Excerpt from "A Tap Water Girl In A Bottled Water World" - Tuning Out, Tuning In

I was four years old the last time I saw my birth mother. She came to the orphanage to visit her children ¾ me, my little sister Mary, and our older brothers Bobby and Ricky. We had been taken away from her.

I remember my birth mother as beautiful, breathy, and always in some kind of hurry. That last day, she wore a long coat with a red scarf and pretty, high-heeled shoes. I don’t remember what we did during her visit, but I can never forget her leaving. I stood watching as she walked down the long hallway, her high-heeled shoes clicking on the tile floor with each step. My arms were outstretched, I cried out for her to stop. I wanted one more kiss, one more hug.

Like time frozen in a movie frame, I can still replay the moment she abruptly turned around, and without a change in expression, quickly blew a kiss from her lips. Just as quickly, she turned and walked away.

That was one of the few days I remember about the months at the orphanage. The rest are blurred with only a couple of events separating one day from another. But my memory is full of the events that led up to my life in the orphanage.

My birth mother was from Germany and had married our father when he was stationed in the United States Army overseas. Our family was living in Atlanta near an army base, but our father was gone most of the time.

Our birth mother didn’t do a very good job of being a Mama. I think it was hard for her to look after her four children, ages two through six. Maybe it was because she had been born in Germany, spoke with a heavy accent and was new to the United States. Or maybe it was because she didn't have any family or girlfriends to help.

Maybe what she really needed was a husband around to help her take care of their four stair-step children. When our army father did come home, she was probably exhausted and frustrated. I still remember hiding under the covers of my bed and listening to them yell at each other.

One time I even heard the sound of furniture being shoved around, and the next morning there was a hole in the wall exactly the same size as the picture tube that protruded from the back of the television set. That is not a good memory.

After that incident it seemed that life got more uncertain for my siblings and me. Our father took us away from our house and our mother. He took us to live with his sister, our aunt, and her husband for awhile. I did not like my Aunt or her house very much.

Before the move, we had lived in a small, white frame house in Atlanta. There were lots of neighbors close by and yards with grass for playing. But our aunt's house was out in the country and sat off the dirt road by itself. The house was unpainted inside and out and balanced atop wobbly looking piles of rocks. I thought it was strange that we could see under the house all the way from one side to the other. Later I learned that the underpinning was missing. Houses like this one were known as tenant houses. The yard was a flat piece of untended red, Georgia clay — dusty, dirty, and uninviting. Not nearly as inviting as the grassy backyard at our other house, the house where our Mother and Father lived (at least I thought our Father still lived there when he was not in the Army).

Our uncle worked on the night shift and that meant he had to sleep all day. So that meant on some days we ¾ four noisy children ¾ were locked out of the house.

One day we were put outside kind of early — and without breakfast. Baby, our pet name for Mary, was hungry and needed something to eat. So, the brothers, Mary and I walked down the road, past a row of mailboxes, and all the way to a neighbor’s house. My next memory is of a screened door opening, the face of a woman, and standing in the yard eating dry cereal out the box.

It may have been the begging incident or the living situation, but for whatever reason, the living arrangement with the Aunt and Uncle didn’t work out, either.

That is how I found myself in a great big building, called an orphanage, still trying to figure out how to look after Baby. I wanted to make things right for her, but how could I, when I wasn't even sure where we were or why we were there?

What I did know was that this place was too big and too scary. The grown-up people in charge didn’t understand why I felt that I was it was my job to look after my little sister. I understood better than they that Baby was only a two year-old who didn’t have a mother anymore, nor a father. During the first day at the orphanage, the ladies who said they were going to help us wanted to take Baby to another room, one upstairs where they said they had cribs and she would sleep more safely.

I wasn't about to fall for that, I was not going to let Baby out of my sight! I was going to stay right by the side of her crib — if I could just find it. I don’t know if I cried, or begged, or sat in defiant silence. I don't remember. I just know that I stayed close. That is until one of the ladies mentioned a nap. While I hated taking naps myself, I finally agreed to let go of Baby so she could go to sleep. I decided to wait right where I was until she woke up and they brought her back.

In an attempt to lure me away from Baby, someone took my hand and led me down a long hall to show me a playground through the window. No matter how much fun the other children were having on the swings and in the sandbox, I knew I could not go outside and be father away from my little sister.

She was somewhere in the front of the building — upstairs. What if she awakened? What if she needed me? What if she discovered that we didn’t have a Mother, Father, or even a mean aunt to look after us anymore? What if she was scared? What kind of big sister would go play when Baby might need her?

Instead, I remember looking sadly out the window, determined not to let the laughter of the other children entice me to join the fun — not during such a frightful time for Baby. Standing there watching my breath cloud the window, I willed myself not to yield to the temptation to go outside.

