Winner of USA Book News for
Christian Inspiration
"An amazing book filled with love, power and mindfulness of how each and every one of us can make a difference in this world!"
--USABookNews.com
"This is a book for everyone; we can all grow in our capacity of loving and understanding--especially the very difficult people in our lives."
Thich Nhat Hanh,
World Reknown Buddhist Zen Master, poet, and peace and human rights activist.
"What a journey!"
Gregory C. Keck, Ph.D.Founder, Director
Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio
Co-author of Adopting the Hurt Child & Parenting the Hurt Child
A Mother's Journey into Meditation:
Finding Inner Peace Raising A Difficult Child
by
Janet Alston Jackson
Published by Self Awareness Trainings, LLC at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Janet Alston Jackson.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information address:
Self Awareness Trainings, LLC
645 West 9th Street, Unit 110
Los Angeles, California 90015-1640
Book cover design by: Jasmine Tara Jackson
Photo by: Janet Alston Jackson
Discover other books by Self Awareness Trainings, LLC:
Sporting the Right Attitude: Lessons Learned in a Troubled Family
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to the thousands of foster children and adoptees -- especially those with special needs. You are indeed special!
To the mental health professionals and child welfare workers who make a difference in a child’s life.
To all parents, especially foster parents and adoptive parents, who have tried their best to raise the difficult child in their lives. Don't ever give up.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my husband Walter for your love, incredible strength, direction, and for always believing in me, and insisting that I follow my dreams. You know you’re my hero.
To my children Ryan and Jada for your endless sacrifices, love, and understanding. To my sister Chanetta, and my brother Geramy for always holding the light. To my mother Evelyn for your love that has always lifted me.
To Devon
For your courage in turning your life around, and for wanting your story to be told to help others.
***
To my Higher Power -- my constant companion and inspiration on this journey.
Janet Alston Jackson
Los Angeles, CA
2010
AUTHOR’S NOTES
The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services has made tremendous strides over the years since our family was first introduced to the agency in the early 1990’s when this story begins.
Back then, DCFS, the largest child welfare system in the nation, was an embattled agency, overburdened with 50,000 children who were wards of the court. These children were taken from their homes because of abuse and neglect. Today approximately 26,000 children are in out-of-home placement under DCFS’ protective care.
I believe that this significant reduction of children in the system is partly due to the tremendous changes made in DCFS with new policies, leadership, and laws that have helped perfect the department. But especially because of the tireless work of dedicated social workers who have found thousands of children permanent homes and reunited others with their families.
Today, I have tremendous respect and admiration for all of those at the Department of Children and Family Services who are trying to protect children. Back then, I had a very different opinion.
This book was written with the purpose that we must never forget what happens to a child like many across the country, who have been trapped, abused, lost, and forgotten in the child welfare system. It’s still happening across the country today.
* * *
The names and other identifying characteristics of certain persons depicted in this book have been changed in order to protect their privacy and dignity.
Janet Alston Jackson Los Angeles, CA
A Special Message by Thich Nhat Hanh,
World Reknown Buddhist Zen Master, poet, and peace and human rights activist.
"This is a beautiful book about the profound transformation that is possible when we ground our lives in mindfulness, the awareness of what is happening in the present moment. This author is truly skilled in the practice of recognizing and embracing her thoughts and feelings, even in the midst of extremely painful and frustrating situations. She shows us how to love and also how to let go. This allows us to remain in control of our own minds instead of trying to control what is outside of us. This is a book for everyone; we can all grow in our capacity of loving and understanding--especially the very difficult people in our lives. And all of us need to see that we are connected to the many hurt and neglected children who are still stuck in situations of despair and injustice."
Thich Nhat Hanh was nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Among Buddhist leaders influential in the West, Thich Nhat Hanh ranks second only to the Dalai Lama."- The New York Times.
CHAPTER ONE
Driving the steep, winding road into Angeles National Forest was like orbiting into outer space. I was traveling only 25 miles per hour, but my mind raced at rocket speeds. Our green mini-van snaked around the chaparral-covered mountain, passing looming, jagged rock walls that reminded me of the moon. The drive reflected the last 12 years of my life. A lonely, treacherous climb into uncharted territories.
I knew where the road was taking me physically, but not mentally. What would the future hold?
My 14-year-old son, Devon, sitting next to me, was motionless. He stared straight ahead as the pine and fir-covered slopes blurred past our windows. His fate was at hand. He didn't believe that I would follow through. I didn't believe it, either.
The wind buffeted the sides of the car as we passed bright yellow sunflowers waving from their spindly stalks, animating the still life picture around us.
Like a mummy waking from the dead, Devon slowly reached his caramel hand to turn on the radio as if to drown out my avalanche of thoughts. But we were traveling in silence. Neither of us knew what to say.
Ahead, another cluster of mountains came into view. They stood like an ancient ghost family that quietly watched over us as we drove deeper into Los Angeles’ 650,000 acre backyard playground.
I caught a glimpse of life on the curving road. A few squirrels scampered among the bushes, a small lizard sunned on a rock, and a hawk glided gracefully above us. The mountains reminded me of the isolation my husband Walter and I had felt for so long. No one else seemed to understand our painful life with Devon. People simply offered empty, impractical advice that even they wouldn’t follow.
The hum of the motor was drowned by radio static and snippets of songs that faded in and out as Devon switched stations, determined to find reception. A few irritating minutes later he found a strong signal on his favorite oldies-but-goodies station that played mostly ‘60s hits. Devon loved that period. He once told me that he should have been born then. But even he was too wild for that rebellious hippie era. Devon never seemed to fit into the world around him. He was years ahead in intellect for his age, but years behind in emotional maturity.
