Visit With Oliver Today (Catching the Green Fish!)

Today, we were put in another room. Maybe CPS didn't want a repeat of my son putting the car to bed for 2 hours and saying his house was "scary".

There is no dollhouse in the other room.

So I walked in and my son was delighted and wanted to eat. Whenever he's with me, his appetite picks up.

We read several books, he wanted "cinderella" first. He likes it when I sing in the mice voice. He also likes dinosaurs and I read a book about dinosaurs to him.

We read together in a tent, and then outside of the tent and then he wanted to run around me, have me catch him, and then hug him, kiss him, and say, "I love you silly." He did this for 10 minutes or more.

Then, I took the mattress off of this hide-a-bed futon couch and put it in the middle of the floor, which was a first. My son jumped all over it.

Then, he was crawling over the frame like it was a jungle gym. Then we played airplane, where I hoist him into the air with my feet, and "fly" him around, saying, "Is it a bird? is it a plane? is it a boy flying high in the sky?!!!"

Then we were on the mattress and I said, "I think we are on a boat!" He looked at me curiously and I said, "this mattress here is our boat!" and I sat in the middle and began to row on both sides. He got this delighted and bright look on his face and sat down next to me, in our "boat". Then, he began to row too!

I asked him then, if he thought we were laying in the sun on our boat, or perhaps catching fish!

He said, decidedly, that we were catching fish.

I asked him if he saw any geese or ducks in the water, and he pointed out across the mattress and said he did. He started saying "quack, quack, quack..."

Then, I said, we'd better catch our fish, and I "cast a line" out into the "water" which was the carpet and a school table. I directed it towards the blue carpet. Oliver was so happy with this and impressed, and he began casting lines too. I turned to him and said, "did you catch anything?!!!" and he said, "I did!!!" and nodded. He looked at me with this big grin. I said to him, "You DID! Wow! that's a great fish there! what color is it?" and he was holding his hand out to me for me to see his invisible fish. He had his hand "around" this fish, leaving space for where the fish would have been.

I said, "what color?!!" and he turned his hand to look at the imaginary fish and then turned it back for me to "see" and said: "GREEN!"

I looked at it and agreed, it was, indeed, a very green and very good looking fish.

So I began casting my line and said, goodness, this fish was being very difficult, and I didn't know if it might get away. Reeled it in and showed Oliver and he smiled and nodded and said he was going to catch another one. I said, "Where do you think we should put all of our fish?" and he said, "In the box" and he "dropped" his "fish" into an imaginary box on the table, where I also dropped my fish.

So we sat there, the two of us, fishing at the edge of a mattress and the visitation monitor probably thinking, "they are quite the pair!" or "they've lost their minds!"

I kept asking what color his fish were, and all of them, big and small, were "green". Green fish. He caught so many, so many, green fish. After he reeled them in, holding his arm out and rolling up the line, he held his fish up for me to see. Every single fish. He held them up for me to appreciate.

And then we were cooking them over the stove. Oliver was pretending the banana was a fish and he pretended to eat it like it was a fish. I took the banana, peeled it, and gave him a piece of "fish" and then ate a piece myself. Then he did some more fishing and reeled one in, and we cooked and ate it.

Then, the visitation monitor began to crack up laughing, because the banana was almost gone, and it was just the peeling, and I was flopping the banana peel back and forth like it was a wily fish in the frying pan.

Then Oliver started to crack up laughing too. But it was a little bit sad to me, because first it was natural and then he wasn't laughing naturally but as if he would be appreciated more if he forced a laugh. He's done this before and it pains me because I know when he's laughing from the heart and when he's laughing out of trying to please others.

But we laughed anyway, and then we saw some more ducks and fish to catch. When the monitor said it was time to go, Oliver began to act out. He started crying like a "baby" and whined and then laid down and sucked his thumb and wanted me to nurture him and cuddle and I laid there with him and had him suck his thumb and hold onto my the finger of my other hand.

Jane Siberry "At The Beginning Of Time," heard this while writing this and for my son to hear sometime, about the boats and time and fishing.

So he laid there and cuddled next to me and didn't want to go. The monitor said it was time for him to go and he refused to move. He told her he wanted his blankie, the Cars blankie I'd given him which he loves so much. At our house, before my son was taken from me, I used this favorite blanket of his for everything. If he was watching a movie, I made a tradition of throwing it out across the couch for hiim to see and then sit on, and sit in for his movie. I used it on the ground, under his forts which I helped make for him when he was only a baby. He still associates evertying that is "cars" with me. I decorated our entire bedroom with "cars" including buying "cars" lights and stringing them up across the ceiling of the room, they were little plastic cars with lights inside of them. He loved it and then i cut out pictures of the cars characters and taped them to my wall. There was nothing romantic about my room except candles. I made it fun for my son. I wasn't involved with anyone. My son had my full focus, and while it may not seem like it, he still does and always has been. Everything I do, I do for my son, including my determination to keep my own identity. It is possible to be a superior and excellent mother and be everything else too--fully independent and adventurous and womanly while still being motherly.

So Oliver wanted to stay there with me. I told him I would see him, not tomorrow, but the next day. He shook his head to going home and I asked him if he wanted to stay with me and he looked at me and nodded up and down. He was traumatized by the idea of leaving and lay there holding onto my finger and sucking his left thumb.

Other things we did, before fishing, we drawing a little bit. He wanted me to draw for him and I tried drawing things from "The Lion King."

I told him if he ever felt sad or lonely to think of me and know I was always thinking of him, even if i didn't see him, that he was always on my mind. He nodded. I told him I wanted to see him more, but there was a man who decided everything

(does anyone want to have a word with Judge Hotchkiss?)

and if I could, I would see him all the time. Oliver just wanted to stay with me and be with me. Plainly.

His nails were long again and he had a dark bruise on his arm, on the inside of the forearm, like someone had grabbed him roughly. Then, he had a dark bruise on his right leg and a band-aid on his knee. I assume the band-aid, I looked underneath, is for a normal playing accident, but those other "fingerprint" bruises, are NOT normal.

Sorry. They're not. And if Oliver is calling his own house a "scary" place, CPS and others need to start caring more about a little boy and his wishes and desires, more than their own and put one little boy above the fears and desires of their Wenatchee medical professional buddies who do not want him back in my care, at any cost.