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.