I saw my brothers playing outside. After all, they were boys, they were older, and they had each other. I was the one who had to be close at hand for Baby.

As that first day and then evening wore on, a compassionate adult staff member found me lying in my little single bed with my eyes wide open. That same person carried me upstairs to a cot to sleep in the same room as Mary. Whoever moved me had made an attempt to right my very topsy-turvy world. What a relief!

The months at the orphanage were strange but, uneventful until the last day our Mother visited. Something she said, I don’t remember what, made me think that it was not right that we lived in an orphanage. We didn’t belong there.

Not long after the final good-bye kiss from our mother, things began to change. We kept hearing the word adoption and tried to understand just what it meant. I knew it had something to do with a new Mama, a new Daddy, a new brother, and ice cream. And I knew that Baby and I would get to sleep in the same room forever!

I also learned that it had something to do with Bobby and Ricky getting a different Mama and Daddy. But we would live close enough to each other to play together. And Bobby would stay with Mary and me during the day while our new parents taught school. Ricky was six years old and he was going to go to school. Mary and I were going to get another brother named Lamar. He was a teenager and was the natural son of our new Mama and Daddy. Mary and I didn’t know what a teenager or a natural son was, but we were excited to have one more brother.

Bobby, Ricky, Mary, and I left the orphanage together. In order for us to all fit into one car, only the two new Mamas drove to the orphanage to take us to our new house. When we got to the small rural town of Jackson, Georgia, all of us would meet our new Daddies. Later I learned that when people asked our new daddy how he could adopt two little girls, sight unseen, he replied, “It doesn’t matter what they look like, if they need a home, we want them.”

During the drive to our new home, our first stop was for ice cream. So far, adoption was pretty good and looking even better. But then, I got worried. I didn’t want to do something bad and get us all in trouble. I didn’t want to mess things up for Baby or Bobby or Ricky — or me! I was wearing a brand new dress with a pretty white collar, and when the first drop of chocolate ice cream fell onto the collar, I burst into tears. I was sure my new Mama was going to send me back to the orphanage. Imagine my surprise when my she said, "It's okay, baby doll. We'll just wash it out when we get home!" I didn't know what baby doll meant, but I knew it felt good to be called one.

As we rode along the country roads, our new Mamas started singing to us. They sang Jesus Loves Me, God Bless America, I'm a Little Teapot, and finally, Jesus Loves the Little Children. How I loved the words to that song, " . . . all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."

As we drove into the front yard of our new house, the two new Daddies were sitting on the porch waiting for us. Lamar was pitching a baseball against the side of the house and catching it. For the first time in a very long time, I believed that life would be happy. Maybe I could let go of taking care of Mary. Maybe we were going to be safe. And even though we would not be living with our brothers, maybe we would be a family.

Little did I know that a new family tradition was born that day. Mama continued to sing, teaching us the words so we could all join in. We sang wonderful songs about teapots and Bill Groggins’ Goat. We sang patriotic songs about amber waves of grain and the rocket's red glare. We sang songs about amazing grace and when the roll is called up yonder (wherever yonder was). We sang songs that required hand motions and we sang songs in rounds. We sang wonderfully fun songs, full of life and joy — My Grandfather’s Clock, Oh Suzanna, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. And we always sang Jesus Loves the Little Children, all the children of the world.

We loved being part of this new family. We went to Sunday School and Church. We took vacations and went to family reunions. No matter where we went, we sang songs. We sang as we traveled the long, hot hours to our summer vacation in Florida. We sang as we crossed the back roads of Georgia to visit all the aunts and uncles and cousins that came along with our new family. We sang on the way to watch high school basketball games — and since new Daddy was the high school principal and Lamar played ball, we made a lot of these trips.

Mama would tease Daddy about being off-key. We certainly didn’t mind that he couldn’t find the key, and he didn’t seem to mind the teasing. Daddy often made us laugh even harder by making up funny ad-lib words to the songs. We were even more delighted that finally there was something to sing about. A family to love and to be loved by. Lessons to learn and life to experience. I knew that something good had happened in spite of a very rough beginning.

Almost forty-five years after joining our new family, as Mary and I were “breaking up housekeeping” for Mama, I found an old, old songbook among the numerous books she had collected during the years, Songs for All: A Collection of Favorite Songs published in 1935. As I flipped through the pages of the familiar titles, I could still hear a family — my family — singing from the top of our lungs and the bottom of our hearts.

The sounds of the high-heeled shoes, an unkind aunt, and an orphanage are now very far away. I can barely hear them at all over the laughter and songs from the back seat of a two-toned blue 1955 Dodge that carried a family — a real family — to ball games and reunions, vacation and church, and then back home again.