Let's Tour My Portland, Oregon - Part III - The Neighborhood Park and the Great Rebellion

My playground at Colonel Summers park- still standing for the next generation

Hands down, the absolutely best thing about my childhood was Colonel Summers park, located a couple of blocks from my foster home. I woke early every summer morning and headed to the park by myself while the rest of the foster home still slept. As a 6 yr. old, I had staked a full-ownership claim of 'My Park.' No one was there more than me. I loved the playground and most especially, the wading pool that was open all summer long for free. To swim in the indoor pool located in the basement of my elementary school cost a dollar. To swim in the wading pool required nothing, not even a swim suit. (The wading pool was closed in the early 2000s due to concerns about health hazards. I'm surprised it took so long.)

One morning. long before anyone else showed up, I was swinging on the swings in the picture above. Oh, how I loved the silence of the empty playground! Just me, the squeaking of the chains and my legs pumping as hard as they could go. As I was enjoying my early sunrise work out, I spied out of the corner of my eye a man standing in the nearby archway where the bathrooms were located. His pants were down at his ankles and he was watching me while holding himself. I didn't know exactly what he was doing, but I knew enough the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I immediately dug my feet into the dirt and stopped the swing. I could hear the man calling out to me as I ran away as fast as my worn out tennis shoes could take me.

Hours later, after pondering the situation in my head, I decided to tell my foster mother Dorothy about the man at the park. I wasn't worried about the man hurting me, I had full confidence in my ability to outrun anyone who tried to mess with me. I was just curious about what he was doing. I  wanted to talk to someone and she seemed as likely as anyone to be knowledgeable on the subject. I hadn't intended to get him into trouble, I just wanted to know.

As I told the story about the man at the park to Dorothy, I could see the color drain out of her face and her hands stopped kneading the dough on the kitchen counter in front of her. She listened while I explained that I wasn't doing nothing, that he just appeared out of nowhere and was watching me from the archway of the nearby shelter. After I finished, Dorothy announced no one in the house was allowed to go outside by themselves anymore. All of us children had to have a buddy with us at all times if we left the house. She didn't explain anything about the man, she just BOOM!, enacted a travel ban for everyone.

I was furious with her. Didn't I just say that I wasn't doing anything but swinging, the way I did every morning? I didn't do anything wrong, so why was I being punished? More than any other child in the foster home, I relied on my freedom to roam the neighborhood to keep me sane. Her clipping my wings was not at all what I was looking for. Once again I was reminded how stupid I was for trusting an adult. No good ever came from telling a secret to a grown-up.

After being blocked several times at the front door by Dorothy because I refused to find another child at the foster home to drag around with me while I made my neighborhood rounds, I decided I had had enough. It was time to show her that I wasn't going to put up with her silly rules that kept me chained to the house.

It was time to pull out the big guns of rebellion. I was going to run away. Of course I couldn't do that by myself. I would never leave my brother behind. If I was going, he was too. Ezra didn't seem to mind when I whispered we were leaving. He was 8 years old, two years older than me, but we both knew I was the boss. I stole food from the kitchen and packed my school backpack with my meager personal treasures. Foster kids don't own bedrooms full of stuff. Their lives fit into a suitcase, if they are lucky enough to have a suitcase. Ezra had his bag of treasures, and we invited Barney, another foster kid who was often my co-conspirator in adventure, to come with us. He happily joined us with his own backpack.

Barney was a good choice as a travel companion. He was my age and the toughest boy on the block. He ate live ants off the sidewalk with gusto and could climb trees with the best of them. We all affectionately called him "Barney Google, with the  goo-goo-googly-eyes" because both of his eyes were lazy and tended to roam disjointedly in their sockets.

We set off in the afternoon with me in the lead. I was determined to never go back. Living in the foster home was one thing, but being shackled by an unfair dictatorship was a whole 'nuther thing.  1973 was an excellent year to run away. No one questioned three little kids with backpacks walking on their own. Back then it wasn't illegal to be on an adventure. Things went well until dusk, when my brother started complaining his feet hurt, he was tired and he wanted to watch tv. I tried to keep Ezra happy, but when Barney chimed in he was tired too, I realized things weren't going in my favor. I looked for a porch for us to sleep on. My plan was to sleep on covered porches and to keep moving. To where, I had no idea.

Ezra refused to sleep anywhere but a bed. He wanted his tv, and he wanted it now. After his third temper-tantrum, I gave up. It was well after dark when we straggled our way back to our street. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the flashing police car lights blocking the street in front of the foster home. Crowds of people from the neighborhood surrounded Dorothy, who was red-eyed and tear-streaked. When she saw us, she grabbed Barney and Ezra and pulled them into her bosom. "Where were you? What were you thinking, running away like that?"  The questions came fast and furious from Dorothy and then the police. Both Barney and Ezra pinned the blame squarely where it belonged, on me.

I was proudly defiant. I told the police I ran away because Dorothy wouldn't let me play outside by myself. After I answered their questions, all three of us were sent straight to bed since it was very late. In the morning I prepared myself for the spanking of my life. I knew it had to be coming, but I didn't care. It was a matter of principle. Amazingly, other than being grounded for an indeterminate time, no other punishment came. By the time I was ungrounded, the rule about having a buddy outside was long forgotten and I was free to once again roam the streets of Portland, Oregon at my will.

It was so worth it.

Let's Tour My Portland, Oregon - Part II - Home is Wherever You Are Sleeping

Our Foster Home - Portlland, Oregon

 The blue house on the corner is where my brother Ezra and I lived until he was 9 and I was 7 yrs. old. It was our foster home, along with a pack of other kids who had no place to go. Ezra and I stayed here Monday-Friday.

The thing I want you to notice is the single car garage on the left side of the blue foster house. The garage door is painted brick red now but when I was a kid, it was white. How do I know that? Look at the cover of my memoir in the side bar on the right hand side of this page. That is a picture of Ezra and I standing in front of that garage door in 1973, getting our photo taken to show prospective adoptive families. I learned to ride a tricycle, bicycle and roller skate on that driveway. I had a lot (way too much) of freedom at the foster home and have fond memories of climbing the trees in this photo, along with all the other trees in the neighborhood.
It was a good block to be a kid on. The house? Not so much.

 

Ralph and Claudia's  Home - Portland, Oregon

This is a photo of our biological parent's home. My bedroom window was directly above the front door on the second floor. This is where Ezra and I lived on the on the weekends.  We lived at the foster home during the week and with Ralph and Claudia on the weekends. I much preferred the quiet of our biological parents home. I didn't have to share a bedroom or worry about getting my fair share of food at their house. We weren't physically or sexually abused here, either. I wish I could say the same for the foster home, but that wouldn't be true.

Both our parent's home and our foster home were in Portland, Oregon. I didn't realize until I was working on this post, exactly where each house was. After all, I was only 7 years old when Ezra and I were abruptly moved from the foster home to our new adopted family, never to see either home again until I was an adult.

They are 5 miles apart. 5 miles on a major road in town, driving from the northeast side of Portland to the southeast side. I have memories of sitting in the backseat, watching the buildings go by as we traveled back and forth between our homes. I had no idea they were only 5 miles apart. Ralph and Claudia stayed in their home for 13 years after we disappeared from their lives, waiting for Jehovah to work a miracle for us to return back home. It breaks my heart to think of their pain, knowing we were only 5 miles away and then we were gone forever.