As we continued climbing the narrow roads, an old Marvin Gaye-Tammy Terrell duet wafted from the radio. It was strange that at such a scary time we both hummed a few bars, and softly sang the few words that we knew. Looking back, the music was probably grounding us, keeping our tightly wound nerves from snapping on that drive. We both remembered the chorus and sang it together.
“Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no river low enough to keep me from getting to you, babe.”
“That’s dedicated to you, D,” I said with tears brimming in my eyes thinking of our past and his fate ahead. I had already climbed too many mountains of despair and swam in too many rivers of tears raising him. He grinned at me with a cynical look, then snapped his head forward, tapping his leg in time to the music, shutting me and my emotions out. I could feel his tension as he softly hummed after the song was over. Music had always been his salvation. It was the only harmony in his life of constant chaos.
I couldn’t believe the coincidence. I hadn’t heard that song for years but it was the second time that it came on the radio within an hour. Earlier, we heard Diana Ross belting out her rendition as we were finishing last-minute errands before going into the forest. What were the odds of hearing this song twice? But it was symbolic of our life together. I had spent the last 12 years rescuing Devon, going through hell trying to save him from himself, but still I lost him. I had been willing to do whatever it took to help him, including dragging him to 21 different therapists. No treatment worked, which was why we were taking the drive on this day.
Except for his humming, he was silent. Devon knew what was coming. I had warned him, and the day had finally arrived.
We continued ascending, passing jagged cliffs overlooking the valley once roamed by the Gabrielino Indians. I could feel their souls in those mountains. I wished that I could have talked to them--learned from their ancient wisdom. I was taking Devon into their mountain home. I thought of the sacrifice those Indian families must have made fighting to keep their land. I, too, was going through a family sacrifice to keep my home.
Devon and I never thought this day would come. I had cajoled, threatened, and bribed him to cooperate, to stop defying authority. The emotional ravage he had heaped on the family was devastating. We constantly suffered battle fatigue. It felt like we were sleeping with the enemy. I stayed on my knees praying, begging God to straighten him out. Why couldn't he be like my other two children? Clearly, he was spitefully different. Devon seemed possessed by demons. I didn’t believe in them, but still I found myself wondering. Did this child need an exorcist? His mind worked counter clockwise to the universe. His time had run out.
Now on July 3, 2001, after years of being held hostage to Devon’s antics, Independence Day had come a day early for me. It was time to break away from him.
We turned off Little Tujunga Road to Gold Creek Road and followed a winding,
sharp turn with signs posted. Ten miles per hour. Navigating this narrow passage that overlooked a thousand foot drop, doubts surfaced about the mission that I was on. But I was not going to turn back now. Not now. I couldn't.
It wasn't an easy decision to take this ride. It ripped me apart like paper going through a shedder. I prayed that the result would result in wholeness for our family. I craved to find the part of me that I had left behind years ago. Because of Devon, I had become an uptight bitch who had long ago lost her joy.
Today I was about to start a new chapter in my life. I was giving up trying to find my happiness through an ideal family. I was giving up trying to stay in control. I was giving up battling with Devon, who was even more controlling than I was. I needed to give it all up to God, who had the real control.
We passed a dry riverbed with another sign- -“Flooding.” Ten minutes later, we had reached the mountaintop, our destination. Suddenly my breathing became shallow and my palms sweaty. Perspiration poured down my back. I wished that my husband, Walter, was with us. But as fate would have it, his mother was desperately sick, and he was 300-plus miles to the north, in Stockton, California, taking care of her. This was something I would have to do alone.
I slid out of the front seat inhaling the pine scents of Christmas on this hot summer day. Each year in these same mountains our family cut down our Christmas tree. The air was thin and still. It was exceptionally quiet like the day after the holy day when everyone is exhausted from shopping and festivities. But this was no holiday.
Devon ambled out of the car and stood next to me as I looked around. He was nearly my height, handsome and slim in his oversized jeans and green plaid shirt. He flashed me his ever-present grin. I never could figure out if that meant he was in pain or happy. I always felt that it was really his mask.
I smiled at him and took a deep breath. A sudden gust of dry California wind ruffled my hair and the bushes surrounding us. I felt it was God's gentle hand pushing me forward as he whispered, “Don't turn back now.”
I looked over toward the scattered, pastel one-story structures that seemed oddly out of place. I pointed and led our way toward the two-tone green building with a sign, “Administration.”
As we walked, I stole a glance at Devon. I wished that he would register at least some little bit of remorse or grief in his blank, brown eyes.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Fine.” I knew that he wasn't, but I had to ask. “Okay” and “fine” were his stock answers. Devon had taught himself long ago not to feel. Not to trust.
I tried swallowing my sadness. My steps became more deliberate, pounding the pavement to suppress my anxiety. I had a mission to do.
When we reached the building, I pushed open the double glass doors holding them for Devon. He walked slowly and solemnly past me into the residential treatment facility.
How could it have come to this? Why?
CHAPTER TWO
For years I held onto Devon like I was dangling with him from the side of a cliff with bloodied fingers, refusing to let him or me slip into the African-American stereotypes: the young boy who won’t behave and the mother who doesn’t care.
Like most parents, the way I was raising Devon was a reflection of my own childhood. I was also following my inner voice and intuition, which have always fascinated and terrified me.
When I was a little girl, I was amazed when I sensed something wonderful about to happen. Other times, I was terrified of the heavy feeling that began like a slithering eel in the depths of my stomach, forewarning of a cursed future.
