Everything Matters
The Seasons of a Life
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, March 16, 2006

Traevena Byrd knows something about a change of seasons. Once when all her days felt like winter the only lawyers she knew represented her and her siblings in court whenever they were taken from their mother. Now Traevena is a lawyer herself, living in Ithaca, NY.

In those cold days of her childhood, police officers were people who woke her up to tell her to get dressed to go to a social service agency or a foster home. But today, after many springs, Traevena is married to an Ithaca city police officer.

“I never thought in a million years I would be married to a cop,” she laughs.

With a loving uncle and what Traevena calls “God’s grace,” she made it over a wall of obstacles. She was the first to make it and ever since then she has prayed for her two sisters, cried over the pain in their lives, tried to calm her pounding heart and conjure up enough faith to believe that they will make it over the wall too.

Her husband helped her to see the difficult truth - that she cannot save her sisters and that there are things they must do for themselves. Therein lies the hardest lesson for any of us who has ever loved someone who teeters on the edge of danger. It is natural that when winter ends for us, we want our loved ones to come in out of the cold also.

Traevena’s mother was “drug-addicted, suffered depression, low self-esteem and had a lot of difficulty with parenting as a result.” She has seen her father only three or four times. The family lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, then moved around, landing in Denver when Traevena was nine.

She went to her first foster home at age four, but was returned to her mother. She was sent to another foster home at age 14. She stayed with that family for six months before going back to Iowa to live with her uncle.

But her younger sisters remained in foster care, bouncing from one family to another before being sent back to their mother. While Traevena blossomed in her uncle’s stable household, her sisters were both pregnant by age 16. Their mother was in and out of jail. Then right after Traevena graduated from high school, her mother’s long winter seemed to be ending too. She went into a drug rehab program and got an apartment for herself and her two younger daughters. Traevena drove to Denver to visit her.

“We took pictures together. I keep one on my nightstand,” she says.

A couple of months later her mother was stabbed to death by an ex-boyfriend. Traevena’s middle sister, who was 17 and pregnant with her second child, was also stabbed during the attack. Doctors had to give her an emergency cesarean and the baby survived.

On their own, her sisters struggled. Traevena tried to help. She and her husband are raising one of her nieces along with their two children.

“I remember being in college and suffering over what they were dealing with,” says Traevena. “I had such guilt. For a long time I could not come to terms with why my uncle couldn’t take all of us. But as I got older and had my family I realized you can’t do some things without jeopardizing your own family.”

Her uncle did what he could, she is sure.

Now her middle sister, at age 32, has lost permanent custody of her three children and they are being put up for adoption. Once, when Traevena was 26 and a single parent herself, she took in her sister’s children for six months. But her sister came one day and took the children and broke off all contact with Traevena.

At first this silence from her sister felt like a death sentence. As the oldest, Traevena had hoped to reach over the wall and by herself pull her younger siblings over to the warmer, sunnier side. Add the sudden silence to the guilt and worry and you can only imagine a measure of the pain she felt. Then add finding out a sister is losing her children - forever.

“This has hit me hard,” says Traevena.

It would have destroyed her if she had not seen the seasons change before. Traevena Byrd is an attorney married to a cop. They just built a new house. She is a good mother who takes her children out for pizza on Friday nights. Her husband helps cook Saturday breakfasts. Her youngest sister, now 30, is in college.

Soon it will be spring again in Ithaca.

 

Patrice Gaines is the author of the memoir "Laughing in the Dark" and the inspirational "Moments of Grace." She lives in the Charlotte , NC area, where she co-founded the Brown Angel Center for women who have been incarcerated. Contact her through her website: www.patricegaines.com.