October has always been a special time of year. It was a cold October night when my father drove my sister and brother and me to the Children’s home in Edison Park Illinois my home for the next four years and where my younger brother and sister would stay for seven years.

It was not a happy move.  I wanted to stay with my sister Marlene in the little girls’ dorm. but because I was at the age where the administration believed I should move in with the older girls at the Home I was taken upstairs to live in a 14 girl dormitory. We were designated the “Busy Bees”; the younger girls beginning at age 6 lived downstairs in the dormitory called “Tadpoles”.

My 13^th birthday had been a couple of weeks before the big move.  My parents were in the midst of getting a divorce and Dad had accepted a government job in Washington State.  My mother was living at my Grandma’s in Chicago where I was born 13 years before. In fact, the move to the Home was about three weeks after my birthday.

I awoke the next day to the sound of a large bell ringing, which I soon learned was the signal for going to meals and also going to bed.  On two days a week the bell rang for Bible Study and Friday night Chapel at the Norwegian Lutheran Children’s Home.  The bell’s name was Emily.

My second day was filled with what I thought was a violation of my rights. The matron assigned to our dorm was responsible for going through our belongings to make sure that our clothing and other possessions met the strict rules of their institutional requirements. This meant a complete stripping of any items of clothing that didn’t meet the criteria set down by a committee that watched for such things as skirts that were too short or blouses that were too low.  None of the new clothes I received for my birthday qualified as “decent attire” and was summarily confiscated.  I was devastated! They even removed new items of jewelry with the explanation that these items were too frivolous.

If the matrons who were assigned to serve as surrogate guardians of the girls in this Home was any indication of what they expected us to look to as models of perfect womanhood, I soon figured out I was in big trouble! I didn’t want to look like them. I wanted to look like Doris Day, or Betty Grable or Debbie Reynolds.

I was really feeling sorry for myself those early days at the Home.  I wondered why if my parents wanted to farm us out to someone so they could pursue their own interests they didn’t spend some time asking us where we’d like to live.

The story called “Home Kid” began when my siblings and I were left at the Home. If you have read any of the Home Kid chapters listed in this blog you know the story isn’t quite finished.  I’ll keep you posted when I get ready to ePublish.