As a child, I couldn’t make out the lingering prophesies of gloom. But these premonitions always made me nauseous as they escalated. Waves of darkness haunted me and warned that something ominous was about to happen, and it always did.
I was often plagued by these sensations as an only child growing up in the 1950’s on the South Side of Chicago. This was the time the Windy City’s black population was 22,000 and growing. Thousands of African-Americans were moving to the city every week.
The South Side had become the capital of Black America as the Harlem Renaissance was fading. Droves of blacks from the Mississippi Delta were migrating into Chi Town, looking for better economic opportunities in defense factories and meat packing plants. With them, they brought the blues. Muddy Waters, who moved to Chicago in 1943, and other great artists were part of the Chicago Blues sound that was a style unique with horns and electric guitars. I have always hated the blues. Maybe it was because my premonitions and the events that followed kept me blue enough.
In October, 1955, my Uncle Bill bought a two-story home with his wife, Queen. Bill, who stood five feet, six inches with cocoa skin, was a concerned and caring man who was always trying to help someone. It was his life’s mission. Queen, an ebony beauty, personified her name, which she vehemently disliked.
The mid-‘50s was the time the Chicago Housing Authority was constantly trying to integrate blacks into white neighborhoods. Many, if not all, of the CHA efforts were met by strong opposition, such as riots by prejudiced whites, which my family knew about first hand.
Bill and Queen Davis had just moved with their 6-year-old daughter, Adrienne into their new home when they were terrorized by firecrackers constantly exploding in their front and back yards. It was the acts of hostile whites living in the apartment house next door. They were enraged that the Davises dared to integrate the neighborhood, plus they were bitter with envy. How could a black family afford a large, two-story home when they were still renting?
The Davises were also harassed by reports made to the authorities: “Five families have moved into the house,” which, of course, was not true. “They’re adding on to the house without building permits.” That wasn’t true either. Undaunted by the torment, my uncle, a hard-working maintenance man for an elementary school, and Queen, a secretary for the federal government, refused to move. They had spent too many years scrimping and saving to get the house of their dreams. Their sacrifice was not going to be in vain.
Uncle and Auntie knew what they were up against even before they moved in. A few blocks away, on 75th Street, whites were burning black homes. In the other direction, another integrating black couple was beaten and their house burned.
Before they bought, Auntie had a talk with the seller, an elderly white widow.
“I hope that’s not what is going to happen to us if we buy this house,” said Queen, trying to feel the woman out.
“Oh no. We took a vote in the neighborhood,” the white-haired woman replied.
“We all agreed to sell out to you people.”
I was three years old when mom and dad moved us into the Davis’s second story, which had been converted into a spacious two-bedroom apartment. It was just months after Uncle and Auntie settled in and, fortunately, I was sheltered from the prejudice, which soon afflicted our neighborhood with massive white flight. We lived in the Chatham section, which quickly morphed into a black middle-class neighborhood. It reflected the hopes of many African-Americans in those days. Chicago was the land of opportunity.
I often heard my mother, Evelyn Alston, a slim, attractive, copper-toned woman, bragging to her visiting friends about our black professional neighbors.
“We’ve got two doctors, a policeman, several teachers, and a fireman living on our block,” she said, beaming. “Mahalia Jackson lives just a few blocks away.” Jackson, then the most celebrated gospel singer in the world, lived in a large, corner ranch-style home. Often I would fly by her house on my bike to see if I could get a peek at her, only to meet someone’s loose mean collie, who patrolled the streets chasing us kids away.
Chicago in the ‘50s was a city where a black person could prosper and be somebody. Joe Louis, the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world and the most famous black man in America, and William Dawson, the only black member of Congress, both called Chicago home during that time. The Defender, the most prominent black newspaper in the country, and the ground breaking magazines Negro Digest and Ebony- -“The magazine by us for us”-- were all published in Chicago. At the same time, Olivet Baptist Church, the largest black congregation in the country, was vying for souls in the Windy City along with the Black Muslims, who had recently moved their headquarters from Detroit.
The South Side had a half-dozen shopping districts. The grandest was 47th Street, filled with department stores, banks, nightclubs, and movie houses. It was in this part of town where such nationally known black institutions as the Regal Theater, the Savoy Ballroom, and the Hotel Grand were located.
Almost every Saturday, Mom took me to enjoy the latest feature film and a top stage show at the Regal or the Tivoli Theater. For 50 cents, we could both get in to see a blockbuster movie and a music great such as Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, Lionel Hampton, Dinah Washington, and my favorite, Pearl Bailey, performing live. Looking back, these Saturday afternoon shows were probably the reason why I later gravitated to a career in show business.
Living and growing up in this progressive Chicago neighborhood gave me a sense of black pride and values that I would later try to instill in Devon and my other children. I didn't want them thinking our history consisted only of being slave descendants and the targets of beatings in the Civil Rights Era, or that we are just the relentless images of angry black men arrested on the 6 o’clock news.
I grew up surrounded by progressive black role models who gave me a spiritual sense of knowing that I, too, am somebody. I would later use that pride to transcend any labels society tried to put on me and any opportunities that I may have been denied because of my color. I knew the truth and I wanted my children to know it too. We were much more than the media images depicting us as shiftless, lazy “niggers” who kill one another.
My Chicago roots molded me with rigid, unwavering values that would not allow me to accept anything less from my children or me. I developed a strong ego that became my two-headed dragon. The Midwestern hard work ethic coupled with racial pride would navigate me through career obstacles. But my ego was also self-righteous, filled with false perceptions. It was the runaway horse that dragged me behind it. Throughout life, I sometimes was the fallen rider who refused to let go of the ego reins. I had yet to learn the spiritual lesson that the ego and its attachments work counterproductive to one’s higher power.
