It seems like as long as I could remember there were foster kids in the house. When I was little, I didn't think about it. They were people, they just lived with us, it was part of life. Later on, I found out that my mom was doing this for professional and for personal reasons. As a social worker, she created this program, a family-oriented group residence for disturbed teenagers, kids that for one reason or another had kind of "flunked out" of traditional foster-care homes. She ran this program out of our house. But she wasn't only doing this because it was her career. She was doing it out of her heart. She believes deeply that "there has to be a place for every kid," and the place she created happened to be at our house.
There were some times when there were fourteen, fifteen people in the house. Our house was so wild that people could come over anytime and be entertained, because so much was going on. Sometimes it bugged me. I could never get a free moment or time to myself, 'cause there was always something going on.
We didn't only have kids, either. We had elderly and disabled people too. A couple of elderlys died while they were living with us.
We have a guy, Ken, who still lives with us who was in a car crash. He was an alcoholic and lost his memory of everything after the car crash. But he's real, real smart, and before the accident he was studying to become a doctor. I used to bring my homework to him and he'd do it with me - but he couldn't remember what he did five minutes ago.
Some of the foster kids were addicted, some were abused, some had serious mental problems. There were all types. Some lived with us for years, and I've gotten very close to a lot of them. When I was little , the foster girls would cook for me, just like in a real family. A lot of them were happy to be in our house because they had never seen anything like it before. Some foster parents are real strict and do it only the money and don't have the loving frame of mind my mother has. She was doing this out of her heart, but she kept control. Believe me, she's a strong woman and didn't take junk from any of them. If they swore, they got punished same as we did. She kept everyone in line. She would try to keep on top of everyone about doing their homework, but it was kinda hard.
A lot of them still keep in touch and even come to my mother for advice. So that shows that she really did good for them. And I think that the ones I got close to are real, real proud of us now.
I never felt bad towards the foster kids. I was never jealous of any of them, and I never resented them being there. But there was a lot of stress. The only times we had big problems was if any of them did something real bad, like steal from us. And that happened. Certain people would do it a lot.
Of course, I felt crowded - big time. But I was always proud of it and I used to love when other people would come in and see how crazy my house was. There was never a dull moment!
I think that living with foster kids has given me the personality I have today. I'm very liberal and very open-minded, and I'm not prejudice one bit - and I think that's what did it. I learned how to get along with anybody.
With so many of us in the house, we all had stuff to do. We had lists of chores, who would cook - different people would cook every night - and who would do the dishes. Up until the time I was ten or eleven, we'd all sit down and have dinners together, saying grace and everything. I usually washed dishes and raked leaves and stuff and cleaned my room. But I never wanted to do any of it. It was more like I just wanted to hang out, go out with my friends. Jon did everything, though. Jonathan just would do stuff because he wanted it done. That's the way he still is today.
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