Easter Picture

 

I remember this picture being taken. It was a Sunday and my brother and I were dressed for church. I have no idea what church we went to that day, but I've decided it doesn't matter. God will meet you wherever you seek Him, right?

I was six years old and Ezra was eight. We are standing in the neighbor's driveway next to our foster home. In the upper right hand corner is 1/2 of another foster kid pedaling the tricycle I considered mine. I was riding the trike until our foster mother Dorthy announced she was taking our picture. I had to get off the trike and Barney immediately jumped on. I was not happy and just wanted the picture-taking business to get over so I could reclaim my bike. Knowing me, I probably punched Barney as I shoved him off the tricycle. Back then I fought hard for every square inch of property I could get. Blood was likely involved.

 Our neighbor was an older single lady. I don't remember anything else about her but she must have been a wonderful person because she allowed her driveway to be used as our playground. I would have been driven crazy by the endless bouncing balls and bicycles ridden in circles in my drive. I'm sure God gave her a special corner of heaven as a reward for living next door to the chaos of a foster home. She earned it.

I Am Grateful for a Door

(This is reprinted from an article I wrote for the blog Mormon Mentality in 2012 while I was working on Ezra and Hadassah: A Portrait of American Royalty. I liked this essay then and I still like it. I hope you do too.)


I love Oregon. It’s everything I consider pretty, even the bucketfuls of rain and gloomy, overcast grey skies. Two years ago my husband and I took a trip to Oregon. It was the first time I had been back in 25 years.

My husband had never been there and after years of me describing it as the only place close to heaven on earth he decided to join me on my trip back to my Motherland. We visited all the places I remembered from my childhood and some I had forgotten. We had a great time and wondered why we hadn’t taken trips like this before. (I’ll tell ya why- money. But I digress.)

One of the things I had forgotten about was the door. The door is covered in names. The handwritten, scrawled on in ink, crayon, pen and pencil names of kids who lived there and signed their names to the guestbook. The door is the official record of kids, most of whom I have never met and never will meet. Some are probably dead or wish they were. Very few, I’m sure, are like me.

The door is located in the kitchen and leads down steps to the basement, where the washer and dryer and shelves for holding piles of clean, folded clothes are located. In the years I lived there, my bedroom never had a dresser and I didn’t use the closet for clothes. Everyday I opened this door and went to the basement to retrieve clean clothes from the shelf marked with my name. All of us seven kids got our clothes from the basement.

I opened and closed this door at least once a day, every day for seven years. And then one day I was gone.
One bad adoption with lots of continued suffering and pain, twenty-five years later, I revisited my old foster home and reacquainted myself with the woman who raised me until my brother and I were adopted.

She is old now, and doesn’t move very well. Her grown son, who was close to my age and inflicted his own share of pain on me, showed me the door. He pointed out where my name is printed out in first grade block letters. I don’t remember signing my name, but I recognized my handwriting.

I introduced my husband and showed pictures of our family to my old foster mother. She wasn’t interested. She had moved on. That is the nature of the foster business. Kids come and kids go. The only record of any of us passing through was our signatures on the door.

I am grateful for the door because it is concrete proof I existed when no one legally claimed me.
Obviously, I am one of the lucky ones. I made it through the door and came out the other side, healthy and with joy in my life. I don’t recommend starting life out with your name on a door, but I do recommend life. Life is good. Enjoy it and be grateful for it.

Pictures From Our Childhood

                                       

These photos of Ezra and I were taken in the living room of the foster home. I was 5 and my brother was 7 years-old. An Oregon state social worker took our pictures, along with every other foster kid in the house. I was irritated because I had to change from my play clothes, probably filthy from climbing trees outside, into the blue dress I am wearing. I assume Ezra felt the same way because in his photo his eyes are red, meaning he had been crying. I am betting they interrupted his afternoon tv cartoons for this picture.

