My Ducks

Each time we pack our children in the car for one of our family adventures it never fails that we hear, “Where are we going? Are we there yet? How much longer, daddy are we there yet?”  A child’s perception of time is minutes are hours and days are weeks.

For a child waiting for Christmas is a challenge that is overwhelming and seems to never come fast enough.  The most important day for a child is tomorrow, because today is just too darn slow.

As I sat on my blue cotton blanket staring at the cold white walls waiting for my next assigned mission of a family, I remember wondering if this life would ever change.  Would I ever have a normal morning of getting up putting on my shoes and running after those big yellow school buses?  Would I ever smell the bacon cooking and a mom standing in the kitchen as I came down the stairs?  Time seemed to stand still and never move.

My days were full of the same routines.  The only difference would be if I was on my way to a new assigned family or taken for a new flash card test.  This was all about to change and my life would quickly go from an organized exercise to complete disarray. Disarray that would be welcomed by my young mind.

As I was stuck in time I had an ally outside the brick walls fighting and battling for my freedom.  It always has amazed me how easy it was for me to be abandoned to the system, a system that is not built to tend families yet one that is designed to hand children off to desiring individuals that want families.  I had been handed off several times and was fumbled back each time.  Here for the first time in my short life I had someone that wanted me and that wasn’t enough.  I had someone that was there for me and only me.  Yet this person had to fight the system to let me go.

I often wonder what kept my Grandmother fighting for me.  She had raised her children, she had her life, why me?  What was I to her save a grandchild she had only met a few times in her life?  I would not understand this until much later in my life and would not fully realize all my Grandmother did for me until I myself had my own children and my own family.

After what felt like a life time I was finally released into the temporary guardianship of my Grandmother.  I stress temporary as this would not be the last time my Grandmother and I would have to fight for me to stay in my new home.  Yes I had a home, at first it was a bit unconventional, but it was home.

My Grandmother had found a way for the state of Utah to allow me to stay with her, but there were several caveats to the agreement.  First she was not considered my legal adopted parent.  Meaning at anytime my biological parents could return and take me.  Second she was to have me monitored and medicated.  This would lead to an all new challenge in my life.  These medication were given to me for the labels that the system had attached to me.  Labels that had no true merit nor did they have any true bearing on who I was or where I had been.  These “candies” would be with me for the next 9 years of my life until I was able to beat the system’s categorizing of my mind.

Life was quickly becoming odd and abnormal for me.  I was becoming part of something that I didn’t understand.  I had someone that cared for me, cuddled with me, watched a movie with me and was just there for me.  It was not all rosy.  I was still a child fighting to escape the memories of life.  I was confused and didn’t know or understand my own mind.  I felt out of control and could not grasp my own childhood.  I was battling side effects of experimental medications and in some instances would sleep more in a week then wake.  I had come into my Grandmother’s life and had changed it forever.

Before me my Grandmother lived a simple life.  She had a job, a fancy apartment and a single life that took her all over the country on adventures with men courting her and begging for her hand in marriage. My Grandmother was a firery red head that that turned the heads of men everywhere she went.  She was an accomplished musician and a business professional that was sought out by several firms each time she looked for a new career path.  She had raised her two children, my mother and my uncle.  She had a life and had lived life.  I would for evermore alter her simple life and my actions would challenge her patience time and time again.

Our first adventure began in a fancy apartment in the downtown Salt Lake City area.  As stated early our first home was a bit unconventional and this was due to the fact that the apartment complex did not allow children.  Pets where one thing, but children, now that was just not allowed.  Why? It was too fancy for my kind and too quiet.  I took on the challenge to change all that and before my Grandmother could find us a new place to stay I had managed to expedite our involuntary exit.

This fancy apartment complex had perhaps my first true undocumented childhood memory that did not involve a pool table or nurses.  Just down from my Grandmother’s posh apartment was a pond.  The pond was nestled into tall oak trees that reflected off the surface of the shallow waters.  Signs posted around the pond read, “No Children & Do Not Feed the Ducks”.  Perfect!  This was the place for me.  Not only did I have the sign to rebel against, I also had my Grandmother’s words.  Words that she would soon understand would have no impact on my behavior.  “Stay inside unless we are together.  I am trying to find us a new home and need you stay inside with me while we are home.”  Now my Grandmother was breaking the rules and asking me to help in this, so really who was the one that was in the greater wrong?

Her wrong was my escape and her love of me was what broke me out of my Red Brick building.  This was truly an example of love.  She was risking her home for me, risking her character to free me and I repaid her by simply rebelling.  Each time she would get on the phone or begin work on a project I would sneak down to the pond with a bag of bread and feed my new friends.  They would come to me in the dozens. My ducks.  They were mine and no one else was allowed to feed them or play with them.  It was my  first true possession and my first glorious childhood memory.

Bread vanished as quickly as my Grandmother would purchases it and being that it had been years since she had raised a small child, I was getting away with it.  I would find ways after ways to spend time with my ducks.

Just off from the pond was the main entrance to the apartment complex and this road had many visitors. Cars, trucks and walking guests would pass right by the pond and I knew that I could not be seen or I would be pulled from my new found treasures and possible even worse.  I would use the shelter of the great oaks each and every time an unwanted visitor would trespass near my pond.  This worked like a charm or so I thought.

After only a few weeks living in my new found home, my Grandmother was informed that she would have to leave as she was harboring an unwanted guest.  That guest?  Me.  I truly don’t remember how furious my Grandmother was about all this, but I do remember I wasn’t fumbled back into the Red Brick building.  She stood by me.  We moved and I said goodbye to my ducks.

I don’t know if anyone else has ever feed those ducks, but recently I revisited my childhood pond and though it is much smaller then I remember, the feelings are still there and those little ducks are still coming to shore looking for their little brown eyed trouble maker and yes they still love SaraLee.