Thank goodness the universe was kind and years later,  Ralph and Claudia's prayers were answered. They deserved to have those miserable 5 miles that separated them from their children erased for good.

Let's Tour My Portland, Oregon Part I

Thank you for joining me on my tour of my childhood haunts in Portland, Oregon. Today we are going to look at my elementary school, Buckman School.

Buckman was an old school when I attended it. It was so old, it was built before paved roads were a real thing in Portland. Here's the proof:

I wanted you to see this photo for a more important reason than to know it was built in 1920. I wanted a picture of the long side of the school. In the basement, the lowest level in the photo, my school had an indoor swimming pool. I was lucky enough to go swimming there all summer long for a dollar a visit, except for the 3 weeks I was kicked out for horsing around in the water (unjustly, I am still mad about that.) According to the internet, the pool is still there and open to the public. Lucky public.

The other reason you needed to see this side view of my school is that I learned my first funny swear word rhyme at this school and I haven't forgotten that either. 

*****DISCLAIMER----If you are sensitive to words,  you should skip down to the end. ****

One morning while I was walking up the hill to school, I saw spray-painted on the side of the building at pool level an unfamiliar word. I was in 2nd grade and making good progress with my reading, so I was feeling proud that I could decipher the word. 

There, in large block letters, was the scrawled word F-#-@-K-M-A-N.

Huh. My 7 yr. old mind immediately went "Whoa! Buckman, F#@kman, Buckman, F#@kman, - Hey! That rhymes! Ha! Ha! Ha! That's so funny!" When I got to class I told my teacher I made up a new rhyme. I proudly repeated the graffiti word along with Buckman. 

I didn't get into trouble, Mrs. White just growled it wasn't funny and not to use filthy language again or I would find myself in the principals office. I slunk away, not sure exactly why it wasn't funny to her. In the foster home I lived in, swear words flew on a regular basis so it didn't seem shocking to me. I didn't know what the F word meant, but I had heard it more than a few times and didn't think it was anything other than funny because it rhymed with Buckman. That rhyme is why I haven't forgotten the name of my first school. Thank you, mnemonic devices.  

The other interesting thing about my second grade class was that I had a black teacher named Mrs. White and a white neighbor down the street named Mrs. Black. I told my foster mother that it was funny that I knew mixed-up people and that I should introduce them to each other so they could swap names, but Dorthy said it was ridiculous to think such a thing. I thought it made perfect sense. 

Lastly, Dianne, the girl in the upper far left corner, was the first classmate ever to invite me to play at her house. She lived in a lovely house with real carpet and a mother who was suspicious of me from the first instant she saw me. I didn't know what I had done to earn her disapproval*, but her dislike was obvious. Everything went great until Dianne's mother asked us to walk to the nearby store and buy a newspaper. On the way home I offered to carry the paper. Dianne was reluctant to hand it over since her mother told her to be in charge of the money and newspaper the whole time. After a few minutes of begging, Dianne gave it to me. While crossing the street I dropped the paper and the brisk Oregon wind grabbed it and flung the pages all over the pavement. We desperately ran to and fro, trying to gather the flying paper, but we couldn't get them all. 

Dianne was crying as we walked back to her house, saying her mother would be furious and she would get a spanking. I said, "Don't worry, I'll explain it was my fault, not yours. You won't get into trouble."  

Yeah....Dianne's mother took one look at the pile of disheveled papers in our arms and told me to go home. I didn't even get to start apologizing before I was out the front door, sent on my way. Not only did Dianne never invite me to her house again, including her birthday party, she didn't play with me during recess either. Our budding friendship was over. 

* Now that I think about it, Dianne's mother probably knew I was a foster kid and heard the stories of my defending my brother on the playground against bullies. I am positive she knew about my infamous Pocket Knife incident. Everyone in school knew about that. It's a good thing I was a student during the 1970's when it wasn't illegal to be a stupid kid. 

Here's what Buckman looks like now. Isn't it sweet? 

Next week: We Explore My 'Hood - Let's Tour My Portland, Oregon Part II

Sharing the Love

Don't you just love it when someone loves your book? I do.

ByMcWood Publishing LLC "McWood Publishing"on December 1, 2014

Format: Paperback

Reviewed by Kelsey Britt
11/24/2014
4:32pm

I was not really sure what to think about this book before I started it, but it sounded pretty interesting. I am a sucker for true stories – and so I dove in head first. By the time you get to the end of this book, your heart has been pulled in a million different directions, and I found myself feeling more like a trusted confidant than an anonymous reader. Heather Young hands you her heart on a platter that just so happens to be disguised in the pages of this book. As she takes you through the things that happened in her life, it reads much more like a novel than like a non-fiction auto-biography.

As Young - who was born as the title character of Hadassah - moves through her life in the Oregon state foster program with her brother Ezra, they encounter all the worst kinds of people. They see many let downs in their lives and they each have to find their own way to survive in their harsh reality - and sometimes that does not always mean that they get through it hand in hand. Their struggle in this world is at once harrowing and heartwarming and I found it to be well worth my time and investment.

Since I finished the book, I cannot get the characters and themes out of my head and that is something that I deeply appreciate with a well-written book. I find myself constantly wishing I had been able to be there for these children throughout their lives, and it’s a definite motivation to do my best to be there for the people that I know and love today. It was a deeply moving read from start to finish.

I would give Ezra and Hadassah 4 out of 5 stars!

Kelsey Britt
www.mcwpub.blogspot.com
www.mcwoodpub.com

Even the Angels Sung for Us

The first selfie ever taken in the history of love. Circa 1987 the day Rob and I got engaged. 

(Previously published on the website mormonmentality.org. Edited and reprinted.)

On the first Sunday in December Rob and I will be celebrating the 28th anniversary of our engagement.  He didn’t mean to propose, it was a horrible accident he tried to take back three times during our six month engagement but I wouldn’t let him out of it. I am spiteful like that.

We dated casually for months but Rob was a recently returned missionary who was determined to get the first college degree in his family so I understood there was no immediate future with him. I dated him strictly because he was cute. That was reason enough for me back then. I wasn't thinking long-term.

I went to school out of town for the fall semester so we lost contact until Halloween. We ran into each other at a church regional young adult dance. Rob describes our meeting as a highly-charged encounter. All I know is the guy I went to the dance with got his nose out of joint over the attention I was paying Rob and almost wouldn’t let me into his car for the three hour drive back to school. He then loudly told the whole student church congregation we attended that I was the biggest flirt and tease he had ever seen. I was shocked. I didn’t know he was interested in me. I thought we were just friends and he was nice enough to give me a ride to a big dance. But it didn’t really matter because after that dance Rob was smitten. He came to visit me on the weekends and we talked on the phone nightly. There is a price for romance. My long-distance phone bill was over $300 for the month of November. My meager ramon noodle and ice cream bar from a vending machine food budget got even tighter.

All along Rob kept telling me that he liked me but that marriage was out of the question until he got his degree, at least three years away. I was fine with dating. I was living in a dorm away from home for the first time, going to school myself so our long distance arrangement was working for me, other than that pesky phone I couldn’t afford.

