After the tumultuous mess of my early years and the revelation that I could better myself, all I had to do was, well, do it!  Armed with the core belief that my brother, Jess, was looking for me and that he would someday arrive, I knew that there was no way of determining just how long it would be before he would knock on my door.  I had to get to work on improving my worthiness  – and fast. 

The first thing I remember setting about changing was my appearance.  I set a goal to obtain a mirror of my own.  After organizing a trade with a classmate in which she would give me her little compact and I would provide her with a week’s worth of lunchbox snacks, by Friday I had accomplished the first part of my first goal.  Simultaneously, I had begun to network.  I had strategically befriended several classmates with whom I had, up until that point, been at odds.  One was terrific at Science, another at Spelling, still another at dressing fashionably.  She always wore the prettiest hairclips and ribbons and I needed to know how to comb my hair.  There was a storyteller and a drama queen and a very talented jump-roper in the group.  I knew that I had a lot to learn form all of them and I was desperate to learn those lessons as fast as my tiny brain and limbs could absorb them.  In the home, I began to cozy up to one of the teenaged gals who had a way with hair.  She had aspirations of being a famous hairdresser and I allowed her to use me as her experimental head!  Within months of my initial goal setting, I had achieved all of the first line and had moved on to a whole new set.  I had friends, was becoming popular, was well dressed with a wonderful hairdo every day and had begun to discover I had thoughts, opinions, talents and interests of my own that others found worthwhile.  

I started my first journal back then, although I did not realize it.  My lists and dates of accomplishment were the first entries.  Occasionally, I would write my plans or lessons I had learned about a short cut to achievement or something I felt I had done wrong and wanted to work out more effectively the next time.  

It did not take me long to realize that, since I had changed my ways from someone who was constantly being disciplined for numerous offenses ranging from sloppy appearance to playing hooky to stealing from other kids - to someone who was a tidy, well organized and prepared, quiet, studious child, I would no longer have the attention or recognition of the school staff.  This had the potential to pose a problem for me, so I chatted up my teachers and school administrators.  I took it so far as to make it a point, as each school year commenced, to march into the Principal’s office, introduce myself and present her with a photo of myself that I had taken at a dollar-for-four booth over the summer.  I would tell the Principal that I needed to do this because I would never meet her otherwise on account of it was my intention to be so good that she would never hear of me.  Further, she would be informed that it was important she knew who I was incase my brother, Jess, showed up looking for me.  The funny thing is, looking back, I was not trying to be cute or charming; I was dead-on serious.  The benefit to me was multifaceted.  Besides providing a sense of personal empowerment and a comfort level that Jess could find me, this little introductory proclamation turned out to have endeared me to more than one Principal during my grammar school years.

By the time Laramie and along with it the voice of my long lost brother had disappeared from the airwaves, I was a healthy, well-established, well-rounded child with a cherry disposition and straight A’s.  The days of fear, strife and maladjustment within my foster families had ceased and I had learned the art of adaptation when it came to the constant moves that accompanied a life within the foster care system in the early and mid 1960’s.  As far as I had been concerned, it was of the highest significance that Jess find a friendly trail when he made his way east and I let nothing stand in my way of assuring that trail was in place. 

Something else had been happening along this path.  I had become even closer to my one constant, lifelong companion, Jesus.  I could always be found telling somebody, somewhere about Jesus and redemption.  I never preached, I just wanted everyone to know about this wonderful man Who, for some reason, loved me so much that He died for me and Who was sure to see to it that I would one day be re-united with my long lost real brother, Jess. 

In September of 1963, when I was nine years old, I was adopted by two wonderful people who plucked me from the foster care system and gave me a home of my own.  As their daughter, I lived in a real house with my own room and a real bed with white and lavender sheets.  We lived on a dead end in a family neighborhood where every house had kids!  My name was changed to match theirs and every year we celebrated my birthday and my adoption day.  They were good, honest, hardworking people who had dearly longed for a child of their own.  How they ended up meeting and choosing me when what they had always wanted was a baby, (and there were many babies back then) is a mystery that even they could never answer.  All they ever said was, once they saw me, they knew I was their child.  As the years passed, they enrolled me in a local Catholic School and gave me the very best of what they could afford.  There were vacations to the Jersey Shore every year and trips to Radio City Music Hall every Christmas and Easter.  

One day, I remember coming home from school with tears running down my cheeks because I, having always been proud of having been chosen, had shared the revelation that I had been adopted with my classmates.  One of the bullyboys made it a point to tell me that his mother had said that this could only have happened because my real parents must not have wanted me and they must have thrown me away… like garbage.  He called me “throw away girl” and “garbage baby” for weeks.  This one afternoon as I shared my private heartache with my mother, she blessed me with words of wisdom that I shall never forget. “Carol,” she started ever so softly, “I want you go to school tomorrow and tell that boy something.  Tell him that your mom and dad got to pick you - but that his parents were stuck with him.” 

Sitting there on our porch swing looking into my mother’s eyes, I had an epiphany.  I knew in that moment that, even if Jess should come for me, I would stay right where I was.  I had been given a home of my own and this was it.  I was where I belonged.