In the foster home, these are the photos we had taken of us. There are no birthday, no first day of school, no goofy hanging-out- in-the-backyard pictures. Granted, this was back in the 1970's when photos were expensive. The film had to be purchased and then processed, so no one "wasted" a picture on silliness. The few pictures I do have are exactly like these, taken by a social worker and are only of me and Ezra. We didn't take pictures with the other foster kids. I assume it was a privacy kind of thing.

 There are no pictures of us with our foster parents and their natural children, either.  How much of that again was the cost issue, since our foster parents were poor as church mice, or they just didn't think to take pictures, and how much was they weren't allowed to, I don't know. But considering we lived in the foster home until I was seven years old, I thinking it is weird there are no photos beyond the rare picture taken by the social workers.

In today's modern digital camera explosion, where a child can have thousands of pictures taken before it's first birthday, my lack of childhood photos seem stark until I remember that it wasn't that long ago that photos didn't exist at all. In the grand scheme of life, it doesn't really matter that I have no photographic record of my childhood. But it sure would be nice if I did. 

Book Review from Greatly Blessed Blog

Greatly Blessed is a blog written by a mother with a large family. Several of her children were adopted. She writes about living with and homeschooling her children, which I humbly acknowledge in no way would I have the energy, organization and good humor to pull off. I bow to her awesomeness, not only that she is raising such a wonderful family but also that she manages to keep her house and kids clean enough to be picture-worthy for her blog. Kudos to her for pulling off a very, very difficult task every day. Whew!

She read my book and her book review link is below. I think her perspective is valuable because she and her husband are doing  the same thing my adoptive parents did, only they are doing it right. She has earned the street cred to have an opinion on my book. She knows what she is talking about.

http://grtlyblesd.blogspot.com/2014/02/ezra-and-hadassah-book-review-giveaway.html

Reading Down Under

 In case you happen to be wandering around Australia today, hankering for a book to read, I thought you might be happy to know my book is available there. How amazingly weird is that?


 Australia's local book store: "Booktopia"

Hot Off the Press

Iowa City Press Citizen, February 2, 2014:

Heather Young was 7 when the state of Oregon removed her from her parents’ care and placed her into foster care.

Young, now 46, said in 1973, she and her developmentally-disabled brother, Ezra — whose name was later changed to Rex — were taken from her mentally ill parents after a state psychiatrist found them unfit for parenting. Ralph Wade, who is developmentally challenged, and Claudia, who suffers from schizophrenia, didn’t realize they were the newest test subjects in a state experiment nicknamed “The Oregon Project,” or “The Termination Project.”


To read the rest of the article, and to see a video interview:

A Family Ripped Apart

Where to Start?

When telling a story, it's always good to start at the beginning. This is where our family began. The baby is my  brother Ezra, born in Sept. 1965. Claudia and Ralph adored Ezra, their first born child. Ralph's mother, Momsie, is sitting on the floor in front. She is a beautiful looking lady. According to family lore, she was a true Rosie-the Riveter, working at the local shipyards in Portland, Oregon during WWII. The family story is she was hard-of-hearing due to the noise of shipbuilding. By the time Grandma Momsie was in her forties, she lost most of her sight. She was legally blind at the time this picture was taken.

We now know Momsie had a  rare genetic condition called Usher's Syndrome. She was born hard-of-hearing and gradually lost her sight over the years. This was back in the day when hearing aids weren't very good and she probably didn't ever have the benefit of them. There was nothing that could be done about the Retinitis Pigmentosa that stole her sight.

How do we know Momsie had Usher's? Because our three children, Jennifer, Elise and Ty have all been diagnosed with it. They too, were born with moderate hearing loss and are experiencing vision loss in themselves. Dr. Ed Stone at the Univ. of Iowa is developing a cure for Usher's vision loss. The hope is within ten years, his research will be available to our children and others.

Family stories are good to know. They might not always be positive, but sometimes they are the answer to bewildering questions like, "What the heck is Usher's and how did my children get it?" I think Grandma Momsie is a true warrior. She dealt with an unfortunate life situation and lived a full life, not missing out on any of the good stuff that makes this journey worthwhile.