[bio]

"We only were allowed to visit her an hour a week, with a monitor listening to everything we said, watching our every move. We wanted to run away and go back to our mom, but they threaten you. They tell you that if you run away and are caught, you go to juvenile hall, and it's true. If you run away to your parents, they'll put your parents in jail..."

I grew up with Mother in a little house with a white picket fence on Penay street in Morro Bay, California. My father had taken off when I was nine months old. "Till death do us part;" what a lie. Mother drove us everywhere in her 60's 2002 sky blue BMW. It was always sunny, always. We'd spend days down by the San Luis Obispo creek, hoping from rock to rock and eating chocolate frozen yogurt. Some days we'd go to the beach. Mother would lay on her big saffire-blue beach towel. I'd make castles in the sand. We'd go swimming. We always had our own little section of the beach. Squirrels would keep us company. We'd go roller-skating, the rink always smelling of fresh popcorn and licorice. "Dada liked black licorice," she'd tell me. Some nights when we'd get home, I'd find a sparkly piece of confetti, shaped like a snowflake on the ground by the door. "Fairies left it," Mother would say. Mother would tell me two-hours stories, every night, in addition to reading me books. There were colored stars that were friends, dresses made of rubies, and anything you could imagine. On my fifth birthday I sat at the breakfast table to find an envelope waiting for me. I opened it. $10; enough to buy the doll I wanted, and a note. "Go to a place where thread is kept," it read. I went to the sewing box. Another note, another clue, another place, until finally i ended up right behind the kitchen table, at the dryer. I opened the door to find a paper bag, full of presents. Later we went over to my grandfather's and I got a light blue dress with a white pin-a-four, and a bike!

A year later, Mother asked if it would be okay with me if we moved to Alaska. I was okay with leaving my neighborhood friends and my school, so we sold all our furniture and we left. Swinging on the swings in a pink dress, in the warm september air, I remember thinking how it was weird that there was no snow in Alaska. Months later it snowed. Mother and I would take taxi's in the snow with our groceries, and go to chuck-e-cheese, both were equally fun. We'd eat lunch at cafes and hotels downtown. We'd take the bus in the rain and go to museums. The air inside the museums was always eerily still, and just as quiet. For Christmas we took the train to Seward. It was a strange lonely city to have Christmas in, but it was perfect; it felt free. These were the best years of my life. Every memory was an adventure, every memory was magic. I hold onto these memories for dear life. They are all I have left...

We moved back to California. To Riverside. Shortly after, things began to fall apart. Mother sent me to live with my dad in Inyokern (Ridgecrest) for a few months. It became February 12th. I sat outside my classroom at school, all alone. Looking for pieces of glass in the sand as I sang quietly to myself. I had a feeling that someone was coming to see me. I knew that my grandfather was coming to see me on the 15th. "That must be it," I tried to convince myself, "that must be it." The next day, the same thing. And again on the 14th, Valentine's Day. The feeling was so incredibly strong, that I was convinced it had to be someone other than my grandfather was coming. And then she was there. After lunch, Mother came into my classroom! I was so happy to see her that for a second I wasn't shy and I ran and jumped up into her arms. She told me that the office said she wasn't allowed to take me from school, that I would have to take the bus as usual and meet her at my dad's house. The bus pulled up to our usual stop, at the beginning of a dirt road that lead to our house. My brothers and I got off the bus. I couldn't wait to see my mom! But there was a van blocking our way. My stepmom's friend. She said that we were supposed to go with her, to her house. I wanted to explain that I was supposed to meet my mom at my dad's house, that I couldn't go with her! But I was only 7, and I was too shy to say anything to anyone. I got in the van and almost cried. We didn't get to come home for hours. By the time I got home, Mother was gone. There were presents on my bed from her, but no Mother.

The next day my grandfather and his wife came as planned. We went to Death Valley for the weekend. When I got back, there was a note on my dad's door saying to meet him at his work, so we all drove there. When we got to his work, all my stuff was packed up in his car. He said he was taking me back to my mom! Oh but don't get excited yet. My step-mother cornered me and asked if I wanted to go with my mom, or with my grandfather who was right there. I wanted to go with my mom, but I was far too shy to say so. I didn't want to hurt my step-mom's feelings by saying my mom, and I really just couldn't get the words out of my mouth. Afraid, I said I would go with my grandfather, thinking that after a few more days of vacation I would get to go back to my mom. I was used to seeing my grandparents all the time when I lived in Morro Bay, so why would this be any different?

