At 18 months old, my mother and father took me to Illinois Children's Home and Aid on Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago and handed me over. I arrived with them and left with my new foster family, who went on to raise me until I was exited from the program at 18. My story to that point is told here in my birth mother's memoirs. My foster parents were both over 40 years older than I was. It's a lot like being raised by your grandparents I guess.
Because of the program, and their infinite patience, I had a roof, clothes and food and attended school. I was warm at night and in the winter and I even had some toys, too. It wasn't much, but it was enough. I look back on my life and I am filled with gratitude to have had so much when others got so little. Living with the same family for so long it felt real, like I was their real son, even if my name was different from theirs. I was so unbelievably lucky. Most foster kids had several homes and many were abused in them, too. Keeping the same, stable family for all those years was like winning the lottery.
My foster father grew up on a farm in central Illinois and stayed in Chicago after returning from the Second World War where he fixed P51D Mustangs at RAF Leiston as part of 357th FG, VIII FC, Eighth Air Force. He married my foster mother after he met her while working at Royal Typewriter. He was a very pragmatic man, very sensible, very dependable. He worked at Argonne National Labs building circuit boards for over 30 years and never complained. He took all the overtime they offered him. Despite being raised as a farmer he was very well-read. Every week he got copies of Newsweek and US News and World Report. He read the Sunday Chicago Tribune every week and watched Face The Nation every Sunday to understand what was going on around the world. He could name every country in the middle east on a map and was a conservative Republican.
His father, my foster grandfather (is that even a thing?) was a hard, Irish farmer who died when my foster father was ten, 35 years before I was even born. Dad grew up watching John Wayne movies in the cinema (no TV back then) and listening to the Lone Ranger and The Shadow on the radio. His heroes were hardworking and stoic, just as he was. They never talked about their emotions or feelings. They never opened up. They did the right thing out of righteousness, not love. They sacrificed whatever they had to for you and you were in their debt through no choice of your own.
For my part I tried to do the best I could. Because of my ADHD I was high-strung, energetic and emotional - too much for such a quiet man to handle. I had no aptitude for Boy Scouts or other activities he might have imagined and I couldn't play any sports at all. I was small and weak and had a runny nose and thick glasses. I was sickly. I had neither interest nor aptitude for fixing the car or watching the news or fishing. I'm sad that I was never the son he must have wanted me to be.
He tried to talk to me sometimes. It didn't work. Mostly I just talked and he struggled to get even a single word in. He struggled to understand anything I was talking about. He couldn't handle my frequent emotional outbursts and tantrums. After I became a teenager it was rare that we even talked at all, except when he would yell about stupid things like where I had been all night or why people he didn't know called the house sometimes (it doesn't cost anything when people call you, by the way). After he got called to pick me up at the police station he never yelled at me again. I could feel his disappointment, heavy like a millstone around my neck.
More than anything, I remember that he never said he loved me. Not one single time. In my twenties I even asked him one time to say it. "Just say it", I cried..."why can't you even say it...after all these years??" He had no response. He never told me he was proud of me for anything I did. In the end, I guess he did his job and I did mine. I was so fortunate to have had what I had, how could I even dare to want more?
In his mind, I should have known how he felt by how he acted. He was still the same Dad who held my hand when I was six as we walked around the block after dinner and who told me about all the stars in the sky, the same ones he looked at when he was my age. I should have known he loved me because of how he put up with me for all those years and refused to give up on me even after I had given up on myself time and again. I should have known he loved me because he stuck around even after my real dad didn't. I should have known he loved me because my foster Mom told me he did, right? But he could never actually say it. Not even after 20 years.
I suppose I needed to hear those words more than anything else. I needed to know that I was loved and that I mattered. I needed to know that my accomplishments, though meager, were worth his attention. I needed to feel important and not be forgotten or abandoned like I was by my real parents. I needed to be needed.
Life went on. When I was 18 and already a man according to State of Illinois, they moved away to Reno Nevada since my foster Mom couldn't take the cold winters in Chicago anymore. I saw them when I could afford to go. After my foster Mom died in 1992 (I was in Osaka) I tried to get back every year to see him in Las Vegas (he couldn't bear to be in Reno after that). Eventually, my foster brother moved from Florida to take care of him and I bought a house for them and a restaurant for my brother to run. All those things are gone now, too. He died at home as he would have liked, just before he would have turned 90. We scattered his ashes in Reno on a hill overlooking the place where they fly the hot air balloons that my foster mom always thought were so pretty. I think he would have liked that.
In a way I have been looking for those words ever since. In the end I found them with my wife and my children - a family of my own. I found that I could always tell them I love them and how proud I am of all the amazing things they do. They will never have to guess how I feel. To them I am an open book.
In these dark times, tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us. Please remember to tell your loved ones how important they are. Tell them how much they mean to you and how much you love them. Admit how proud you are of them. Hug them often. Say the words. Don't be afraid. Don't forget. Don't tell yourself they already know how you feel. Don't tell yourself you'll say it next time. Do it NOW. They need to hear those words as much as you need to say them.
Say the words.
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