Some memories are harder to share than others

My mom was a do-gooder. She preferred "caregiver".  When my Aunt Sheila needed a temporary home while her husband was in the army, she came and stayed with us.  When my Aunt Sandra's husband was in a terrible car crash, my little cousins came to stay with us.  Why?  I don't know.  How long?  Long enough.  And sometime in 1966 or 1967 my mom decided to take in a foster child, the first of many.  His name was Bruce and he was 15 years old.  Where did he come from?  I don't remember.  He disrupted our lives in ways I did not understand until many, many years later.  One day he was there, the next he was gone. Was that the end of my mom's desire to be a foster parent?  No.  Soon we had four sixteen year old boys living in our basement bedroom.  One of them was my soon to be adopted older brother, Michael Dennis.  He married Donna Patterson and they live in Colorado.  The others?  I don't remember their names or stories, but soon they were gone, too.  Mom didn't get any other foster children until after my brothers and I left home.  Over the years there were dozens of children that got a temporary home with my parents.  Some stayed a day, some stayed for years and became part of the family.  

Mom was always taking on more than she could handle.  The foster kids, the family, working full time, and her own demons on several occasions overcame her ability to live up to her commitments.  She started smoking.  I will never forget coming home and seeing her sitting at the dining room table with a cigarette.  What do you say to that? She did not stop smoking until the doctor found a spot on her lung and scared her into quitting. Then there was a bottle of vodka in the corner kitchen cabinet. Where did that come from?  She started staying out late and going to Ames in the evening.  She was working at an electronic parts store in Ames and one of her co-workers was named Stan.  That is where she was, with him.  This was when my dad sat across the table from me and said he was afraid they would have to get a divorce.  I wonder what made them stay together?  Many marriages get strained to bursting and then somehow, someway they get pulled back together.  Mom and Dad were obviously devoted to each other in their later years.  They would walk down the sidewalk holding hands.  

I was 16 when Mom tried to kill herself.  My dad had a pistol on the upper shelf in the closet in the little bedroom where my piano was.  She tried to get it but my brother, Michael Dennis and I stopped her.  Then she ran out of the house to her car and said she was going to drive it into a bridge.  Mike took the distributor cap off so she couldn't start the car.  At this point I cannot tell you what happened next because my memory of what came next is blank but it ended up with Mom spending a couple of weeks in the psych ward at Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames.  When she came home she had to give herself shots in her thighs.  Who knew what drugs they gave her.  My friend Cali Christy and I went to visit her one time while she was in the psych ward and we took along some music so we could play the piano and sing for her and the others.  We started singing "going out of my head over you" and Cali was the first to realize that maybe that was not an appropriate song!  

I had an English teacher when I was a sophomore named Mrs. Book.  Ruth Book.  She also went to our church.  I am not sure what the give away was but she got me alone one time and asked me how I was doing.  If I was OK.  In a small town, you can't hide this kind of shit.  I know I did not talk to her about anything.  I did not talk to anyone about any of this stuff.  Years later, Cali Christy told me that her parents talked about taking me in because they thought I needed to be away from the drama that was my home life.  They were always very kind to me.  Rolo and Gail had me over to their house all the time, gave me rides to high school, took me to nightclubs to listen to the band (OK they were bars, not really nightclubs), encouraged Cali and I in our musical adventures, and offered me an alternative vision of how adults lived.  

In spite of all the drama, I was a good kid until the summer before my Senior year.  I did not smoke, I did not drink, I did not screw and I did not go with boys that do. As a sophomore  I went to the prom with a boy who took me to a keg party and I made him take me home. He kissed me and touched my breast and I never went out with him again. I did not do drugs or stay out late or give my parents cause to worry.  My grades were excellent, I participated in school and extra curricular activities.  I had friends.  I helped around the house, cooking huge suppers for all those foster kids.  I did all the "normal" good kid stuff until the summer of my 17th year.  After all the times my mom accused me of things I didn't do, didn't trust me when I was clearly very trustworthy something had to give.  And the thing that gave was my self respect, my confidence, and my sense of self worth and any desire to conform or fit in or obey the rules. For the next year, I made up for lost time by doing all the things that my mom thought I was already doing. I started smoking cigarettes and marijuana.  I had sex. I stopped wearing a bra.  I stayed out all night and lied to my parents about where I was.  I turned 18 in February and was legal to drink.  I drank. Lots. Sometimes I have no idea how I got home.  I dropped out of chorus at the end of the first semester of my senior year.  I got the one and only "F" of my life.  I got a detention.  My life was on the fast track and I was lucky I lived through it.