My Family Stories - Part 21 - Life Throws Some Curves.

When I left off writing my family stories, chapter 20, we had just moved

to the farm, and I was always worrying about having enough water, as

it was from a well on the property.

A lot of other changes came into our life, that summer of 1969. Mark

had just graduated high school, and began working in the research

laboratory as a lab technician at the chemical plant I worked for. He

was good there, enjoyed the work, and he didn't plan on going to

school right away again.

Somehow, the best laid plans, you know, he and friends got together and

he had very good SAT scores, and was accepted into Westchester Community

college, about 45 minutes from where we lived. Mark had to tell the chemist he

was working for, that he was going to leave in September, and he was quite upset.

It takes some training and Mark was a quick learner, and he didn't want to lose

him, and was warned, he wouldn't be given his job back should he change his mind.

I felt kind of bad, but happy that Mark wanted to go to school. He was going to study electrical engineering.

That September he began riding down to the school with two other friends.

College classes are different, you know, scattered throughout the day. Mark

was not driving there, and very nervous about it all, as one of the boys

was a volunteer fireman, and every time he had a call they all had to

leave school as he had the car. I could see him getting very upset and

nervous, and he talked to me about it. Of course it was his decision,

and at the end of that first year, he decided to leave and return after

he could drive himself. The school had no problem with that as his grades

were up there, and they could see him getting anxious too.

Of course, he wanted to go back to his old job, and he did try. The

Chemist would not take him back, but he was given a job in the plant,

doing other work. We drove back and forth to work, and I didn't like that

too much, as I am a very punctual person, and he was hard to get up,

but we always made it. Later on he would get his own car.

We all loved living on the farm, we had a quite a few cats, all out door

cats, who brought presents everyday to the door step, I always watched

before putting my foot down, lots of snakes for gifts and other little

presents. Cat's have their own idea of what you might like. Bill brought

home dogs that people who came up to the “country” from New York City

for the summer and then left them behind. At one time we had three

large dogs. A German Sheppard, an English Setter, and a Beagle.

After awhile so many dogs were hard to feed, so I asked around the plant

and one of my friends, a foreman, took Bessie, our Beagle. He said to

me a couple of days after taking her home, that the dog wouldn't eat

dog food at all. I told him to put some spaghetti sauce on it. That dog

loved spaghetti. In those days our dogs ate table scraps, frowned on now, but

they were all very healthy and happy. The English Setter was named Chumly,

and the German Sheppard was Homer. They had plenty of room to run.

I didn't know it, but when we moved to the farm , not only would we become

the owners of many pets, but we would become parents again. No, I didn't

have another baby, but Dexter brought his little 15 year old girl friend home, he

was 14, and she was very pretty. They were in the same school and he

was a handsome guy, she fell for him, and of course I believe he was

enamored too.

She began coming home with him a lot, and took a liking to me and Tracey who was only nine at the time. Linda, the girl friend , was a foster child living not too far from us. She began to tell me stories of how badly she was treated, and I couldn't understand it at all as she had a beautiful smile and sunny disposition. Soon, Dexter, romeo that he was, tired of

her but Linda kept coming over anyway.

One night in January of 1970, she wouldn't let me take her home. I called

her foster parents and they called social services, who told me to just take her

over and drop her off in front of the house. Linda said she would run away, I

told this to the Social worker and she said then the police will pick her up. It

was 2 degrees out, so with a lot more discussion , I agreed to let her stay

overnight and the social worker would pick her up the next morning. It

was a Saturday, and I was home from work. Bill working for the police,

never had weekends off.

In the morning the social worker showed up. Linda told her she didn't

want to go back to where she was living because she was mistreated.

She said she wanted to stay with us. Now, I was taken by surprise, but

never underestimate a teenager who knows what she wants. Since it was

a Saturday the woman asked me if I could keep her over the weekend

and she would make other arrangements for Linda on Monday. I talked to

Bill on the telephone and he said okay, but she can't stay more than that.

How little he knew. I listened to all of her stories of how she was abandoned

by her family,  I learned later from the social worker, that she had been abused

sexually by her father when she was still in her crib until she was about 13 years

old and ran away because her mother didn't believe her, and was hiding in someone's cellar, and her friend told a teacher so that is how she got into the Social Services

system. Her parents had taken off for Florida with their four other children, and just

left her to fend for herself.

She was tough. That sunny disposition and smile was covering a dark

and deeply hurt personality. I didn't see it at first, and social services

did try and tell me, and I asked to have her psychoanalyzed and they

made an appointment for her, and took her to the doctor. Of course

I wasn't allowed to go in with her and the doctor came out and assured

me she was fine. She was educationally retarded though.

We were still keeping her, a few weeks had passed and finally Linda

told me she had asked them if we could be her foster family. Now, this

takes some investigation. But we were given a temporary certification

so that we could get financial assistance to take care of her. Bill and I

had more or less fallen in love with her, in spite of the problems she had.

We talked a lot about it, and then agreed to apply for certification to

be her Foster parents. I can't believe it, but we were almost turned down

because we had three sons. They said the boys might take advantage of

her. I now know, it was the other way around, she was looking to marry

one of them, and she was still a kid.

I took her shopping with her first clothing check and outfitted her the

way she wanted to dress. Mini skirts were in vogue then and I didn't

like them as short as she did, so there were a lot of discussions as to

what she could wear to school. She did fit in with the family , and she

and Tracey shared a bedroom. They became fast friends. It was nice

for me to have a teenage girl, we did some things together that I couldn't

do yet with Tracey and now I look back at that, and think what was I

thinking.  Hindsight is always 20/20.

Our lives were about to change way more than we had bargained for.