They took me to their house and put a restraining order on my mom for non-existent domestic violence. [My cousin and I found this piece of paper years later]. My mom kept going to court, trying to get me back. I eventually was shipped up to Alaska to live with my strict aunt. Mother came soon after. She borrowed money from friends and moved back to Alaska to get me back. She fought court battle after court battle, and finally I got to go home. "I would rather live with my mother in a shoe box than have to live with you!" I snapped at my aunt the last day I lived with her. She had told me that if I went back to live with my mom, I would never be able to see her or my other aunt again. I was nine years old, I didn't care. All I wanted to do was go home to my mother. But things were different. Home had changed. I had a new little brother, who's father had been left in California. Re-bonding with Mother was hard, much like trying to sew back on an arm that had been cut off, after a year of being separated from the arm. My little brother took up time and attention that used to be mine. Nothing was the same. Over time, it got better. We moved back to California after a year, attempting to live with my brother's father. But I didn't like him, so we moved on. A year later we found ourselves in Orange County.

I was 11. It was January 20, 1995. I was pulled out of P.E. class and sent to the office. I knew something was terribly wrong. When I got the office, they told me I was going to Orangewood (a modern day orphanage). Two social workers led me out to their car, where I found my little brother, just barely 3 years old. He was only wearing PJ pants. No socks, no shirt; no one had bothered to dress him, and it was cold out.

They took us to this locked-campus looking place. They checked us for bruises, and tested our blood for malnutrition. They separated us. They took our clothes and gave us other old clothes to wear instead. They gave us white jail-style toothbrushes, and shampoo and conditioner in plastic cups, soap in a bag. They took me to this two-story hospital looking building filled with other girls, all about age 7-10. They assigned me to a room with a roommate. There were strangers everywhere.

Later I was told that Social Services had come to my house and found my mother to be "depressed" and took her to the mental hospital because of it. Because there was no where for my brother and I to go (they didn't give my mom time to look), they sent us to Orangewood, which was usually a place for abused and neglected children. The doctors found us fine, and said that we could return home within 3 days. We were assigned "Social Workers," which kept changing to new social workers, and with each new social worker came a new date. Three days turned into two weeks, which in reality was months and months. I turned 12. I didn't get to see my brother for months. I finally got to see my mother. My brother and I visited her in the hospital. And then she got out of the hospital. They still didn't let us go home. [Note: there was nothing ever wrong with Mother, nor reason for her to be in the hospital]. We only were allowed to visit her an hour a week, with a monitor, listening to everything we said, watching our every move. We wanted to run away and go back to our mom, but they threaten you. They tell you that if you run away and are caught, you go to juvenile hall, and it's true. If you run away to your parents, they'll put your parents in jail. Not to mention the fact that you would have to stay out of school, to keep hidden. The monitors could and would terminate our visits whenever they felt like it. If Mother started talking about God too much, they would end the visit, because, it's not a free country or anything, you know.

My brother was put into a group home, and after awhile I lost touch with him completely. After 6 months of being in Orangewood, I was transferred to a temporary foster home, and from there moved to a worse foster home for two years. During this time of course, I was trying to grow up, without a mother, trying to grow up, under trillions of rules. I wasn't allowed to go in cars with friends, I was allowed to do anything really. I had a boyfriend, and they didn't like that, so they grounded me from him. So we ran away together, with my foster sister (who I kind of hated). In the end I made a small attempt to go back to my mom, but we ended up finally going home, after running away for less than 24 hours, trust me, not my idea. My foster sister got sent to a group home, and I was just even more grounded. After months of being good with no reward, I started seeing my boyfriend in secret, stealing kisses during games of hide-n-go-seek with neighborhood kids. One day I was caught at his house. A foster kid had told on me, of course. I ended up being sent back to Orangewood and then to the worst group home ever: Boystown. It was here that I didn't see my mom for almost a year, it was here that I nearly stopped listening to music, it was here that my soul was nearly crushed.

