Published: 31 Jan 2022

Tom

 
There wasn’t anything I could do about it; Miss Lyons, my caseworker, had told me to get cleaned up, comb my hair and dress nice, because I was going to the “meet and greet” downstairs in the big lounge in 20 minutes, no ifs, ands, or buts. So, I made my way to the bathroom that was assigned to the 19 other boys and me. I quickly washed up, and returned to our dorm room to get dressed in school clothes. It was the week after we had started our school’s summer vacation, and I had been living here in this dorm room for a year and a few months. I was now ten and three quarters and had just completed fourth grade.

I was living here because my parents had died in a car accident the summer before. Miss Lyons wanted me to meet a nice couple, or something, that would take me and foster me. She thought I deserved a “loving family”. You see, my own parents were not very loving; in fact, they used me as their cleaning staff at home. I had been shown how to vacuum and sweep the floors, do the laundry, fold the clothes, and make all the beds. They had begun to teach me how to cook parts of their meals. I didn’t really know that they were any different from any other parents, not even the slaps across my head or the occasional slap across the face because I wasn’t allowed friends, except what I had during school, so I really had nothing to compare them to. They had been brought up in the state’s care, and so there were no relatives for them to have learned good parenting from.

I wondered when I read about fictional families in the books, I had to read for my schoolwork, but I thought that is just what they were, fiction. I had a great third-grade teacher, Mr. Clark, who seemed really nice to all of us in his classroom. He always showed up clean-shaven, and he appeared to be a happy sort of guy all around. Compared to him, my father looked like a tramp; he was a town garbage collector. My mother wasn’t much better; all she seemed to do was to give me orders during the commercials of the soaps on the TV. I was not allowed to watch TV, just the news and weather.

I learned about real families by listening to the other guys in my dorm room. Many were here because either their father or mother, or both, had died, leaving them all alone, just like me, but their stories about what they were missing seemed like something out of one of Mr. Clark’s books. I was a really good student, though. I had earned A’s all through school so far, occasionally an A+. I will tell you something though, my life here at the dorm was a lot better than it had been. Yes, we had to mind our P’s and Q’s. Still we had playtime out back, on an old asphalt parking lot that had a half-court basketball court painted on it, and an old swing set and a rusty jungle gym that mostly the younger boys used (girls were housed in almost identical quarters right next door). We were not allowed to mingle with the girls, and the ten-foot fence separating us made that really clear. Some of the other boys had sisters or other relatives over there, and they were given visiting privileges once a week for about an hour or so.

I had been to these Meet and Greets before; usually, a different dorm (or age group) went twice a month, or more, to them. They were set up for the prospective foster parents to hopefully meet the child they wanted to invite home to see if they all got along together. Miss Lyons told me once that my attitude kept couples shying away from me, and I told her that I liked it here and didn’t want to leave, but she always insisted, she said there was just the right family for me out there, and I’d never connect with them if I stayed in my dorm room reading.

After getting ready, I went downstairs with some other stragglers from the group of us 20 boys that shared our large dorm room, each of us having a single-sized bed and a small personal space for a tiny chest of drawers and a bookcase. It was very spartan (I learned that word after reading David Copperfield for school this past year). Once in the lobby, we lined up in two lines where we were “tagged” by Miss Lyons and another caseworker. This meant we were issued name tags, you know, those adhesive name badges that say; “Hello My Name Is,” and then your name is written on it, and then it is stuck on your upper chest. Mine said “Tom Wilson” when Miss Lyons added my name to it.

Some of the guys went to the buffet table to see what snacks the kitchen had supplied for tonight, but a few of us wandered the room to scope out who might be there already, or like me, to claim a small seating area along the far wall, kind of away from everyone else. I had only been sitting there a short time when I noticed a really tall guy making his way through the now almost crowded room. He sure looked familiar from where I sat about 20 feet from him, but when he spotted me and his face broke out into a familiar grin. I knew exactly who he was, and it only took me a second to get up and almost run to him, so happy to see someone I knew here tonight, but I couldn’t figure out in my mind why he was here, of all places. He was Mr. Clark, my third-grade teacher from the previous school year, when I was living back in Granby with my parents.

I couldn’t help it, it was the first time in just over a year that I had seen someone from my past, and he had been the best teacher I had had, a really good teacher, and a very friendly one, not just to me, to everyone in our class. When I stood in front of him, he was smiling down at me, and we both reached out, and we hugged each other for the first time. I asked Mr. Clark what he was doing here, as he was saying that he had finally found me. We ended up sitting back in the small sitting area I had just left, and he began to tell me how he ended up here tonight.