I guess as a child I felt the anger that would sometimes sweep over me when I was busy communing with nature. I even tried outrunning that feeling. I flew down our long driveway and raced the wind on my shiny sky-blue-and-silver Monarch bike. I often imagined that I had become the bike’s brand name, flying down the middle of the residential streets like a real butterfly. Still there was no escape. The anxiety would persist intermittently for a couple of days until the news matched my unease: “Uncle Fred died today,” “Uncle Jerome didn’t make it,” “Janet, your grandmother is gone,” or “Aunt Sis has gone to heaven,” “Aunt Ethel passed.” A lot of deaths occurred in my family when I was young. I felt frightened, but it would be years before I learned that I was going through feelings of abandonment and suppressed grief.
The grief I felt often was overpowered by the scary feeling of having known something that even the adults didn’t know. When I was told someone had passed away, and I reflected on the feeling that came weeks before, it felt like I was running happily in a meadow chasing butterflies when suddenly I encountered a cliff, nearly falling off. As a child, I felt that death meant falling off the earth.
Looking back on all those premonitions, I now see that the great outdoors gave me balance. The baby squirrels, the new blossoms, and buds represented birth, new life, which I needed to keep me from drowning in morbid thoughts of death.
I never told anyone about those premonitions, especially not Mom. She didn’t need any more bad news. She had too much pressure and worry over my dad, who had diabetes and constant, near-fatal asthma attacks. It was during these times I felt most lonely. Now I realize that I was trying to suppress my rage.
“How could anyone be so sick and look so good?”
Those were the sentiments echoing among our family and friends about Daddy. The one word I heard most to describe Hurley Alston was jolly. His boisterous laugh could lift a crowded room and often did. He was a large, handsome man with café latte skin, dancing eyes, and dancing feet. One of his favorite pastimes was twirling my mom and other women around on the dance floor at one of the many parties the Davis and Alston clans hosted in our large basement.
Some of my favorite moments with him at these parties were when I would step up on Dad’s big brown shoes, holding his strong legs tightly to keep from falling. Gently he would take my hands, balancing me. Once I was stabilized and smiling up at him, Daddy would then move us gingerly around the dance floor in time to the music as everyone smiled at us and clapped. It was the attention and the wonderful feeling of gliding with Daddy as he laughed and danced that gave me joy. I felt secure and so happy. I felt like I was dancing with God.
The Davis-Alston parties were the happening place, and often the entire block attended these soirees that were thrown for no particular occasion. Dazzling female guests arrived in a rainbow of different colored satin and lace evening dresses with taffeta linings, sexy fitted bodices, and strapped stiletto pointed-toe shoes. I marveled at these glamorous women, especially my mother, who twirled their foot-long cigarette holders like movie stars. Mom, whom I thought was the prettiest woman in the world, had a black and silver one which I secretly played with when she was away at work as an underwriter for Great American Insurance Company.
The men arriving at the parties, dressed in earth-tone suits, were impressive in their matching wool fedora hats, which they handed to me since I was the pretend hatcheck girl, even getting tips. Often I would carefully try on their hats, remembering the warnings as I gently laid them aside from the coats to keep them from being crushed.
Everyone was dressed up compared to the casual block parties that were organized each year on our street. The neighbors would get the city to block off the 7900 block of Indiana, and there would be about 20 card tables filled with food, stretching nearly a half block.
Daddy loved cooking for these get-togethers almost as much as he loved cracking jokes and dancing. But once the parties in our basement were in full swing, he would quietly slip away to bed. In a few hours, he would rise in the wee hours of the morning, dressed in his whites, to take two buses and the El train north to the swank Peach Tree restaurant where he worked as the head chef.
He made good money, although he had very few days off in the year, and the hours were long and grueling. His commute was especially difficult in the dead of cold Chicago winters. “The Hawk got me today, baby,” he would say to me with his rosy cheeks looking like they were on fire.
I loved being the center of my father’s attention. Often when I returned home from school, he would sneak a nondescript brown bag on top of my bed. Delighted, I would open it up to find some small toy. On his days off, he would cook me my favorite breakfast, French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar. It seemed that Doris Day’s hit song, “Que Sera Sera,” was always playing on the radio. It was hokey but better than the blues. I hummed along as my eyes were glued to Daddy as he moved gracefully around the kitchen like a Tai Chi master. He mesmerized me. Nothing pleased me more than to hear his nickname for me. “Here you are, Angel Cake,” he would say, smiling as he placed the seductive smelling French toast in front of me with a glass of milk.
Aside from the deaths and the premonitions, I was a happy child, living a care-free life until one day in the winter of 1962 when my world crashed. I was 10 years old, trudging through calf-high snow coming home from school alone. I remember turning onto our street and seeing a crowd and an ambulance with rotating red, flashing lights in front of our tan bungalow. As I got closer, two men in white were wheeling daddy into the ambulance. The adult neighbors and kids snapped their heads, looking so strangely at me when I approached the crowd. They were eerily quiet. I can remember for some odd reason being embarrassed. There had never been anything like this happening on our block before, and I didn’t know how to react. “Your dad fell out on the sidewalk,” said Adrienne, her dark eyes wide behind her cat-eyed, black-rimmed glasses.