On the first weekend in December Rob once again came to visit me (Staying with mutual guy friends. We were virtuous.) We ate at Denny’s on Friday night. After our meal we went back to the apartment. In a gentle way, with trembling hands, Rob produced a ring box. I was surprised. For a guy who protested he didn’t want to get married, he was moving fast. In what can only be described as the work of angels, for the only time in my life, I let Rob speak without interrupting him. Good thing I did. He showed me a simple gold band with intertwining hearts and a tiny diamond chip. He once again reminded me that he was in no position to marry, but that he was offering an exclusive friendship. Would I consider being his friend? Accepting the ring would mean we would date exclusively but with no other long-term attachments until after college graduation.

I was smiling so big my mouth almost cracked. I was laughing on the inside but I didn’t want to hurt Rob’s sincere attempt at landing his first ever girlfriend. He was trying SO hard to be true to his heart and his head at the same time. I accepted the deal. I went back to my dorm and showed all the girls on my floor my official friendship ring. Everyone was very confused as to its meaning.

For the next 24 hours as Rob and I hung out, I proudly showed off my ring, explaining each time that it signified Rob’s and my friendship. It was corny, but very sweet. The girls in my student ward were happy for me because that meant I was officially off the market for the rest of the boys.

We attended church together on Sunday morning. During the opening hymn of  “Hark ! The Herald Angels Sing” Rob leaned over and whispered in my ear, “ Will you marry me?” I didn’t immediately reply. We continued singing until last stanza of  the song. I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Yes.” He looked at me and while closing the hymn book he responded, “Oh shoot!”  The church service began and we sat together in silence, pondering what had just happened. I was wondering what the “Oh shoot” was about. I assumed he regretted his proposal. After the Sacrament was passed I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. I whispered, “What do you mean, “Oh shoot?”  Did you make a mistake?”  He put his arm around me and  said in my ear, “No! I wanted to ask you, but not like this. I wanted to wait  and do something really neat. I just felt compelled to ask. And now I have ruined my chance to do something unique and I will be forever stuck with this.”

I love that every year we get to celebrate his mistake. Some years we get lucky and the ward chorister randomly picks our song as the opening hymn for church on the first Sunday service in December (I used to request Hark! The Herald Angels Sing every year but after a rather unfortunate run-in with a church chorister who took offense at my request for reasons that still don't make sense to me, I now leave it up to fate. Just another reminder the universe doesn't revolve around me. How rude.)

Whenever I have the chance, I also tell anyone who will listen that Rob and I were friends for only  24 hours before he proposed. It explains a lot about our marriage.

Below is a link to a version of Hark! The Herald Angels sing that is a Must Listen To at our house. This singing group has performed on Sesame Street and our Grandbaby Eleanor adores them. Nowadays, this the only version that counts. 

What You Should Consider Before You Act Badly

In regards to the art of memoir writing, I think no one does a better job of explaining the rules than the author Anne Lamott.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
-- Anne Lamott”


Amen and Amen.

What is a Grief Hole?

The beginning of my grief hole

A grief hole is what you make when the physical discomfort of stress collides with the emotional pain of situations you can't fix. I mean the times  when your shoulder muscles are wound so tight even the most determined massage therapist can't break the tension buried deep within your body. When your usual coping skills of eating fine ice cream and pastries makes your stomach hurt instead of soothing it. When you  know you definitely wouldn't give into the temptation to drink or smoke or pop some pills because you know you would become an instant addict, thereby screwing up your life even more than it already is.

My grief hole began as the solution to a simple problem. My kids had a backyard trampoline that was placed underneath electric power lines that connected our house to the rest of Denver's utility grid. Although it was probably fine, I worried that the kids might jump too high and come into contact with the lines. I decided the only option was to lower the trampoline into the ground. Getting rid of the tramp didn't occur to me as a possibility because it was their main form of entertainment and exercise. Whatever kept them under reasonable control was what were doing.

I started digging, not realizing what I was really doing. It was a simple hole in the backyard, dug with a cheap shovel from Ace Hardware. It was going to take a long time, but that was the one thing I had at my disposal. Time to worry, time to feel helpless, time to be furious at the people who seemed to have an easier life than me, which appeared to be everyone. I was trapped in a horrible place of watching my brother, whose life had already been one big pile of steaming injustice, suffer even more. Where was the fairness? What was the point? What kind of universe would create the evilness of cancer in such an innocent body? The whole thing sucked and I despised it.

I dug my hole for an hour a day while my youngest child was in morning preschool. After I put him on the bus, I fed my brother his breakfast and the handful of meds the hospice nurse had organized into a pill box. Then I cleaned up the kitchen, put laundry in the basement washing machine and did the routine chores of a housewife while working my way towards my backyard project. After an hour of hard core shoveling, wheelbarrowing and dumping, I was tired and needed to shower before my son got off the noon bus.

Over time I recognized my arms were getting stronger and the tightness in my shoulders was incrementally lessening. I started looking forward to the peace and quiet in the backyard, just me and my hole full of dirt. As I worked, my mind fell into the rhythm of the movement and I slowly noticed times of mental silence. It was nice and something I hadn't experienced since I ran cross-country in 6th grade gym class.

After 3 months of steady digging, my hole was done and I had renamed my project. It was no longer the trampoline hole, dedicated to my children's safety. It was the grief hole, where I excavated my lifetime of anxieties, hurt and confusion. It served an important role in my mental and physical health at the time and I reflect back on it now with nothing but 3 feet deep of gratitude.

My Favorite Thanksgiving Memories, Served With Sides of Relaxation and Revenge

To be honest, holidays aren't my favorite thing. I put on my happy face in public and try to keep my grinchy side tucked in tight, but sometimes I just can't help myself. My lack of enthusiasm leaks out through holes I can't plug fast enough. Luckily, my family doesn't hold this against me.

It isn't about not having thankfulness, or joy or religious enthusiasm, it is just DANG - I don't have memories of childhood holiday perfection. If you had a generally crappy childhood, it wasn't magically better just because it was Jesus's birthday, or the Bicentennial of 1976 or whatever.  Holidays just meant there was no escape from whatever was going on at home. Yippee. As an adult, I slowly came to the realization that holiday fun = a hell of a lot of work, time and money, especially as the mom who was supposed to cook, clean and make the magic happen.  Bahumbug. I just want to sit down and read a good book.

In light of Thanksgiving happening this week, I want to share with you my two favorite memories of Thanksgiving past:

 TV Dinner Heaven

 At my adoptive family's home, Thanksgiving was a week long ordeal of Virginia buying food, preparing food, cooking food and in-between her once-a-year activity in the kitchen, yelling at us kids to clean up the mess after her. When she cooked, she used every pot, pan, bowl and spoon in the kitchen and whichever unfortunate child caught her attention (usually me or my sister Emelia) would be ordered to spend all day in the kitchen with her, washing dishes as she used them. It was a dreadful job, made only worse by never knowing what Virginia was going to be crabby about at any given moment. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner were the two times a year the good dishes came out and the table was set with crystal goblets, irreplaceable china and real silverware that had to be polished before use. After the meal, every piece had to be carefully hand washed and stored in the china hutch. Heaven help the poor soul who broke or chipped a dish! I  don't recall any of us children making that fatal mistake.There was nothing I looked forward to about Thanksgiving.

