Yes!!! this is what I was waiting for, this moment.
I knew when I was going to ride the bus today, I would meet someone special. I had known it for months, but this was that moment coming true. As she sat there in her light & dark gray hair she opened up to me. Probably a little too much but that is ok. She told me that for the last twenty years she had stopped watching TV, only listens to live music, and has a hard time working a computer. She lives in her own little world inside of her head. She is a little off because all the LSD made her mind a little too beautiful for her to handle, some time ago.
She began our conversation about writing, suggesting that I submit a piece of work for this annual magazine that the local Community College (which I am going to enter btw), she took me to her work, she took me to her favorite art gallery in town. Claira was a little bit crazy, & she told you up front it was because too many drugs when she was younger. I talked very little on the bus, perhaps because I was stoned, or perhaps because I just wanted to listen.
As we started walking up an obnoxious hill, to the 'old beach road' she had asked if I had ever been there. I said yes, & shared about the Sand Castle competition the previous years. I talked about being hired to work at FosterClub & how I had just moved to the Coast from Michigan. She talked about how in her 30's she had taken in a foster kid sibling group of three. Now they were all in their mid to late 20's & she still cared for them deeply.
When we finally made it up the hill to the beach road& I was wrong, I had never been here before. Claira response was ecstatic "I was hoping I could show you a place you've never seen before."
On this strange old road, she talked about her past & shared it with me. During the 60's she traveled up & down the West Coast because that was the thing to do. Seattle, to Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Northern Cali, SanFran, then all the way down to LA & back. She told me that she would bump into other hippies she would see in the other towns she had just come from. That must have been an amazing experiences, but then a grim look swept her face.
Claira said that "those were the days, but they got all screwed up because LSD was made illegal, and I was very reluctant to put a child up for adoption in 1968. He's forty one now, and I just hope he's doing alright."
That whole experience, that whole moment I had with Claira became surreal. As an advocate, hell as a foster kid, I experienced something that I like to call a 'full circle' experience. I sensed her pain in that statement. I saw the sorrow rest upon her face. I could see that she was hurt from her past always haunting her. In that moment, I felt compassion for her. She had pain from her past too- as a matter of fact just the opposite kind. Here we are, one generation apart and yet we are so close.
There was something Claira taught me today, she taught me how to forgive my bio parents, which is something I have been trying to do for years...
Everything happens as it should. I cannot really argue with that.
Oh by the way- I never really wanted a house with a white picket fence, its going to be more along the lines of this one...
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