In the days ahead, I felt like I was swimming through sludge, trying to understand the gloomy feeling that engulfed me. Daddy was still in the hospital when my mother and I sat on our green sofa, talking about our future. My skin crawled. Suddenly she pointed her sharp Cherokee nose upward, a trait from her Native American grandmother, as she tried fruitlessly blinking back tears.
“We’re moving to Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles? I had been there twice on family vacations and had fallen in love with the palm trees and bright, pastel-colored buildings. They were a stark contrast to the dark old brick buildings in Chi-Town that looked dirty in comparison. But I wasn’t sure about moving to L.A. forever, even for Disneyland. I would have to leave the Davises and all of my friends. But, we had no choice. Doctors said that Daddy’s latest severe asthma attack meant he wouldn’t last another winter in the freezing Chicago weather.
I sat there flashing on a few weeks earlier going Christmas shopping with Daddy downtown. Light, fluttering snowflakes fell on my nose, tickling it as we trudged through the snow, chattering about what to buy Mom. I held Daddy’s third finger since I had always found it hard to entirely grip his big hand. All of a sudden, he stopped walking and talking. I looked up at his face as he pulled away his hand, which flew to his chest. His ever-present rosy checks were drained to gray-blue and his brown eyes were filled with panic. His head flew backward and dropped forward as he gasped for air.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?”
He couldn’t talk as he stumbled backward into the doorway of a closed flower shop.
“I’ll get help,” I said, turning to call someone, but he grabbed my coat pulling me back toward him, shaking his head no. He leaned against the door gasping. I was terrified as he fumbled in his beige coat pocket for his nebulizer, the lifesaver. So many times in our apartment, I had to run into his bedroom to get that little contraption and bring it to him so that he could get air. But he was never so desperate as I saw him this day.
Quickly he jammed the glass tube into his mouth, sucking on it violently as he pumped the gray rubber bulb on the other end. After a few minutes of wheezing his breathing slowly changed from labored to long, deep breaths. Eventually the color returned to his strained face. His frown that was foreign to me now disappeared. It seemed hundreds of busy Christmas shoppers rushed by as he struggled to breathe, but no one seemed to notice -- or they chose not to get involved. We never did finish our shopping that day. We took the El train home, riding all the long way in silence.
A few years later, after we moved to Los Angeles to be in the climate most conducive to Dad’s ailments, he died from another asthma attack.
Now, when I look back on that shopping trip and the ambulance, I realize that was the beginning of my emotional growth, the end of my innocence. The emerging caretaker and the woman-child within would take over in the days ahead. All the while, I would wish that I could have back the childhood that I left behind. But the laughter, the joys of the early carefree childhood years, would be locked away in the vault of my mind, almost unreachable.
Leaving Chicago would be the beginning of a journey inside myself searching for the lost joy from the family life that I left behind in the Windy City. That quest, that yearning to fill the family gap, would lead me into a tumultuous venture ahead, hoping for my own family one day. It would take me decades to realize that what I was searching for was not so much people but God’s loving energy that was channeled through them. It was that love of my eternal father/mother God that was always inside of me, which I thought I had lost as a child. I didn't know that the years ahead, raising my own family, would be a painful, treacherous journey toward this revelation.
CHAPTER THREE
All of the abandonment and demons from my childhood that I had tried to suppress growing up would again surface to be healed when I first met Devon in 1990. Little did I know then that I had some deep issues to clean up in my life. I also had no clue that Devon would be my mirror and become the instrument for my healing, my greatest teacher.
Like many other middle-class blacks, my husband Walter and I had moved from the city of Los Angeles to the suburbs in 1986, leaving neighborhoods like South Central, which were quickly being integrated by young Latino immigrants. The population then in South Central was dramatically swinging from black to brown.
In 1980, there were 30,000 gang members in Los Angeles County and by 1998, there would be an estimated 150,000. Gangs had started dealing heavily in narcotics in 1983, two years before our oldest son Ryan was born. Crack cocaine was the new drug, and the gangs -- black, Asian, and Latino -- were reaping thousands of dollars literally overnight.
The drug problem in South Central was growing fast in 1996. I had no idea that the effects of drugs were about to seep into our suburban home 30 miles away.
Walt and I seemed to be living the American Dream in the suburbs with our four-year-old son, Ryan. The only thing we didn’t have was the white picket fence. Back then, I was working as a publicist for the ABC Television Network after having been with CBS for 14 years. Walt was a realtor then and Ryan was a happy, rambunctious preschooler. His feet never hit the floor except to change directions. We were the picture of the typical All-American middle-class family, sitting in our two-story house with two cars parked out front.
I’d like to think that since we moved into our home on February 14th it was Walt’s Valentine gift to me. But actually, it was his peace offering to save our marriage. After several years of begging and pleading with him to find us a home and being jealous of his clients that he put in their new homes, I had had enough. I was still on maternity leave from CBS when I packed my bags and took Ryan to San Diego while Walt was at work.
For days, Walt didn’t know where we were hiding out. I was contemplating leaving him for good. Tensions had been running high. The stress of a colicky newborn and postpartum blues was holding me hostage. I felt imprisoned in our cramped, one-bedroom that was located on a busy, noisy corner. Some evenings it was like trying to sleep at the side of a freeway.
Evidently my stand worked. Walt later told me that he was going crazy with the
thought of losing his family. While we were gone, he cruised in his car for hours praying for directions to find some affordable house when he came upon a tract of new homes. He found the perfect place for us in picturesque River Bed, a Los Angeles suburb nestled in the foothills. It’s called horse country because it has the largest equestrian population in the Los Angeles area.