That all changed the year that life fell apart for the Spencer's. For whatever reason, our family had to move out of one rental house and into another over Thanksgiving weekend. It wasn't our typical organized kind of move. It was more like hurry up and throw that box in the truck, we are outta here sort of thing. I had learned to not ask questions, so whatever. All that mattered to me was, "What about Thanksgiving?" I couldn't see how we could possibly do the typical week of  Thanksgiving torture with all our dishes in boxes. I didn't dare breathe a word of my thoughts, I just waited to see what would happen. Praise be - God does answer prayers because for the first time in my adopted life, we had no Thanksgiving preparation. Just packing, loading and unloading truck loads of household goods. Thanksgiving day arrived with us sitting in the living room on unopened boxes, nary a proper silver fork in sight.

At lunch time, Harley plugged in the stove and turned it on. Virginia had planned ahead and had purchased a stack of Swanson frozen turkey tv dinners, which were unceremoniously heated up in the oven. Oh the smells! Turkey gravy, mashed potatoes and cherry cobbler all mixed together, filling our new rental house with warm gooey goodness that didn't require me to stand at the sink, dodging scalding pots and barbed tongues. Yay for Swanson! The greatest thing ever invented in my short 13 year-old life, was the frozen turkey dinner that required no preparation and no clean up on my part.
I ate my tv dinner with quiet satisfaction, thinking it tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten. No holiday had been as relaxing and uneventful as that one and I enjoyed every minute of it.

  The Thanksgiving My Son-in-Law Came to Visit

 Fast forward 33 years. I was all grown up, with grown children of my own. My daughter had been married for just under a year to a guy that I repeatedly reminded myself that I although I didn't care for him, my daughter did. She was bringing him home to enjoy a long Thanksgiving weekend with the rest of our family. In the name of supporting my offspring, I sucked up my irritation and got on with the business of Thanksgiving.

 I was cooking away in the kitchen when my son-in-law called me to the living room. He wanted to play his video games with me. He had already worn out every other member of the family with his non-stop 24-7 obsession with video games and it was finally my turn to deal with him. The food was at a place where I could let it go for a bit, so I took up his challenge. He carefully demonstrated how to use the game controllers to make the characters on the screen move. The first game we played was fencing. He made a big show of explaining sparring, jabbing and other fencing moves. I didn't pay an ounce of attention to his instruction. I had no intention of being a real contender with his silly video game. I'd never seriously played video games in my life and had no interest in starting now. My goal was to lose as quickly as possible so I could get back to the comfort of my kitchen, where no one bothered me with stupid things like dumb video games. 

When the game began, I started thrusting the game controller at the tv screen as fast as possible with no regard to form or technique. My son-in-law made an alarmed squeaking noise as he started to correct me, but then he noticed I had killed him. He quit paying attention to me and concentrated on his game. In less than 10 minutes, I fenced him to death on every level of his video game. He was NOT happy. He was a military dude with top-security clearance in his field, and his chubby, ignorant mother-in-law whooped him good. I repeated the same thing with my son-in-laws boxing game. Within another 10 minutes, I boxed him to knockout on every level of his video game. He started to complain that I had cheated, but was silenced by the loud laughter of everyone else.

I pretended to be nonchalant, like I knew all along I was going to win. I am super cool like that. In reality, I didn't even know how to turn his game on, let alone how to win. I just wanted it over. My son-in-law's naturally occurring bravado was taken down a notch and we all enjoyed a peaceful Thanksgiving afternoon without testosterone-filled competitiveness. It was delightful.

The next morning I was so sore from the previous day's exertions I could barely lift my arms to dress myself. I had used muscles I didn't even know existed and they were not graceful in their introduction to the rest of my body. I spent the rest of the weekend in a pain med haze and it was so worth it.
A few years later when my son-in-law's lack of character came to the full light of day, I stood next to my daughter in the courthouse while their marriage was dissolved. I took great satisfaction in remembering that although he was over 6 feet tall and cut an imposing figure, I wiped the floor with him the first Thanksgiving weekend we had together. I was the only person who was undefeated against him.

I love the holidays. Don't you?

The Objects of Our Affections

My brother Rex loved people. Even when they didn't love him back, he never really stopped caring for them.  He couldn't help it. In the book, I tell a story about how during high school Rex fell hard for a beautiful, popular cheerleader. There was no chance in h-e-double-hockey-sticks she was interested in my underdog brother, but he didn't give up until there was a show-down with the cheerleader and her football-playing goomba boyfriend with half the school watching. It was heart-breaking to witness. Public rejection of affection is harsh business.

 My brother wasn't the only one mystified by the nuances of love. I was just as clueless in the romance department as he was. From the first time I chased down cute third-grader Billy DeYoung, pinning him to the school playground, I realized an eternal truth. It wasn't hard to catch a boy, but what to do with him next was a real conundrum.

Rex and I both longed for love in all forms. Since we didn't get it from our home, we sought it out everywhere else. The part of my brother's high school romance that I didn't put in the book was the story of what I was doing the same year that he suffered the ultimate teenage rejection. While Rex was busy following the cheerleader like a puppy, I was stalking my own prey. There was a breath-takingly gorgeous boy at school. We didn't have any classes together because he was a year older than me. We did have the same lunch hour. He and his football buddies commanded the lunch table next to where I sat with my girlfriends while we all ate. He was so adorable, I had a hard time not staring at him. More than once he caught me looking at him and made an ugly face to discourage my attention. It didn't work. I was smitten.

For some reason that escapes me now, one day I decided Today Was the Day I was going to declare my adoration of him. At lunch the routine of us kids sitting at separate tables, ignoring each other went on as usual. I am going to speculate that Lori, one of cute girls at my table of smart, honor roll girls (I was the oddball in that group) was flirting with one of the boys at the table of my love. As the attention of the boys turned to our table, I got brave and in a burst of pent-up enthusiasm, I threw my mystery-meat lunch burrito at the back of the boy I adored. He turned his beautiful head of blonde hair to us and bellowed, "Who threw that at me?!" I sat silently while the girls all around pointed their fingers without hesitation right at me. He stood up, surrounded by his hulking athletic friends and towered over me, "What in the @#$%^* is wrong with you? Why did you throw your *&^%$ food at me?" His angry questions came at me hard and fast. My face turned beet red with embarrassment as I realized he missed my obvious attempt at showing affection.

His friends standing next to him suggested they beat me up. Whoa! This wasn't going at all how I planned it in my head. I thought he would good-naturedly get my joke and understand my sacrifice on his behalf. I willingly gave up my government-subsidized free lunch burrito for him, which was a big deal because I missed breakfast and wouldn't eat again until supper. I didn't give up food without a good reason and what could be better than sending the message, "You are too cute for words and I want to be your girlfriend"? Nothing. Nothing was better than finding true love over high school lunch period. He just needed a reason to really look at me, to see the pure intent of my heart and appreciate my most excellent inner qualities. I helped him out, giving him the reason he needed to find his destiny.

