You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
A mother who steals with her child.
Christmas Made Me Do It, she will tell me.
I walk into her simple apartment and I am surrounded by tears and woe is me.
I feel warmth, so I know she has heat.
I see lights, so I know she has electricity.
With tears dripping down her face, she tells me how she stole for her children.
It’s Christmas, she said. There’s nothing under the tree. Who doesn’t want things for their children she said.
And so it goes. The mother will tell me that what she did is wrong in one sentence and then tell me why she did it in the next.
I wonder if she has been stealing all week and only just now got caught. Is there stolen merchandise hidden throughout the house?
The woman has 4 children. On Monday, she takes her 9-year-old child to Kohl’s Department store and she begins stealing.
She steals men’s clothing. She steals women’s clothing. The police report indicates she shoved it in her purse and into her buggy.
Then with her 9-year-old in tow, she simply walked past the registers and left the store.
Loss prevention stopped her and called the police.
The 40-year-old woman is charged with theft over $500 and criminal trespassing. She has apparently been told to leave this department store before.
Now DCS is investigating the family. Apparently it is frowned upon in the state when you bring a child to a crime scene.
It is with this back drop that I bang on her Murfreesboro door.
A man answers and asks what I want.
I want to get both sides of the story I say.
“One minute,” he says, closing the door.
The door has been kicked and patched.
The stoop has a cement ash tray filled with cigarette butts.
There is a crystal hanging from fishing line twirling in the strong December breeze.
5 minutes pass and the woman answers.
She is wearing a clean T shirt and her hair is fixed.
She looks much better than her mug shot, which is one part nefarious, one part smudge.
She is apologetic for making us wait and invites us inside.
I am reluctant and ask her to step outside where it is light and I feel like I have more control in case something goes awry.
She tells me it is cold and insists we enter.
We do.
The house is dark, illuminated by an analog TV on the floor.
There is a small but cheerful Christmas tree in the living room.
There are lights, an angel, some tinsel.
There are no presents beneath the tree.
She begins to cry when I ask her why she took her 9-year-old daughter with her to steal.
She says she is broke and she is upset because the anniversary of the death of her oldest boy is approaching.
She says the death is being investigated as a homicide. She mentions an overdose and pills given to him by a friend who was no longer a friend. She shows me a picture of the 18 year old on the wall. He is flipping the bird in one photo, counting money in another and sporting body ink in others.
I can’t imagine hanging pictures that look like these of my children, but then again, this Christmas story is a long way from the life I lead, and I reserve judgment.
She points to the barren little Charlie Brown Christmas tree creating a rainbow-colored swirl on the wall.
She says she only wanted to give her children something for the holidays.
I believe some of what she is telling me is legitimate and some of what she is telling me is manufactured for the cameras.
I believe she is down and out. I believe she cares for her children and wants more for them. I also believe that she is grieving the loss of her oldest son who died 2 days after Christmas last year. I get that.
I will later re-read the police report. It indicates that she stole more than a dozen items, worth close to $700. The police report indicates the items are men’s and women’s clothing. There is no mention of children’s items.
I call the police spokesperson and ask about the report. The spokesman stands by the report that only men’s and women’s clothing was stolen.
The jail report indicates she has a long history of theft, dating back to 1994. Locked up 19 times in 20 years for theft and failure to appear.
It’s a broken record of nescient behavior.
Still I do feel sorry for her. I let her tell me her story. I know that the facts don’t support her holiday pitty party.
I came to do a story about a woman who steals with her child. I left with a woman who steals with her child and she says this is why she did it.
Lie. Tell the Truth. Cry. Whatever.
Half of TV news is simply getting the interview. I got the interview. Honestly, I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I knocked on her door. She wanted to talk.
At the end of the day, she admits she stole and with alacrity she admits she did so with her child in tow. She says she told her child that “mommy did wrong and there is no excuse.”
She is right.
I try to put myself in her position. A dead child. A Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Stealing with my youngest child?
I just can’t mentally get there. I don’t see it happening. I would have a job. I would find a way.
Poverty is not an excuse for acting illegally or immorally.
Perhaps that is the problem with this country.
When things don’t go right, we burn something. We throw a rock through someone elses window.
When we don’t have enough money, we steal something. We complain that someone owes something.
And when we show our children this demonstration of wrong, it does nothing but perpetuate the problem.
I do feel sorry for this mother. I am not a heartless jackal.
I ask her if she needs help. She says normally she would not accept, but now, now she would.
I tell her that if anyone reaches out to me, I will put them in contact with her.
But I also know that I must be true to the story. I will include the police reports that help flush out the story of a mother who is stealing in front of her child.
Christmas brings out the best in people. Good will toward men.
But the expectations of what Christmas is supposed to be in a Zales commercial can also bring people to the precipice of despair.
Those without want what they do not have.
When they don’t see the American realization of Christmas under the tree, emotions can churn and anxiety can stir.
Christmas began in a manger with farm animals and some frankincense and murh.
It’s now big red bows on convertible Cadillacs.
It’s princess bracelets and trips to the islands.
Christmas has become a commercialized vision of distortion.
Unless your heart and mind are pure, you can fall prey to the yule tide lure.
From this woman’s track history, she has more issues than one Christmas where her kids are without.
I say goodbye.
My photographer hugs her. “Merry Christmas,” he says.
I leave her home hoping that she can right her ship. I pray that she is telling me some truth and not just playing me for a dope.
If she is, I’m just her latest Christmas con.
19 arrests in 20 years.
As I drive away, I feel her life swirling around the drain.
I don’t think she has the will or the attitude to change her ways.
I feel bad for her, but mostly for her children who will grow up with a mother who lacks the strength to show them the light.
Life’s Crazy™