The new homes were being built over wild strawberry fields, although the development project was abandoned several times by the builders because of so many rattlesnakes. The homes were a few months from being finished, but the entire tract had been sold when Walt found the project. God had answered his prayers. One of the houses had just fallen out of escrow so Walt quickly made a down payment. Communicating through my mother, he convinced me to come back to him and to see our new home. Satisfied that my point was made and that things between us had changed, I returned. When Walt took me to see the house, I didn’t even have to look inside; instantly I was home.
The peace and the quiet of the house’s location was the main attraction for me. The neighborhood was extremely peaceful. There were no screeching brakes or honking horns, just the rustling of leaves from soft winds and chirping birds. Our friends who came to visit from fast-paced L.A. said they felt like they were on vacation visiting us, or they had stepped back in time.
Our community was a United Nations. Blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians lived cohesively side by side. Horseback riders in cowboy hats and boots waited patiently for a streetlight to change. Screeching peacocks strutted slowly across the roads, holding up cars. At night, coyotes and possums strayed from their hillside homes in the Angeles Forest, a half a block away, to raid our trash cans. And then there was the neighborhood's old owl who frequently sat on people’s warmed chimneys, hooting a lullaby into the night sky that was sometimes streaked with a shooting star.
Back then, we didn’t have a clue that the contentment we were feeling would be short-lived. No one could have told us that we wouldn’t enjoy true tranquility in our home again for at least another 12 years.
It all began on a brisk Sunday in January 1990, when an invisible force brought Devon into our lives. I called that force my higher power, but years later, as things got worse in our house, I doubted that a loving God could have brought us together.
I remember sitting with Walt on our beige flowered sofa, one of the nicest pieces of furniture we owned, but totally impractical with Ryan, a pre schooler with jelly fingers, around. We were contently watching the evening news, being the news junkies that we are, feeling secure and happy about life. Through that little box, we watched the world spin in turmoil.
Homicides dominated the airwaves that night. Murders had been increasing steadily in Los Angeles since 1985 because of the drug traffic. But between the commercials for the best whitener for your clothes and the best whitener for your teeth, a public service announcement sponsored by Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) flashed on television. Little did we know that city life, and the effects of drugs that we saw on the evening news, was about to catch up to us.
Singer Marilyn McCoo, then ranked as one of the top 10 black female vocalists on the pop charts, was asking families to adopt the cute little sad faces that flashed on the screen. She seemed to be talking directly to me. At first, I thought it was because we knew one another. I had been the publicist on her CBS television mid-season variety series, “The Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Show.” But I know now that it was because my spiritual fate was beckoning me through Marilyn’s closing words, “and you, too, can adopt.”
As I look back on that day, something went off inside of us. We were being lured into the dark underworld of abused and abandoned children, many who would come from South Central, fugitives of the drug epidemic.
The next day we called DCFS, high with hopes of adding a new family member to our home. But within weeks, we felt like we were walking in Antarctica's waist-deep snow. The agonizing, slow steps through the frigid-cold world of the county’s processing system was enough to freeze anyone’s efforts. Still we were undaunted. Our perseverance was rewarded when we were sent an invitation from DCFS to an adoption party. I was floating on a cloud.
I have a vivid memory of that party on February 11, 1990. Miraculously, everything huge for us always seemed to happen in February, our power month. Walt and I met in February, we moved into our house in February, we bought a car in February, and now we were looking for a second child in February.
We just knew our lives were going to change that day. We were excited having decided to look for a demure three-year old girl, which was Walt’s suggestion. She would balance out our family, especially Ryan, who never sat still. I swore that he had a fire in his little buns. A three-year old girl would be in the natural order. A year younger than Ryan and a hell of a lot more calm.
Outside our window, it was the kind of day where you could almost see into other dimensions. A tantalizing light breeze and crystal, aquamarine sky. I could almost hear the Universal Presence quietly birthing life. Inside our home that Sunday, we were riding waves of joy. I smiled, hearing tiny footsteps pattering toward our bedroom where I was dressing, followed by the sound of a small fist beating on the closed door.
“Hurry up, Mommy! Daddy says we’re going to be late to go get my sister.” Hearing Ryan’s sweet, high-pitched voice always melted me. I once thought I would never hear it when he almost died at birth.
“I’m coming, baby.”
“Okay, Mommy.” I giggled listening to his happy feet scamper away. My smile faded when I remembered the days I thought I would never hear them.
The doctors said it was a mystery to them why Ryan had stopped breathing. But I held onto my dark, guilty secret, feeling the blame. During my labor, I visualized myself dilating like an open flower to give birth trying to avoid painful contractions. I had been reading a yoga book on the mind-body relationship and was taking similar classes in the ministry at night with Walt to deepen our faith. We both wanted a closer relationship with God and Sunday morning services just weren't enough.
Walt checked me into the hospital after an onslaught of contractions. The nurses didn’t believe that I would be giving birth any time soon and neither did my doctor, who took his time coming to the hospital. But in my head, I saw a fast delivery. I kept replaying the picture while I was placed in a room.
What I didn’t picture was the consequences. The maternity team raced me on a gurney into the delivery room hours earlier than they anticipated. Nor did I foresee that my doctor would arrive just in time to catch Ryan, who flew out of me as if he had wings. Holding Ryan in his hands, the doctor looked like an NFL rookie astonished to catch the ball during the last seconds of the fourth quarter.
It was the perfect delivery I had visualized, fast and swift. I was amazed that Ryan came out looking exactly like Walt, chocolate brown and with identical features. I kept thinking that I went through all of this pain and discomfort for nine months and my baby didn’t look anything like me. People would constantly remind me of this for years to come when they would tell me that they didn’t think Ryan was mine because of my light skin color. People can be so rude. I often thought that since Ryan looked so much like Walt, I should have charged them both transportation and carrying charges.