Unfortunately, his buddies didn't follow my romantic script. They threatened to do bodily injury to me for assalting their buddy and I got scared. I scrambled to my feet and took off running, with a pack of testosterone-fueled boys close on my heels. I broke a cardinal rule of high school lunch hour by ducking into a hallway of occupied classrooms, figuring if I could get to the the girls restroom they wouldn't follow me in there. The boys ignored the invisible blockade outside the girls bathroom and started to enter behind me. I panicked, realizing for the first time I might get hurt for real. Luckily, the boys were stopped by a no-nonsense female security officer who threatened to throw them in detention and get them kicked off the football team if they didn't leave immediately. I was saved.

The next day, the boy who I now not-so-secretly adored, came up to me before school and said, "Hey Heather (he knew my name! Yay!) I got into trouble yesterday because of you. I had to go home to change my shirt. I missed my afternoon classes and you ruined my t-shirt, so you owe me money for a new shirt." I stammered something about how I didn't have any money to give him, but I was sorry for his getting in trouble. He waved me off, saying, "Just stay away from me and keep your food to yourself."

That was the end of my interest in the most beautiful boy at school. Shortly thereafter, I found the book How to Win Friends and Influence People in the library and discovered a new, more rational way to approach the problem of how to get a boyfriend. The book had absolutely nothing to do with romance but was an excellent primer on basic social skills for those of us who had none. The book not only worked, (I landed my first real-life boyfriend before the end of the school year thanks to a well-placed sincere compliment,) but it gave me the confidence I needed to keep working on the most important goal of all; to love and be loved.


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I called my best friend Stephanie to ask if she remembered the burrito incident and what the boy's name was.  She definitely remembered. She was there that day. I could swear his name was Darrell. She looked through our old yearbook and she is certain it is the boy in the center photo, Darrin. I remember Darrin as being a friend of Darrell's and one of boys who chased me into the bathroom. I don't think he was The One. Or maybe I am confused and it was Darrin and Darrell was one of the guys who chased me. I dunno. To do my due diligence to you, my  dear reader, I called the only other person who might know about the burrito boy. My other best friend from high school, Mike, was no help at all. He asked, "Why would I know who you threw a burrito at? And why would you do that anyway?"
I said, "Because I adored him and that's how I showed my feelings, DUHHHH.  We were friends and I was hoping maybe you were there that day, or maybe I told you about it. Surely I talked to you about Darrell (or Darrin) and told you how much I liked him."
"No. I don't think so. I don't remember that at all."
"Really? You have no recollection of any boy I had a mad crush on at school?"

Before Mike could deny his knowledge again, I remembered instantly my friendship with him. I talked, I cried, I showed every emotion in the rainbow of girl's feelings to him and he always listened silently. I thought Mike was the world's most amazing guy friend because he never cut me off before I was done talking and that could take a while. Now that I've been married almost 30 years to Rob, a most fabulous man who goes silent when he's not listening, I understand what was going on with Mike. I was pouring out my soul to him and his mind was off wandering into la-la land, waiting for my emotional storm to pass so he could ask me for help with whatever he needed. He probably doesn't remember anything I've ever told him. Stupid boys. On the other hand, my secrets are safe with him because he wasn't even paying attention.
Mike did offer a bit of practical advice at the end of our phone conversation.
"Darrell, Darrin- what does it matter? Just tell the story without using his name and don't worry if you have the wrong picture. No one will care."
I gave up and sighed. "Yeah, you are probably right."
 What I really meant was, "Boys just don't get it."

The boy in the middle. Maybe. Darrell? Darrin? Who knows. 

Thank You For Listening

Yep. That's exactly how I looked.

Today I gave my last college presentation for the semester. I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. It has been an intense few months, full of preparing for and giving lectures to students about my book. As we all know, Ezra and Hadassah isn't a stand-up comedy routine. I am happy when I can get a chuckle out of the audience in a place or two because talking about serious topics for a whole class period can be very....serious.

This time was fun because I got to the classroom before the instructor and some of the students asked if I was the guest speaker. When I said I was, they were all, "Oooo....awesome! We are looking forward to your lecture. We heard you were really, really good." and I was all , "Awww...shucks. That's nice to hear." I thought that was a kind way to start our discussion of hard things.

At the end of of my talk I took questions from the audience, which I have decided is my favorite part of speaking. The students asked smart questions that showed they were listening and thinking about what I said. One student asked, "What can a social worker do to protect a child in the foster care system from being abused?"
I responded with the truth. "Not a damned thing. You can't control how any adult treats a child outside of your view. But what you can do is be the adult a child would trust to tell if they were being abused."

So you can see, in my presentations we talk about hard things. And now I am telling you the same hard things. Being a trusted adult isn't just reserved for social workers. All adults should be the kind of people that children can turn to when bad things are happening to them. Look out for the children in your life. Watch them, talk to them, let them know you care. Most of the time, the stories they tell you will be happy ones. Enjoy them when they come. But also be ready with a comforting smile, a hug or a real offer of help if they tell you a hard story. Be the grown up that protects them and makes their world a safer place to live. 

That's really the only thing we can do. 

What Everyone Wants to Know - Part II

The one and only family picture taken with the Spencer's

In my last post, I gave you the answer to most popular question I get asked about my book. http://ezraandhadassah.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-everyone-wants-to-know.html

That post stirred up feelings for some members of my adopted family. I understand their position and think that there is a need for more exploration on this topic. There are some universal themes that I think touch more than just our family's pain.

First of all, it does hurt to think of someone you loved as being portrayed as all bad, all the time. You have good memories of them. That is true. No one is 100% bad or 100% good all the time. Even my brother Rex, who I describe in my book as a highly spiritually sensitive person, managed to drive me crazy with his need to do good things for others because his good deeds always required my help. I just wanted to sit and read a book in peace and quiet. His zeal was exhausting. No one is 100% anything all the time.

I am sure if we interviewed the family and friends of Jeffery Dahmer or Charles Manson, we would find people who have fond memories of them. It is not wrong to claim those good times as positive. It is also not wrong to tell the truth, warts and all.

The underlying message of "but Harley and Virginia did good things for me" brought out one of the principle points of the book.  I tried for years to forgive them for the things they did to their children. I tried to think of the positive things they did for me. I even searched the patriarchal blessing I was given at 14 years old, looking for the reason God put me and my siblings in the Spencer's home. I decided there was one good thing that came from living with them. I became a Mormon because of them. And I stayed a Mormon in spite of them.

It sounds crazy, right? I was baptized into the Mormon faith when I was adopted because like all children, I didn't have a choice about what religion my parents chose. It was no different than all the other churches I was baptized into when I was in foster care.

As I got older and started paying attention to what was being taught at church about loving your family, I silently questioned  Harley and Virginia's ideas on child discipline and love. For years I listened to Harley's prophecies about the End of Times and what was going to happen to us kids if we didn't mend our wicked ways. I chose not to believe the things Harley swore to be true because they didn't pass my test of believability. I grew a thick skin about religious doctrine. That skill has proven to be very helpful in my adult spiritual life. As I hear people's ideas on heaven and hell, what God really wants from us and all other aspects of our religious lives, I use my inner "bullshit" (excuse my salty language. I can't think of better word for it)  meter to judge what is true for me and what is not. I do not concern myself with what others chose to believe or do to honor God. I respect every person's right to worship how they want. I  do object when a religious faith abuses others, especially women and children. I made my peace with God independent from Harley and Virginia and that saved me. Their version of the gospel was not healthy for me and it was good I learned that while I was still a teenager. It made me strong and helped me avoid the common pitfalls of youth that would have derailed my life.

