The Rockford Files

My mother had lived in Chicago many years before as I had already mentioned.  She wasn’t real excited about returning “home” she kept saying you always return to your origins to die.  I told her that this wasn’t the case because she was born in Kentucky, not Illinois.  But I finally realized that I wasn’t going to convince her on the phone.  I was going to have to go to Tennessee and make my argument face to face.

So in late May, leaving Jill behind to work with my cousin, I hitched a ride with a friend of my mom’s named Nancy who had known my mom for 50 years.  They grew up together, they loved each other. When we got to Tennessee, we found Mom a complete mess.  The house was half destroyed. Holes in the wall, stains on the carpet, cuts in the counter, very disheveled. This wasn’t because Mom was a bad housekeeper; it was because Mom was a foster parent.

Mom started taking care of therapeutic foster children a couple years before I graduated from high school.  She was good too. Over the course of 6 years she had rehabilitated 15 out of 17 kids in her charge.  This means that 15 of the 17 kids she took into her home were able to be put back into mainstream society or were able to return to their real homes.

The last foster kid she had was also the hardest kid she ever had.  He had many issues, and was physically abusive. Hitting, biting, kicking people, spitting, and cussing. Any way he could damage someone, he would take advantage of it.

His wrath wasn’t just limited to people however. When punished by being confined to his room, he would punch holes in walls, break windows, kick base boards, slam doors, throw things, pretty much the same destructive behavior he showed towards people  He had a lot of mental instabilities.

My mom had tried everything she could think of with him, short of a beat down with a baseball bat but he was just too mentally unstable for her to be able to make an impact on him.  She finally had to admit defeat when she about had a nervous breakdown.

When Nancy and I showed up this foster kid was gone, but the wake of his presence was still there.  I immediately set about the laborious task of convincing Mom that a move to Illinois would be in her best interest.  She argued with me for almost 4 months.  But in the end I succeed in convincing her that a better life existed in Illinois.  She finally accepted and we began the process of moving all of her belonging to Illinois.

1. A Small History Lesson	2. Congratulations It’s A Freak
3. The First Five Years	4. It All Goes Up In Flames
5. School Daze	6. Say What?
7. A New Hope	8. Becoming A Sophisticated Redneck
9. A New Beginning – Literally	10. Back Into the Fray
11. They Like Me, They Really Like Me	12. 10011001
13. Let the Music Heal Your Soul	14. Taking My Sister to the Prom
15. My First Love, My First Broken Heart	16. From Zero to Hero
17. Livin’ On a Prayer	18. Moving On
19. Going Full Circle	20. The Rockford Files
21. Faith of the Heart	22. Partner, Friend, Lover, Wife
23. Turns Out She Was Right	24. A One-Legged Bear
25. Another Victim of the Game	26. Payin’ Bills with my Skills
27. A New Revell-ation	28. A New Page, A New Day
29. R We There Yet?