know the exact series of events following that, but this is what he is charged with; DUI (of marijuana) as well as possession of less that 1 ounce of pot and paraphernalia--apparently neither of these charges are felonies and are in and of themselves no huge deal--but when the police searched his car and found a handgun and a machete in his trunk, they concluded he was a criminal, thus resulting in $10,000 bail (the lawyer actually got them to reduce it from $30,000) and 2 felony charges.

Now, the gun was purchased legally in NH and was found in a locked safe (Thomas doesn't trust banks) unloaded(I don't know where the machete was), but apparently the combination of drugs and weapons is not looked very favorably upon by the state of Utah. While I comfort myself with my heartfelt knowledge that Thomas could never hurt a soul, and know that his fascination with guns has been life long (to my knowledge he had never seen a gun before he made one out of Duplo blocks not long after his first birthday) I also fear that if I, and his Dad, were better parents, Thomas would have grown up and out of his fascination for weapons and video games. Anyway, that's another subject for another time. Let me just say that this experience has humbled and helped me to become less judgemental of parents who have children in trouble. My position USED to be that if a kid turned out to be a criminal, we could always blame the parents, and maybe that is still true to a certain extent. But now I believe that most parents are trying to raise their kids in the best way they know and there is so much out of their control. My heart truly goes out to the parents of children who commit violent crimes against themselves or others. The guilt and pain they could potentially experience is unimaginable to me. Although maybe, as Paul likes to point out, I'm just projecting...

Just for the "record"

Now that I have put the fact that Thomas was arrested in writing on the Internet, I feel like I should tell the whole story so people don't get the impression that he's a future serial killer or something.

Thomas decided to make a move out to CA to try and find work. I encouraged him to go for many reasons-not all of them unselfish-but mostly because I figure he's a whole lot more likely to find an acting job there than he would in NH. Anyway, I paid for the car to be fixed ($1000+), gave him my credit card for potential emergencies(that seems kind of ironic now), a big hug and kiss, and sent him on his way. It seemed that he had done his research regarding the route he would take and how long it would take him. He had desperately wanted to get the license plate changed on his car because he said, "I am not going to drive across the country with a license plate that says "OH SNAAP"" but he couldn't because you can only change your license plate during your registration month. I got the impression that his anxiety about the license plate was due to a fear of being a target for "bad guys" because he was planning to sleep at rest stops along the way. It never crossed my clueless mind that he might be worried about being a target for the police (and maybe it didn't cross his mind either...I guess OBVIOUSLY it didn't cross his mind!) Anyway, he said he was going to be extra careful driving through the "I" states (Illinois, Iowa, Indiana) because, according to his research, those were the states strictest in law, and he didn't want to get pulled over there. He never said anything about Utah...

His first stop was to be in Boulder,CO to visit with his friend JT who is studying Buddhism. He arrived there safely on his 23rd birthday and called me saying he had a great trip so far and was looking forward to the last leg of his journey to CA. That was on on Sunday, October 18th. The next time I heard from him was on Friday, October 24th (the day before the first official day of my much needed week off from work) sometime between 9 and 10 PM. The phone woke me up out of a deep sleep and when I answered I heard Thomas saying, "I know you've done everything possible for me, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc and I have failed you, blah, blah, blah. "What happened, Thomas" I knew the answer deep down before he said, "I've been arrested."

Paul is the man of many hobbies. Every few weeks (or sometimes months) he has something new that he's into; amp building, guitar repairing, building a solar hot water heater, sound proofing his music studio, grass growing and many others I can't remember right now. Watching him has made me realize that I don't really have any hobbies except trying to keep myself from (literally) going insane which I guess takes up a lot of my time. Anyway, Paul's latest hobby involves his new GPS and hiking in the forests of Bow. He's been spending a lot of time downloading maps from the internet and learning how to read them. So last weekend he asked me if I wanted to go on a little hike with him. I was a little wary because I'm not in the best of shape and needed to teach an aerobics class the next day, but he said it was 1.8 miles so I thought "no problem" since I know I can walk/run at least 3 miles on the treadmill... Shit! It's now been more than a year and a half since I started writing this and now have no idea how the story turned out. My guess is that the "short hike" turned into some kind of 3 hour fiasco involving one of us stepping into the bog and sinking down to our asses and lots of angst and sore muscles to follow...

Clueless

Well, apparently I've created a blog that links to my Facebook page but I have no idea, really, how I did it and how to access it except by signing on to the "Kaminski Family Blog" and signing in. That makes me feel like a stalker while posting my own thoughts and family drama on the internet makes me feel a little like I went to school with just my underwear on:) But still, this blogging thing is way more my style than the Facebook thing. I just can't keep up with that.

Well, Thomas is out of jail and in CA and just got a job! As a professional Career Counselor, I advised him to get a job BEFORE he is convicted of the 2 (that's right, TWO) felonies he's been charged with. Actually, he has (I think) a really good lawyer, and I he may come through this with relatively small consequences which, in the long run, is probably not a good thing...

Never in my wildest dreams...

...did I think I would create a blog:) Seriously. But the subject of this post is my first born child, Thomas William Guertin. Almost exactly 23 years ago Thomas William came careening into my life. A bundle of joy with a strawberry blond peach fuzzy head who the nurses nicknamed "Barracuda" because of his talent and desire to latch on and suck the nourishment out of me within the first couple of hours of his life. When I look at it in retrospect that probably should have been a red flag. But in spite of that and the many hours of labor, emergency C-section, and post-op infection, I was smitten with him from the beginning. Anyway...never in my wildest dreams when the nurse handed me that hungry, demanding, bundle of joy did I think that 23 years later I would be posting $10,000 to bail him out of jail. Quite the opposite, in fact. I thought he had the charisma to become someone great and famous. Even the nurses at Yale-New Haven Hospital thought he was something special and voted him "Best looking baby" in a nursery of probably 50 or so others. The birth announcements I chose said, "We are proud to introduce the 49th President of the United States" or something like that. If someone had told me that 23 years ago I would be hiring a criminal defense attorney in Utah to argue Thomas's "innocence", I would have laughed them right out of the hospital room. (I wish the painkillers I was receiving then were available to me right now) But in spite of that and everything else I have been through with him, I love him as much today as I did back then. And just like I have multiple times before like on his first day of daycare, kindergarten, Exeter, etc., etc. I need to let him go and be who he is meant to become even if what he becomes was never in my dreams...