Just when I was first caught up in these superficial thoughts and the nurse was about to place him on my chest, Ryan suddenly stopped breathing. My outstretched, empty arms flopped down to my sides. All I could do was stare mutely into Walt’s eyes to gather strength while the delivery team worked frantically to save our baby. They almost lost him again before discovering that a vital air hose had a hole in it. I couldn’t believe that Cedars Sinai, hospital to the stars with state-of-the-art equipment, had a faulty air tube. I kept wondering, was my baby going to die, too, like so many other of my relatives before him? Was I cursed? Suddenly it didn’t matter that he didn’t look like me. I just wanted my baby to live.
After being resuscitated twice, Ryan was breathing again through a tiny oxygen mask, but while they were rushing him into Intensive Care, his breathing stopped again in the hall. Fortunately, he survived, but we faced a week of critical hours when the doctors told us not to expect him to live. It seemed all of Ryan’s vital functions, from kidneys to lungs, stopped functioning properly.
The specialists summoned said that they thought it was all due to Ryan’s coming out so fast.
“He didn’t have time to convert from breathing in the womb to breathing outside of the womb,” one said. Secretly I harbored the guilt of having visualized him coming out so fast. It was a powerful tool, I discovered.
Two weeks later, Ryan was stabilized and had drastically improved. Fortunately, after he came home from the hospital, he never had another health problem.
Spiritually I have always thought that when he stopped breathing his soul saw the work ahead of him in the world and vacillated about coming into this existence. Regardless, after that I became careful of how and what I visualized.
We never considered Ryan’s near-death experience as a possible reason why we wanted safely to adopt instead of having more kids, by birth, which we could easily do. Nonetheless, I suspect it may have been our subconscious motivation.
“Jan! What’s taking you so long?”
Walter had appeared in the open doorway, gripping the doorknob. His forehead creased with a frown.
“We’re going to be late for the adoption party.” We have opposite internal clocks. He’s always early, and I seemed to always run late.
“I’m getting dressed,” I said, struggling to pull my green pants over my hips. He sighed, and checked his watch. I held my breath and sucked in my stomach, hoping that I could shorten the two-inch gap keeping my zipper from closing. I needed liposuction for that to happen.
“I’m hurrying,” I said, puffing and tugging at the pants. “I just want to make sure I have on the right outfit. I was thinking pants would make me seem cool to a kid, but probably a dress would be better. What do you think?”
“I think you should hurry up,” he snapped.
“I am. Will you be patient?” Walt stood in the doorway, handsome with his thick brush mustache, rolling his dark alluring eyes that attracted me to him seven years earlier. But at this moment, I tried ignoring them.
“Kids like bright colors. But some of the things I want to wear I can’t get into.”
The clothes drama didn’t sit well with the always impeccably dressed Mr. Physical Fitness, who runs at least five miles a day. Exercise was his daily ritual because sports had saved his life as a teen. A fateful car accident left his best friend dead and Walt clinging to life in a coma with multiple broken bones. But his stamina, developed from sports as a four-star celebrated athlete, helped overturn doctors’ prediction that he wouldn’t live. His determination and discipline helped him learn how to walk again.
Walt gave me the “you-should-exercise look” for the millionth time in our marriage and turned to leave. I wanted to kick him.
“If we don’t get to this party we won't get our daughter,” he barked over his shoulder as he stepped into the hall. “Just put on something. Kids don’t care.”
I kicked the door, slamming it behind him and catching my reflection in the mirror. I did a double take, horrified as I moved closer to look at myself. A pimple sat prominently on my nose. They came like enemy soldiers whenever I was excited. My God, the kid will think I'm a witch. I am too old to be going though puberty.
I wiggled like a reptile shedding skin, shimmying out of the pants. I threw them on the mountain of rejected clothes on the bed. The weight battle was a lifetime war.
Twenty minutes later I sat uncomfortably in our gold Volvo, stuffed into a tight, bright yellow dress with a long black jacket, which I hoped was minimizing my protruding butt. My body felt heavy, like a grounded bumblebee, but my head was buzzing with excitement. We were on our way to pick out our child at the black adoptions pre-Valentine’s party, which was a new event for DCFS. The events were conceived because so many African-American children are trapped in the system.
In the county’s adoption process, an orphan’s social worker and the prospective adoptive family’s social worker try to match their clients. When they think they have a match, the social workers enters both parties’ data into a computer to see if technology agrees with their choice. I never thought that a computer could do God’s work, so when Barbara Darling, our social worker, called to invite us to the DCFS adoption party, I calmly said “yes.” When I hung up, I screamed at the top of my lungs for joy.
“When we get her can you take us to the show tonight to see the Ninja Turtle movie, Daddy?” Ryan was in the back of the car hanging out of his child’s seat, stretching to roll his tiny toy truck on the window. He was nearly twice the size of an average child his age, having made up for his uncertain start in life by constantly eating.
“Your new sister isn’t coming home today, Ryan,” said Walt.
“Why not?”
“Remember I told you the Department of Children’s Services has to make sure whoever we pick is right for us.”
“How will they know who’s right? They don’t know us, do they?”
“Good question, Ryan,” Walt said, smiling. “That’s a mystery to both of us, too. No, they don’t know us.” He went on for ten minutes, patiently explaining the process to Ryan.