For the first month I was there, I wasn't allowed to talk on the phone, at all. Not even to family. Then after a month, I was allowed to talk on the phone for 15 minutes a day. This place consisted of 5 houses on the top of a hill, 6 kids per house. The staff actually lived there, and other staff came to help out. We weren't allowed to eat without asking, we weren't allowed to go to our rooms without asking, we weren't allowed to go to the bathroom without asking, we weren't allowed to walk bare-foot in the house. We had to say "okay" to anything the staff told us, and "follow instructions" ...if you said ANYTHING other than "okay" and only "okay," it was considered arguing and you would earn negative points. We had to carry around these cards and anything we did, bad or good, had to be written down, and was assigned points. Anytime anyone came to the door, strangers, the rare case of a friend, anyone, we had to shake their hand and say (in a fake voice) "it's nice to meet you!" "it's nice to see you!" Do you know any 15 year olds that shake hands with their friends? We also had to "deep clean" every Sunday, for 10 or more hours straight, including dusting blinds and the rims of that border that goes along the bottom of walls... If you didn't do everything they made you do, not only would you get negative points, but these negative points would add up to earn you "subsystem," a form of being grounded in which you were forced to sit at the table, weren't allowed to talk on the phone for at least week, weren't allowed to talk to your family on the phone, weren't allowed to talk to the other kids, were forced to clean more, and on and on and on. On just a normal day, you would have to earn 10,000 points or so to earn the right to talk and so on, if you didn't earn enough points, you were stuck at the table, not allowed to talk, watch tv, listen to music, or even go in your room! In fact, you were rarely allowed to hang out in your room and have time to yourself. They also censored what music you listened to, to an extreme extent. And remember this is where I LIVED, this wasn't some school or something. This was "home." We also weren't allowed to touch other human beings, weren't allowed to wear tank tops or spaghetti strap shirts, or hats, or bikinis, or show our stomachs. We weren't allowed to have boyfriends or girlfriends. For every boy we called on the phone, we had to call 2 girls. We had to keep at least two feet away from other people. It went on and on. We were only allowed to see a friend, one friend, once a week for 4 hours, IF we made enough points. Often the staff would come spy on us. In this place, we were not allowed to go in anyone's car unless they were a real, finger-printed, fully-screened (parent-type) adult approved by a social worker.

I of course had a boyfriend the whole time, who was so wonderful that he actually convinced his parents to get finger-printed, and we pretended to be old friends.

At some point my brother got put up for adoption, against my mom's will, and eventually adopted.

Stories could go on forever. I finally got out of that horrible place and back into a foster home, and then another and finally another. More horror stories. Then finally I turned 18, graduated high school and went to Nevada to try to live with my mom again. I tried to go home, but there was no more Penay street, there was no more sun. It had been too long, way too long, and we had grown way too far apart. There was no more Mother, and there was no more May. We had both become hardened.

Two months later, I went to San Diego for college, which then took up every second of every day. In June of 2005 I graduated from UCSD with a BA in Theatre....

I'm currently still trying to fix things with my mom. I've seen my little brother twice in the last 7 years. I've seen my dad and my other brothers twice in the last 15 years.

And it goes from there. There is no happy ending. There is only what you see, and what you see can be deceiving.

Read the short play I wrote. [based on a true story] click here!

PLACE I'VE LIVED

about 39
includes:
Alaska:
Fairbanks
and Anchorage
Laughlin, Nevada.
California:
San Clemente
San Diego
Hillcrest
La Jolla
Golden Hill
Morro Bay
Ridgecrest
Cayucus
Riverside
Garden Grove
Orange
Anahiem
Fullerton
Trabuco Canyon
Wood Crest
Buena Park
Crestline
Yorba Linda
(i lived in different places within some cities = 38)

SCHOOLS I WENT TO

20
one in kindergarden
one in first grade
three in second grade
one in third grade
one in fourth grade
five in fifth grade
three in six (but one was the same as fifth!)
two in seventh grade
the same one in eigth grade
one in ninth grade
one in tenth grade
one for eleventh and twelfth grade
so far, only UCSD for college!!