Second time around

photographs by Mark Ostow, text by Yvonne Abraham

"In no way was this how I expected to spend my 50s," says Ruth Curran, a handsome woman with blue eyes, sandy hair, and little Christmas-tree earrings.

She sits at her dining table on a cold December day, talking about what her life has become. It's noon now, and she's been up since 6:30 a.m., as she is most days. She takes a tiny bite of her bagel, and slowly rises to bring back a fresh pot of coffee. Her husband, Dave, sits beside her, a ruddy-faced, blue-eyed man who listens closely when she talks. He gets up sometimes to check the NFL scores on the television.

Ruth's three grandchildren pass in and out of the room in search of amusement: David, an articulate, bright-faced basketball fan of 11; Nicole, 10, who constantly hides her huge eyes behind a plastic-diapered Minnie Mouse doll, keeping her distance from the grownups. And the more social Chelsea, six, dressed up in a flowered frock. Chelsea stays close to Curran, sidling up to her for hugs, which Curran gladly dispenses.

Three years ago, Curran got a call from her son, who was living in Texas. He and his wife, he told his mother, were crack addicts, and they needed her help. Ruth says she'd suspected for a long time, had heard things from friends of theirs. Still, when certainty came, she was unprepared. "It broke my heart," she says. Since then, David, Nicole, and Chelsea have been living with Ruth and Dave in their subsidized home in Milton. Curran's son and daughter-in-law are still getting themselves together.

At the 1990 census, 3.2 million American grandparents were caring for their children's children. Now, according to elderly affairs and child support agencies, there are many more. Ruth, 53, and Dave, 57, like so many of those grandparents, were just winding down their work lives when they found themselves with no choice but to start over. Curran gave up the free movie passes that came with her beloved cafeteria job at General Cinemas to stay at home full-time for the children. Before, she and Dave used to light out for the movies -- or even Nashville -- on short notice, but not anymore. Instead of three loads of laundry a week, Curran does three a day. There's no downtime: she sleeps when the kids do.

This second family is more work than the first one was. Curran has to protect her grandchildren from what seems to her a much more dangerous world than the one her own kids grew up in. In Texas, she says quietly, all three children saw things children should not see, horrific things. They all need extra support and attention. And counseling sessions, to which Curran ferries one or more of them four days a week.

They also need money. "We lost all of our savings at the beginning," says Curran. "They had nothing, so I used what I had in my 401(k) to get them bedroom furniture and clothes, to get them started." Were it not for the government, the family's only income would be Dave's $8-an-hour job as a courier. Welfare gives the Currans $446 for two of the kids, and Nicole, who has a learning disability, gets $511 a month from Social Security. After rent and utilities -- before food and laundry detergent and clothes and schoolbooks -- they're left with $500.

If Ruth and Dave Curran were caring for strangers' children, they would actually get more financial help: on average, grandparents in their situation receive only a third of what foster parents get in Massachusetts. Legislation has been proposed to correct that, but it's stuck somewhere in the State House. Meanwhile, these grandparents plod on.

"Financially we live one week to the next, just like before, but now there's more worry," says Curran with a sigh. "Now, we're at the mercy of the system."

But her biggest concern is age, of which her arthritis is a constant reminder.

"My mortality is more of an issue now than it was when I was raising my own kids," she says. "What happens to them if something happens to me?"