Home Is Where the Heart Is

Growing up in foster care kids never grow to understand the phrase, Home is where the heart is. This phrase isnt fashioning reference to a house or a tangible item in your life. An emotional connection you acquire with someone or something is what I confidence home represents. The feeling of being secure, knowing youll be taken care of no mater what you say or do, and always feeling like your love and wanted. Hundreds of kids have grown accustomed to the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness. Kids have grown accustomed to feeling like they dont belong anywhere I was once one of those kids.I commemorate the bone-chilling feeling of seeing the black almost hearse-like car coming to take me away from the only place I was familiar with. I remember the feeling of confusion, the feeling of sorrow, and the feeling of anger. I remember getting into the car and smelling the old, damp, mildewed scent of previous the riders tears. The tears I had grown so accustomed to. I remembered how I wished to scream and squeal, like the brakes, when the car stopped at my new quarters. I remember telling myself, Dont get comfortable Josh, because you wont be here long, right?Ill be home soon. Right? I remember the feeling of being abandoned, the feeling of being unwanted, feeling just plain alone. Throughout my years as a foster child and adolescent, I moved in and out of countless houses, met and said goodbye to countless families, friends, and instructors. I remember the Bensons they took me in when I was seven. I had already been moved close to eight times. The first thing they said to me was, Itll be okay, you dont have to worry anymore, youll be here for a long time. The weight of unbelief lifting off your shoulders is a good feeling in fact, it could be the best.Being able to take off your shoes, plunge round off on the couch, and say hello to someone who says hello punt. Having the ability to look someone in the center fields and, not only feel, but here, I lov e you. Home to me is all of those things fasten together and put in my back pocket, saved for a rainy day. I grew comfortable and unworried the two years I didnt have to pack around any extra weight with me. It was presentation day, in my third grade clique. For my presentation I chose an animal, the cheetah.Did you know that a family of cheetahs will get together until the babies are all grown up, and will support each other? I gave my presentation and was feeling good about it. I was chosen to hold our class pet, the gerbil, he was brown and smelled almost exactly like an old crusty sock, I was overtaken by the joy of his sensitive pulsing body. My class and I were sitting in a circle around my teacher, listening to our daily reading of the second Harry Potter, when the door opened and the sound of my teachers representative was cut short of telling us what happened next.Two gloomy adults came in, a man and a woman. The man was tall, change in nice black goldbrick and a black sports jacket, the woman was short, dressed in black dress pants and a red sweater which had thirteen black buttons straight down the front. My teacher excused herself and met them at the front of the class. My friend and I started laughing at the gerbil he was doing summersaults on my lap and almost fell off. Josh, my teacher called my name, Come up here please, I gave the gerbil to my friend and went to the front of the class.As I was walking to the front of the class, I noticed my teachers eyes they seemed to be turning a glossy color, almost like two wet marbles shimmering in the bright sun. The two people dressed in black were smiling down at me with blank expressionless looks on there faces and said hello. Their words were cold and harsh. I noticed a sharp fast glare, almost like needles, injected from my teacher to the two people dressed in black. My teacher knelt down to my level so we were both eye to eye. She stared at me with her big marbles and said, Josh, these p eople are going to take you out to lunch.You need to go with them, OK Josh. My teachers eyes were getting wetter, You need to be a big boy, OK Josh. You be a big boy now. Before I knew it, she had engulfed me into her chest, wrapped me neatly into her arms, and covered my orient with her chin. Warmth and love surged through my body as if I was hit by a bolt of lightning cupid had mistaken for an arrow. I felt up a warm drop of water hit my head. OK Josh, it is time to go, said the large man dressed in black. I felt his cold hand watch my shoulder, abruptly stopping the lightning from continuing through my body, forcing it out of me.My teacher released me, stood back to her full height, and pricked them agin with her needle. The woman dressed in black took my hand her hand felt like an ice cube, cold and damp. The man and woman led me away from my teacher, away from my friends, away from my security, away from my love, away from my peace. As soon as I got into the lifeless car, all of the lost feelings returned to me at once. Its happened again. Whats wrong this time? Was it me? Maybe I can take whatever I did back and say Im sorry? Josh, were taking you to another house.An enormous weight hit my chest I couldnt breathe, I felt my eyes swelling, my nose began to run. A salty liquid hit my mouth again and again, my memories flooding out, like millions of bees swarming and stinging after their homes have been breached by smoke, engulfing me. merely as I had felt for years and years kids are still felling today. Kids still feel unwanted and unloved, kids still dont have the conformity and trust they need to become who they are and construct their home, and kids still have the lay their head down every night and wonder if the pillow their put on will be the same tomorrow night.Kids in foster care may have a house but they dont have anyone they can make a home with. People in the foster system are so concerned with is putting kids in houses (not formula t hat this is a bad thing), but they should focus more on the home. Instead of being full of emptiness the kids homes that they create, should be full of trust and security, truthfulness and consistency, laughter and love.