I'm posting what comes next in the free-write I started sharing the other day. I am purposely not using names in this until it's appropriate.
That phone call came in January during the 2010 “snowpocalypse”. I had 5 months left of high school and suddenly, I didn’t think I could finish. I thought I was going to fail out in the last two quarters. I didn’t...but I got pretty close. Thanks to an amazing chemistry teacher and having accommodations, I went from a D to an A in chemistry within the last 2 or 3 weeks and I pulled through with last ditch efforts in my other classes as well.
Since high school, I’ve gotten an Associate’s Degree from Montgomery College, a Bachelor’s Degree from Shepherd University, briefly moved from my mom’s house to a small basement apartment across town, then took another brief move to Morgantown with my now ex-boyfriend and then, and here’s the big one, I hiked the Appalachian Trail.
But before all these amazing things happened, my siblings and I had been born into a very poor household. We lived in a small apartment in Hagerstown, we didn’t always get fed as often as children need to be, 3 out of 5 of us were at one point or other labelled failure to thrive and actually, my sister’s twin brother passed away when he was just 2 months old. Our mother was 26 when she had my older brother, but she ended up having 5 children in 4 years and didn’t have a clue about how to raise kids. Or perhaps she did, but she couldn’t muster the wherewithal, the gumption or the effort it takes to raise 4 or 5 children when the husband is either away or present but abusive.
Having heard from someone who has worked in more than one state with either Child Protective Services or the Department of Social Services, children living in this situation in Maryland often never get placed into better homes, yet somehow, someone within DSS knew our mother and reported our situation so someone was able to open our case. DSS got involved when in 1995 and we got adopted January 5th 1999. Our current parents never planned to adopt, they had thought that they would just foster children then send them away. However, my sister and I were their very first foster kids and here we are today.
I’ll also put it on record that we were among the worst children to consider adopting. When our current parents saw us during the visits to DSS, we raised hell. There are stories about us jumping up and down on a table, flipping over the furniture and my personal favorite, the time when we pushed the security button and bolted out the door when the guards came in and dispersed into the hallways. We had attachment disorders, maybe all of them even just between my sister and me. My brothers got adopted separately since we had the ravaging power of an earthquake when we all got together. Our propensity for mischief was out of this world. My younger brother started taking apart wooden benches in a Walmart while a photographer was trying in vain to take a picture in which all four of us were at least sitting. While in Hagerstown, my older brother and I flooded the bathtub in the middle of the night and the tenant downstairs called to say there was a leak in her ceiling.
Yet, here we are years later, relatively well adjusted adults. The oldest brother is working at a Michael’s. My sister is pursuing a medical career because she wants to be a cardio-thoracic surgeon, my younger brother works in the IT department at his Alma Mater and I have completed school, gotten many types of jobs and will eventually go back to school to get the degree I was after the first time around. I have also stored up 10 years of savings and depleted most of it on an amazing trip along the Appalachian Trail.
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