Of course, I must give full credit to my brother for completing my religious education. Through his experiences with his Best Friend, I saw what having an active relationship with Christ could be. I am grateful for Rex's influence in my life and the spiritual clarity he gave me. I was so lucky to have him as my brother. And I am content to think that I was lucky to live with Harley and Virginia. They taught me a lot and I am a better person for having lived in their home. I don't accept crappy religious doctrine, I don't espouse anything beyond "Love One Another," and I don't expect God to make decisions for me that I am perfectly capable of making on my own. For all of that and more, I thank Harley, Virginia and the universe that decided they were the best teachers for the lessons I needed to learn.

I am blessed.

What Everyone Wants to Know

Wanna guess the by far, number #1 thing that people want to know after they are done reading Ezra and Hadassah?

If you haven't read the book yet, you don't have a clue. If you have, you probably already did what lots of people have done and emailed me from this site, wanting to know the answer to your one and only question.
In case you haven't, I'm gonna help you out and answer your question now. Dang, the customer service on this blog site is simply stunning.

Ok ----Here goes:

The question is: What Happened to Harley and Virginia? 

Taken for an anniversary, after Virginia had her stomach stapled to lose weight. Unfortunately, she gained a lot of it back. And yes, she's wearing a wig. 

The answer is: Nothing. If you were hoping for some kind of public thrashing for their behavior towards their children, that didn't happen. Nothing happened. All their kids grew up, moved out and that was that. Like I explained in the book, after I moved out on my 18th birthday, I never spent another night under their roof.  They continued to move and change jobs every few years, so no one ever really got to know them. I was told stories over the years about how loved they were by their church congregations and how they gave inspirational talks about the importance of families.  Knowing Harley and Virginia, I am sure they were amazing and brought audiences to tears.

 Have you noticed how I am writing about them in the past tense? Yep. Past tense. Both of them died two years ago, less than 3 months apart. Harley went first. I didn't know about it for a couple of weeks because at the time he passed, my father-in-law also had died very suddenly. I was out of town with my husband's family, participating in my father-in-law's funeral services, and no one could contact me about Harley's death. I missed the whole thing. Luckily, my adopted sister Emelia went, intending to comfort Virginia and to attend Harley's funeral. Imagine Emelia's surprise when she shook the Bishop's hand at the church before the services and the Bishop had no idea who she was. He didn't know Harley and Virginia had any children besides one daughter (an older sister who moved her family to be near them) and her children. They attended the Bishop's congregation for a handful of years and he had no recollection of Harley or Virginia ever talking about having any other children. He visited them at their home and saw no photos or evidence of them having a large family including children and grandchildren.

When Emelia set him straight, his face turned ashen from the shock. He had no idea. What kind of people don't acknowledge their children and grandchildren? Especially in the Mormon faith, which is so super family- focused it is hard to remember anything else it is known for. I'm sure Harley's funeral service was the strangest meeting the Bishop ever officiated, considering no one else at his church knew the Spencer's were the parents of  11 or 15 children (depending on how many of their unofficially adopted children are counted. I can never keep it straight.)

When Virginia died 3 months later, Emelia didn't go and neither did anyone else besides their local relatives. Oh well. They say funerals aren't for the person who died, they are for the living left behind. We all took a vote and decided it wasn't worth it to go and either pretend we were a close family, or what - stand up and tell the whole congregation what messed up, miserable people Harley and Virginia were? Naaahhh. Not worth the time or trouble.

The only thing I can say for sure that I learned from finding out my parents denied their children's existence, is that I do look at older people differently now. When a sweet elderly man or woman tell me they have grown children and grandchildren who are selfish, neglectful people and never visit, I find myself taking pause. Maybe one selfish child, possibly. But if more than one child doesn't come home for holidays or have their children visit over summer vacation, something is up. It goes against nature to want nothing to do with parents, especially if grandchildren are involved.

 I have seen my share of crazy, dysfunctional families who fight like cats and yet still manage to stay connected. It may be messy and stressful and hard, but family members do, deep in their hearts, want to stay together. I am blessed to have my biological parents, Ralph and Claudia Wade in my life and I know I am lucky to be able to share my husband, children and grandchild with them.

Too bad Harley and Virginia chose something else. They missed out on a whole lot of the sweetness of life.

Why Writing as a Form of Therapy is Crap

A few days ago I ran into someone who read my book. She commented that it must have been therapeutic to write it. I laughed and replied, "Not really. I don't recommend writing a book as a way to heal."
She was taken aback and said, "Well, I am sure it helped you process stuff."
I laughed again and said, "Actually, it made me very sick to write the hard parts. Some of it I hadn't thought about since I experienced it the first time and that was enough for me. It wasn't a great thing to do and I didn't feel better for doing it."
She persisted, "But the fact you got sick while you were writing it means that you weren't done with processing it."
I was getting tired with my inability to explain myself clearly and her inability to understand me. I let us both off the hook. "Yeah, I'm sure you are right."
She smiled at my acknowledgement of the correctness of her assumption. She continued for a few more minutes to heap praise on the value of the book and the importance of it's message, so I walked away feeling positive about the whole exchange.

Except...

That was not the first time someone had commented that writing the book had to be healing. I dunno, maybe I should just handle the whole thing with more graciousness and class. Maybe I should just let people assume whatever they want about my motivations and rewards for writing the book. I probably will, since my previous attempts at explaining myself haven't gone so well.

Except...

I sense that there is an important lesson to be learned from this situation. The lesson could be just for me. Maybe the reason I haven't let the comment, "Writing your book must have been therapeutic for you," slide by is not because the commenter needs to understand, but maybe I do. After all, who cares what someone else thinks? What matters is what I think. This whole thing is silly because I am the first person to jump up and say that writing definitely helps me. When I am stressed or upset, my first inclination is to dash off a few lines. Heck, that is exactly what I doing right here, right now. Of course writing is therapeutic! I use it all the time. Duh.... everyone knows writing down stuff helps purge it from your mind. It is a standard tool used in formal therapy for a good reason.

Except.....maybe not always. Maybe there are superficial levels of pain that are resolved by writing. And then there is another deeper level, that requires much more than just writing to heal. I am going to try for the first time, to fully explain why writing didn't heal my childhood traumas, and what actually did.

As you remember from the book, I spent years carrying around serious anger at my foster parents, adoptive parents, and the foster care system. I tried conventional therapy to talk through my pain, but I couldn't afford the costs in terms of dollars and time. I read my fair share of self-help books, I approached the church, I talked to any girlfriend who would listen, I talked to my husband, I did all kinds of homegrown, poor people versions of conventional approaches to mental health healing. None of it really made a difference. I was still mad as hell and couldn't let it go.

