Chapter 8

“There’s no place home.  There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home. “  We pulled up to a beautiful house in Blue Grass, Iowa at about dinnertime.  I remember that day like it was yesterday.  We knocked on the back door and were greeted by my new foster mother, Ruthann.  I noticed immediately she was wearing Lee jeans and a white sweatshirt with their painting company’s red logo.  She had a red bandana tied around her neck and I instantly wanted to dress just like her.   She was so cute and bubbly.   She also talked very fast.  My head was already spinning with the events of the day.  This was information overload!  Her husband Jay, the quiet one, was sitting at the dining room table.  The sun was shining through the big picture window just behind him and the light made it seem as if he was glowing.  He was a very tall blond man with a smile that made me like him straightaway.  My social worker didn’t stay long as my new family and I apparently had somewhere to be.  My only tie to what had happened that day was disappearing.  I’m not sure why, but I felt like I was being abandoned.  I had yet to speak a word and I was now living with these strangers.  They were in a hurry and so we said goodbye to my social worker and off we went.  I can’t really remember the car ride, but we ended up at a daycare center.  Ruthann and Jay had volunteered to help out there that evening.  I was sat down in front of a television set just in time to see Dorothy click her red ruby heels and mutter the words that would bring her home to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.  She was right.  There is no place like home.  But I wouldn’t know the meaning of home for many more years.