Chapter One: The Good Old Days
My first memory of life doesn’t
begin with my biological parents. My memory begins at the foster home, an
old-fashioned four-story craftsmen style house with a wide front porch located
near downtown Portland, Oregon. I rode a tricycle on the sidewalk in front of
the house, my two year-old hair ruffled by the wind. At that point I spent my
days at the foster home while my brother went to Head Start Preschool. We
weren’t yet living there full time - that would come within another year or
two. Ezra and I went home to our parents every night, like any other children
in daycare. I had no idea we were far from typical. That knowledge would unfold
slowly, year by year as my body and brain grew and my awareness of a world
beyond my tricycle on the sidewalk expanded. In the beginning, I knew only the
sensation of the worn rubber on the front wheel of the tricycle bumping
unevenly on the pavement as I raced an imaginary foe to the end of the block,
stopping just short of the curb dumping me into the street.
Time sped by and suddenly I was
five years-old and I knew. I can’t explain how or when I knew, maybe at some
point an adult sat me down and gently explained my life in a way that I was
able to understand. If they did, it was such a non-conversation I can’t recall
it. There is an equally good chance no adult said anything and I just put the
pieces together myself. I knew our mother Claudia had something called
schizophrenia and our father, Ralph was referred to as developmentally
challenged. I knew they couldn’t take care of us. There was no drama, no
police, no ripping me from my parent’s arms. Just one evening our parents
didn’t come to get Ezra and me and we didn’t go home that night. Silently we
flipped from visiting the foster home to visiting our parent’s home.
The neighborhood around the foster
home felt safe to me. I considered the streets surrounding it to be my home as
much as the actual house. It was a working class community, all the houses
lined up in rows with narrow paths between each. The sidewalks in front were
perfect for bike riding and roller-skating. Across the street from the foster
home a group of houses were bought by several families. I watched them turn
their homes into a communal living, hippy kind of thing. Kids roamed freely in
and out of all the houses, being fed and disciplined by whichever adult was
nearby. The fences separating backyards were torn down and the area in the
middle of the block became a shared garden and playground. I loved hanging out
with the hippy families because they were nice to me and invited me to their
children’s birthday parties. It was fun, even if all they ate were salads.
Our foster home had a partially
finished attic that became my indoor refuge, a place to escape to when I needed
a break from living with foster parents and seven or more rotating children.
The attic ceiling was tall enough in the center for an adult to stand
comfortably and it had plenty of natural light from the big windows on all four
sides. The middle of the floor had plywood across the exposed beams covering
the crumbling insulation between the floor joists. A railroad train set with
tons of track and miniature village pieces occupied hours of my time.
I laid on the floor, my face
pressed into the dusty film so I could get the best view of the tiny people as
they moved around their orderly town. The miniature townspeople got on and off
the trains that took them over mountains made from cardboard boxes and tunnels
constructed from old oatmeal tubes. It wasn’t the trains that fascinated me. Actually,
the way their tiny wheels constantly fell off the track annoyed me. It was how
the sun, streaming in from the windows, fell across the town illuminating the
ancient dust specks in the air. The flakes of dust gently settled on the post
office, the school, and stores like freshly fallen snow. It was a peaceful
village of people with happiness painted on their faces. I could imagine myself
living there someday, running the beauty shop or the deli. It was a calming
scene, full of everyday life with no surprises. Everyone did what was expected
without shouting, hitting or drama.
The second floor of the foster home
consisted of a bathroom and three bedrooms. Our foster parents, Dorothy and
Wayne shared the master bedroom, the girls’ shared one bedroom and the boys the
other. Since we had no closets or dressers in our bedrooms, the kids’ rooms had
plenty of space for several rows of bunk beds in each. There were two extra
beds for ‘short-timers’. They were kids who came for a few days or months at a
time, knowing they were not here to stay. I always felt sorry for those kids,
they were lower on the list than I was. At least I had a place to be.