Then I became the mother of three children whose health needs drove me to my knees in utter exhaustion. I sought out solutions from our doctors, who had none to offer. I was forced by my unwillingness to accept three miserable, chronically ill children, to look towards unconventional healing. I had to let go of my life-long fear of being considered odd, like the rest of my childhood family members, to do what I could to help my children. They needed assistance that was off the beaten path and I was the only one who could get it for them. I discovered a whole new world of  underground healthcare, centered around excellent nutrition, the concepts that physical and emotional health are intrinsically tied together and that man has been healing himself for centuries without the benefits of prescription medication. Not that there isn't a place for prescription medication or modern medicine, but that it wasn't the end all, be all that I was raised to believe it was.

As I started the process of finding ways to heal my children, a funny thing happened. I started healing, too. The chronic acne that had plagued me for 15 years, cleared up. My ability to concentrate improved, my energy levels went up. My bowels became regular in ways I didn't know were possible. And most importantly, I lost my anger. As my outer physical symptoms improved, they mimicked the inner soul healing that was simultaneously happening. It was a graceful, gradual lifting of my emotional pain that I found mystifying and peaceful.

When it came time, years later, to write the book, I wasn't expecting to have a physical reaction to any of my past. I was done with it, healing had happened and it was over. My expectation was proven wrong. As I recalled long ago memories, I went from being fine to throwing up in the nearby trash can within minutes. I collapsed into my bed for a few days, unable to work at all while my body burned with a fever and sweated out its pain. I used all the healing arts at my disposal to support myself. I knew that I didn't have the flu. I didn't catch a bug from my children. I had total emotional clarity that my physical symptoms were directly tied to digging up the horrors of my childhood. When I was finally well again, I had a new, deeper level of inner peace that I hadn't experienced before.

So yes, in one way, my book fans are right. Writing was therapeutic. It brought old junk to the surface, giving me an opportunity to heal my wounds in whatever way I saw fit. Writing in and of itself - Not Healing. Writing being the catalyst for peeling off a previously unknown level of trauma so I could then do other things that healed me physically, emotionally and spiritually? Yes. Absolutely.

Interesting, isn't it? Who would have guessed? Not me.

Of course, I am telling you the short version of the process, and I can tell you in full confidence that my healing is not done, just as no one's is until they leave this life. As old trauma's heal, they are replaced by whatever the new drama of the moment is. The difference is I have skills for understanding and supporting my present day stresses that I didn't have in the past. And for that, I am grateful.

And look! After writing all this out, I do feel better. In fact, I would say it was therapeutic. Go figure.

What's Your Vision?

 A celebrity was recently on a tv talk show promoting a book he wrote about being successful.  He said that he attributes his success to several simple principles. First, he spends the first 10 minutes of his day thinking of things he is grateful for. Then he mentioned a vision board where he keeps pictures of his goals to remind him of what he is working on. The talk show host asked the celebrity what kinds of things are on his vision board. He said his current goal is to become a billionaire. Good book sales should help him towards his fulfilling his vision. 

I couldn't decide what part of this interview upset me the most. I didn't think it was any one thing he said, including the fact he blew through several marriages with children on his way to the top, that got under my skin. The whole thing just felt wrong. (1)  Afterwards I thought about it for way too long, trying to understand what my problem was with the guy’s message. Was I jealous of his money? Did I resent his success and fame? Was it my own sour grapes of bitterness causing that nasty taste in my mouth?

It took some time to tease out what my problem with the celebrity’s message was. At first I went to the obvious answer, “It’s the economy, stupid!” as the solution to my angst. There are plenty of articles written about how the poor and middle-class are systematically suppressed in our economy and how the deck is stacked against the have-not’s. (2)  Then I thought about my childhood and how I grew up knowing that the world is a tough place to make a living, especially without the advantages of inherited money, good looks, business connections, or superb physical and mental health. Having a vision board wouldn’t bring any of those intangible assets to reality.

In my poor and lower middle-class neighborhoods while growing up, the most commonly tried solution to the problem of not having enough money was always MLMs (Multi-Level-Marketing companies) like  Avon, Tupperware, Herbal Life and Mary Kay.  Since the American dream of owning a business was out of reach for my neighbors,  participating in a MLM was a way of reaching for the stars, owning your own piece of the pie, being your own boss and last but not least, Your Potential is Limitless! The sign-up sales pitch always featured the wonderful qualities of whatever was being sold and more importantly, the amount of money to be made from your family and friends as they sign up to sell the products under your direction. 

I never saw anyone, including my own family members, make anything more than maybe getting their initial $100 investment back. (3) The hurdles of overpriced goods, no customers able to afford the merchandise and no way to break out of our poor neighborhood to sell to wealthy people willing to sign up to shill the same products, all conspired to make chasing the MLM dream just that, a dream.

As an adult, my heart broke as I watched my infatigable brother try over and over to become his own boss by selling products through MLM companies. At first I tried to be supportive and I bought my fair share of worthless collectable figurines, kitchen gadgets, and magazine subscriptions. I knew that Rex’ s mind was full of scenes of happy children with toys on Christmas morning. He wanted to create wealth so he could make the world a better place. How could I not support his optimistic, happy-go-lucky determination to achieve his goal? Those are the stories America is made of; people who with little more than hard work and a never-say-die attitude that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made it happen. Of course, those people didn’t have one-tenth of the challenges my brother dealt with every day of his life.

I did what I could, as long as I could, before I stopped buying Rex’s products because really, how many porcelain angels with wings was I supposed to own before the universe would kick-in and honor my brother’s pure heart, rewarding him with his fervent desires?

As you can guess, Rex didn't win in his quest to own a Fortune 500 company specializing in being Santa Claus, delivering free gifts to children all over the world.  But he did win in ways that mattered to me and to many others. He won in teaching me how to forgive, how to not be a walking-wounded soul and how to truly love.  And that is a vision board that I can embrace.

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1. I’m not Debbie Downer. Really, I’m not. And yes, I read The Secret. And the DVD  was given to me as gift by a friend who wanted me to see the book acted out in movie form. I watched it. 

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/vision-boards-positive-thinking_b_907618.html

2. Because so much of the talk about the economy devolves into political shouting matches between those who scream,”Get a job, you lazy loafer!” and those who scream right back, “White/Rich privilege!”  I prefer to research on the academic side of the issue.  This is a good place to start for a long history of American economics and social policy. http://www.russellsage.org/

3. I personally know one person who made it big with MLMs. It took her 30 years of selling everything under the sun, but she finally hit upon the winning combination of a strong network of distributors from previous ventures and a product that was hot. I am thrilled for her success and assume she has a fully stocked vision board.  If you are interested in talking to her about her journey, contact me and I will hook you up. But don’t be surprised if she uses her highly refined skills of persuasion to sign you up to sell. Yes – she is THAT good.

I Can't Keep Up With the Awesomeness

I just got an email telling me a blog site posted a positive review of Ezra and Hadassah. Yay! I always hold my breath about that sort of thing. I haven't had a negative review yet, which I am very grateful for.