Walt is the kind of father who would answer any and every question Ryan could throw at him and sit there explaining it as long as it took for Ryan to understand. In contrast, I often felt like walking off the back of a ship from hearing Ryan ask me “Why?” a zillion times a day. But Walt didn’t mind. He also was the one who stayed up nights rocking Ryan on his shoulder when he was a colicky infant. He was my relief since I was ready to jump out the window from the relentless wailing. Mine and Ryan’s.
Fatherhood was important to Walt, who didn’t have a close relationship or much communication with his parents. He grew up in Stockton, California, an agriculture city 90 miles inland from San Francisco that began as a muddy-street gold rush camp. Gold seekers from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, the Pacific Islands, Mexico, and Canada all converged into a great melting pot. In modern times, the area has been the backdrop to many movies and television shows because of its scenic beauty, with five major rivers including the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River, and its rural charm. But there weren’t many opportunities for African-Americans at the nearby prison and the local cannery was just about the only employment blacks could find.
Walt’s father, Walter Sr., was a building construction supervisor for the City of Stockton and his mother, Dorothy, a domestic at a local hospital. Before moving into their house, they lived in a government housing project with Walt’s younger brother and older sister. The household was one of only a few in the project where both parents lived at home, although they fought constantly. Much to Walt’s embarrassment, he often heard people gossiping about his parents, saying they fought like “cats and dogs.”
One day, Walt told me the pain he went through growing up.
“I was ashamed because it seemed that all my friends in the projects knew about our family fighting. I tried to justify my feelings, telling myself that at least I had two parents living at home,” said Walt. “But I carried a tremendous amount of anger and fear. I didn’t understand why.”
Those feelings confused Walt about himself and life. The only time that he felt good about himself was on the basketball court, the track, or the football field. He was a four-star athlete, written up constantly in the papers.
“Sports were how I channeled my anger.”
Walter Sr. was a very quiet person who also kept his anger bottled up inside and would seldom talk. Possibly that was because he felt unloved, growing up when both of his parents died before he was six. His mother died while giving birth to his younger sister and his father, a construction worker on a bridge, was killed when a pillar collapsed on him. After their deaths, Walter Sr. and his siblings were sent to live with different relatives. He moved in with an aunt who clearly didn’t like him.
Walt says his father never knew how to communicate with him, and he never saw his parents discussing their problems. They would simply argue.
“It seemed that arguments and physical fights were the only ways my parents could deal with their differences. I know that I would have turned out just like them if it wasn’t for sports that taught me team work and how to work out problems with other people.”
One summer Walter Sr.’s brother, Charles Jackson, a career army staff sergeant who had been stationed in Germany and was now stationed in San Francisco, came to visit. The brothers hadn’t seen one another in eight years.
“I felt my father’s excitement,” Walt recalls. “He very seldom showed any type of emotion, but I could sense his happiness this day. I was on the basketball court at school when my father picked up Uncle Charles at the Greyhound bus station. After a good practice, I headed for home. As I walked along, I felt good, I felt talented and special, full of confidence to tackle life’s challenges. Sports made me feel that way.
“When I got home Uncle Charles was sitting on the couch in the living room. He hugged me and we sat down to talk about things that I was interested in. Sports. I remember thinking that I would have liked to have had this affection from my parents, but it never happened.”
Walter remembers when the next evening Charles and his father, who had gone out together to a bar, came home. Walt’s father frequented bars to unwind, but it was unfortunately, where he met other women. It wasn’t surprising that Walt’s mother had her suspicions that night. When the two men returned home, she seemed to have an even bigger chip on her shoulder than she normally carried, according to Walt.
“Just as Dad and Uncle Charles stepped in the door an argument broke out between my parents. The moment I heard Mom and Dad raising their voices, I got scared. I jumped out of bed and put on my clothes and Converse sneakers, as I had done so many times before, because I just knew I might have to break up another fight ... again.”
Walter remembers kneeling on the floor, begging God to take his parent’s anger away before he went into the kitchen where they were arguing. But all seemed to subside when his father was then talking to Charles, who had taken on Walt and his sister’s role calming Dorothy.
Little did anyone know that even though Dorothy was quiet, she was still seething inside, like some witch’s brew. She calmly stepped over to the sink, put some water and sugar in a pot, and placed it on a burner. No one thought anything of the fact that she was boiling water. Suddenly, she took the pot from the stove, turned to Walter Sr., who had his back to her, and with an ice-cold expression, threw the boiling water on him.
“He jumped up and ripped off his shirt. And when he did, my father’s skin came off with the shirt. All hell broke loose then,” said Walt, shaking his head. “I have never understood why my mother ran into the bathroom and locked the door when she could have run through the kitchen and out the front door. It was as though she had a death wish because she knew my father was going to kick her ass.”
It didn’t take long. With a surge of rage he kicked open the bathroom door.
“Mom was curled up on the floor under the sink. But before Dad could put his hands on her, Uncle Charles and I grabbed him. I tried to take a kitchen knife from him, but he had such a strong grip that when I tried to pull the knife from his hand my fingers went across the blade, cutting me.”
Walt bled profusely and immediately all of the attention was shifted to him. Once again, Dorothy would survive another “barn burner.” But the rage would continue to burn in Walt for years to come.
It were these types of experiences that made Walter not only want to be a good father and husband, but want to communicate effectively with his family, as well. He would later write a book about that life and give workshops and speeches on overcoming anger. It was also probably another reason why he wanted to adopt. Many kids in the system are orphans because of violence in their homes.
When we married, we learned that while he was going through family violence as a teen, I was just 90 miles away, also trying to survive my parents’ alcoholic rages.