Celebrating a Second Chance at Motherhood

Like other mothers, Leticia Seda will be having breakfast today with her kids. She has three. There is also a fourth child, Rosa, her sister’s girl. Seda is bringing up Rosa now. And naturally she would like to spend as much of Mother’s Day as possible with her granddaughter.

With her granddaughter . . .

Seda is 35.

She is so young to be a grandmother. And to be a single parent, responsible for four children, isn’t easy for a woman of any age.

There are mothers all over America who would love to wake up on this particular morning with the knowledge that they can reach out and touch their kids. At home, if possible. On the phone, if necessary.

And there are mothers all over America who will wake up as Leticia Seda did a few years ago, wondering not only how their kids are, but where their kids are.

That’s what happens to the kind of mothers who end up spending their Mother’s Days where she did.

Behind bars.

*

Surrounded by baby strollers, the woman in the white blazer doesn’t look much different from any typical mother on a warm midday in May. She could be at lunch from a downtown bank or a law firm, or on her way to the public library.

The kids are nearby, off from school for the day. There’s a son, Mike, who’s 13, and a daughter, Monique, 12.

And day after day, Seda can only pray and say, “Don’t do what I did.”

Her own 13th birthday in Wilmington was the beginning of a hellish descent into addiction, crime and punishment. That’s how old Seda was when she first experimented with cocaine. Thirteen. And that is all it took for everything in a girl’s world to go wildly, horribly wrong.

By 16, she was pregnant. She dropped out of Banning High.

Before long, she was not only a teenage mother, but a prostitute.

“My life,” she says, “was very self-destructive.”

There were arrests. People were understandably worried for Seda’s first-born daughter, Christina. The Department of Children’s Services soon became involved. And so did Seda’s own mother, who called the cops on her. She did so out of fear that there were drugs inside her daughter’s house.

Guilty of nonviolent crimes, Seda was nonetheless jailed and separated from her children. She was in need of treatment and rehabilitation. All she got was a cell.

“Nobody even offers to get you help,” she says. “They just lock you up.”

She knew better than anybody that she had made a mess of her life. For her last possession charge, Seda served 10 months in the L.A. County lockup, then 10 more in Riverside.

Mother’s Day came along.

“My mother placed one of my kids in an orphanage. Children’s services put another of my kids in a group home. The third was living with my mother. She couldn’t handle them all.

“That was the time I knew it was now or never.

“When you’re behind bars on Mother’s Day, let me tell you, you got the blues, you got the blues. Your family’s already cut you loose. Off in the distance, you know there’s a kid in bed, crying for their mother.

“It’s as low as you can go.”

*

More than 128,000 women are currently incarcerated in U.S. state and federal prisons. An estimated two-thirds of them are mothers of dependent children.

Given a proper rehab program, many could turn their lives around and be able to keep their kids. A national organization called Mothers in Prison, Children in Crisis is seeking alternatives to mandatory sentencing for drug possession, to spare families from permanent separation.

“ ‘You will never get your kids back. Never,’ ” Seda still recalls the authorities telling her.

In 1993, she got out of jail. She began attending substance recovery meetings six days a week. She went back to school. She found a job, working for a drug and alcohol abuse counseling center. She is buying a house. Almost miraculously, she has regained custody of her kids.

Christina has a girl of her own now, 5 months old.

When leukemia took the life of Seda’s sister, she agreed to care for her niece Rosa, who is 10.

A man asks, “How will you be spending this Mother’s Day?”

“Thanking God,” she says.

Not every mother deserves a day. Some are lucky. They get a second chance.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or phone (213) 237-7366.