Here is the link so you can go read it for yourself: http://youngmormonfeminists.org/2014/10/27/book-review-ezra-and-hadassah/

Which reminded me, I think I was so busy in October freezing at Book Festival's in sub-zero weather and giving myself a black eye and concussion, I forgot to link the other very nice review of  the book. My apologies to the site that posted this gem: http://rationalfaiths.com/book-review-ezra-hadassah-portrait-american-royalty/

If you noticed when you read them, (What? You haven't read them? Quit skipping the good parts and go back and read the reviews that someone was nice enough to pour their energies into for your eyeball's benefit.) both of the sites are blogs that discuss all things related to the Mormon religion.The book is not written as a religious text, it is just the story of my family, which happens to include Mormonism. And Jehovah's Witnesses. And Catholics. And Jews. And Evangelicals. Pretty much every religion that was popular in downtown Portland, OR during the 1970's gets a bit part in the book. I think nowadays, in 2014, we call that "being inclusive."

Anyway, isn't it nice they liked the book as much as you do?

The Year I Destroyed Halloween

LtoR: Me, adopted dad Harley, adopted sister Emelia at a costume party, probably at church. Possibly Halloween, possibly something else. I have no idea, but I made an awesome hobo and I think we can all agree that I have thing for black eyes, since I've been drawing them on since childhood. My current black eye is turning sickly yellow, so that is positive. 

As a child, I worked very hard to hide my anxieties and fears. I protected my older brother from bullies at school and I was proud of my neighborhood reputation as a kid not to mess with. Growing up in a free-for-all style foster home, I coped with the stress in my life by sucking my thumb at night and by seeking constant reassurance by teachers at school that I was doing a good job. I also avoided scary movies, which wasn't hard  to do because our foster parents never took us to the theater and VCR's hadn't been invented yet, so really that just meant whenever intense movies came on our black and white tv, I read books in the unfinished attic instead of torturing myself with spine-tingling entertainment. It was nothing. 

 After Rex and I were adopted when he was 9 and I was 7 years old, my carefully crafted veneer of toughness cracked wide open in one horrific incident that ended up changing the way my school celebrated the most anticipated, most popular holiday of the year. Yes, I am the one. I am the kid who destroyed the school's Halloween party. And not just for one year. My behavior was so alarming, so completely over the top, I managed to smash all memories of the good old days of Halloween fun, replacing them with subdued whispers about how there would never be a proper school party ever again. 

In third grade, less than 4 months after my life was turned upside down with an unexpected adoption into a family of total strangers, my new school held it's annual Halloween Carnival. It was the biggest event of the school year because it was not only a party for students and their families, it was also the school's biggest fund-raiser. People bought tickets at the door to play games like Ring Toss, Cake Walk, and Pop the Balloon. (This was during the Wild West period of childhood, years before anyone questioned the safety of kids throwing metal-tipped darts at a board full of small balloons and when it was not considered bad form for minors to walk themselves to school or to spend all day outside roaming the neighborhood, either.)  The consistently hottest event at the Fairfield Elementary School Halloween Carnival was the Haunted House.  The school staff and PTA pulled out all the stops to make the Haunted House a spectacular experience for all community members. Grandmas and Grandpas lined up with their 1st grade grandchildren to walk through the fun of being startled by the unexpected. When I say Haunted House, I don't mean the kind of blood tripping, chainsaw chasing gore that grown adults now pay ridiculous amounts of money to walk through. I mean a gentle, no monsters, school library classic-book-themed walk through the decorated, darkened rooms adjacent to the stage in the school gymnasium.

I had never been through a Haunted House, so I had no idea what to expect. No one told me anything about it other than it was the Best Thing EVER, so of course I had to do it. I was a tough kid after all, and nothing scared me.

As I entered the dark foyer with a group of other people, we paused to wait until everyone got in the room and the door was shut behind us. My eyes adjusted to the blackness, which was broken only by the eerie greenish glow of a neon exit sign above a door I hadn't noticed before. I danced lightly on the balls of my feet, nervous about what was coming next. The first thing that happened was a cackling voice over a speaker saying, "Welcome my pretties to the Wizard of Oz," followed by an evil laugh straight from the Wicked Witch of the West. Seconds later, the Wicked Witch herself stepped out from a nearby black curtain. She had the green face, crooked nose, pointy witch hat and green hands holding a flashlight shining upwards,  illuminating the ugly warts on her nose.

And that is when I completely lost it. I don't remember anything other than being dragged out the door underneath the green exit sign and finding myself outside behind the school lunchroom, surrounded by teachers in costumes from the beloved book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I was still screaming bloody murder when I came to my senses. The Wicked Witch was kneeling in front of me, ripping off her scary green hook nose, wig of long gray hair, telling me it was ok, it wasn't really real. It didn't matter at that point what was real or not real. I stopped screaming and deescalated to sobbing and shaking like I was having a seizure. Adults streamed in and out of the building, asking what happened and what they should do next.

I am sure they asked me why I freaked out, screaming in blood-curdling horror at the witch, and why I frantically clawed my way to freedom, pushing and shoving everyone in my path in a desperate attempt to flee. My reaction to being startled by the witch set off a chain reaction of screaming by all the other children in the same dark room as me, and we were all hysterical by the time I was removed out the back door.

I didn't have an answer for what happened to me beyond hiccuping tears that the witch was scary. I wasn't able to explain that many so-called family friendly movies terrified me. The Wizard of Oz was a special kind of horror because it featured a host of characters that were in my mind equal to Freddy Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street. It had not only the wicked witch, but also flying monkeys, a suspicious tin man, a mean Mr. Oz and I thought Dorthy's aunt was kinda grumpy, too. Of course, I didn't see all those characters at the Halloween Haunted House. I didn't get that far. The Wicked Witch was enough for me.

When I was escorted back inside the gym, the party was over. My screaming inside the haunted house was so loud it invaded the rest of the carnival and all the children started crying. I killed the whole thing. The grown ups were talking quietly, removing crepe paper streamers from the ceiling as my adopted siblings and I were escorted through the gym to the office to call our parents to come and pick us up. 

The next year, the school had the annual Halloween carnival, but without a book-themed haunted house. Attendance was way down and for the first time in the history of the school, fund-raisers selling candles and Christmas wrap had to be instituted to replace the missing Halloween money. Everyone still remembered quite clearly what had happened the previous year and I still had no answer to their unspoken question, "What the hell is your problem with The Wizard of Oz?'  I didn't know then and I still don't know now. All I can tell you is that thanks to the wonder of video clips, I can show you exactly the parts of  famous children's movies still alarm some part of my inner soul  (and I will never understand why all these movies are shown on tv between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There isn't one redeeming holiday message in any of them. America's sentimentality is weird.)

1. The Child-Catcher in Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. I don't know what treacle tarts are, but I don't want any, thank you very much. 

2. The tunnel scene in Charlie and Chocolate Factory. Watch for the giant earthworm across the face and a chicken's head as it chopped off. (!!!)

3. We've fully covered this topic, so no need for more words. Just proceed with the evidence of terror, please: The Wizard of Oz

Flying monkeys, 

 Melting Wicked Witch of the West,

 and Auntie Em (now that I'm a mother, I am willing to cut Auntie Em some slack. She was obviously exhausted and her sniping is completely understandable. Besides, she didn't even use a curse word. She is fine.)

Please feel free to share your version of Halloween hell. I would like to know I am not alone on this.