He told me that after last summer, once school started, he became aware that something was missing in our school back in Granby, and he figured out it was me that was missing. He decided to find out where I was, and once he had been informed of my parent’s deaths and where I had ended up, he began to take the fostering classes to be able to maybe take me in should I still be without a foster home. He explained that he had an extensive renovation project going on at his home during this time, and he explained how he had come to even have a home. He told me that he also had lost his birth parents at an early age, and he had been fostered and then adopted by a really nice and loving couple who unfortunately had died during his second year of teaching, the year I had him as my third-grade teacher. He had inherited a very old colonial home from his adoptive parents, on an old farm about two miles from the grade school he taught at. It had needed a lot of work, but the main house was finally done, and the outbuildings had been repaired and cleaned up. The pool was finished. Would I like to come out to see it, spend the weekend with him, maybe spend the next two weekends with him too and then stay forever with him as my permanent guardian?

I stuttered out that I sure would, but before I could say more, he told me he had something to tell me that might make me change my mind. He explained that he was gay, that he had only two boyfriends up to this point, and that neither was full-time forever kind of guys, and that is what he was looking for in a partner. Whereas I was what he was looking for in a son, and he had known that for quite a while, and that is why he had taken the fostering classes and had let the DCFS do all their investigations on him to enable us to be here now. That also allowed us to get reacquainted and comfortable with each other. He stated that it made no matter to him if I was gay or straight, it was me myself that made him want to father me, to see me into adulthood, and be the smart, happy boy he knew I was.

I couldn’t think right then about what I could say to him that would let him know that having him as my foster father would be the best thing that could happen to me, so I stood and walked to him as he sat looking up at me and I hugged him, asking him how I got so lucky for him to do what he did to find me. At that point, Miss Lyons walked up to us and asked if everything was alright, and I turned my head towards her and said that everything was great, and could I go to Mr. Clark’s this weekend? She had a big smile for us, and then Mr. Clark asked if we couldn’t move up the pick-up time because we both were now on our summer vacations from our schools. Miss Lyons really smiled then and told him that she could arrange that, since we were both so eager to get our weekend started early.

She took us to her office, and she took out a sheaf of forms and had Mr. Clark start filling in just a few things and then sign the document. He was chuckling as he did this and said to Miss Lyons that she could have finished filling this form out, with all the data he had supplied her in the last couple of months. She teasingly replied that she would have, if she had had enough time, she was looking right at me, and I knew she had spent those few minutes trying to get me up and about to come to this evening’s meet and greet. I apologized to her, and she told me that everything had turned out even better than she had hoped.

So, it was arranged that Mr. Clark would pick me up at noon the next day. Knowing that, it was still tough to say goodnight to him, and I admit, I reached up to him, and we exchanged a tight hug, one that I hoped would last me through the night until I could see him tomorrow. I truly felt that this was the one person who would take care of me, help me grow into the man he expected me to be.

After he left, I went upstairs to make sure I had enough clean clothes for the weekend, remembering to make sure my swimsuit was handy, since he had said he had a swimming pool. I tossed in my dufflebag a few pairs of Dockers, two pairs of shorts, a pair of jeans, three sets of underwear and socks, and some polos and T-shirts; the swimsuit went on top. My comb, toothpaste, and some deodorant I had just started using, just in case. The current book I was reading went in last, in case I had time tonight to read some more of it. Shoes and sneakers could go in the bag in the morning. I had some dreams that night; some of them were kind of exciting, like getting to ride some small horse at Mr. Clark’s farm, like us sitting together on a couch watching the TV. Or the one where we were cooking together. These dreams brought me a lot of peace and comfort, not at all what I expected to be feeling the night before going to someone’s home after one of these meet and greet things, but this was Mr. Clark, someone I knew and admired. Needless to say, I slept well that night.

In the morning, I had my shower amid most of the other guys in my dorm, and as we dressed after, there was a lot of talk among us as to who got invited for a home visit and who didn’t and why. When I was asked, I told them that a former teacher of mine from my hometown had come last night and we had already made arrangements for me to visit him for the weekend, starting at noon today. When asked if there were other kids in the teacher’s family, I told them, no, and when asked what his wife was like, I told them that he wasn’t married, but was looking. I explained that he had been orphaned as a child and had then been adopted by his foster parents, and he just wanted me to have a better life.
 
 
The thing was, I felt comfortable with Mr. Clark. I didn’t often feel comfortable back then. I guess I was waiting for some adult to demand in a threatening tone that I do the dishes, or take out the trash, or scrub out the bathroom. And if I didn’t move fast enough, I could expect a hard slap on the side of my head, or across my face. But Mr. Clark was different. Even if, as a class, we just were not paying attention, he would come up with some antics, or a way of explaining something that had us in gales of laughter. He was a nice man, and he went out of his way to track me down, and he even took classes to become my foster parent. That meant a whole lot to me, I’ll tell you, and it made me automatically care for him, admire him and respect him. I was so eager to see him again that I was packed and ready to go by 11:15 the next morning. I knew I was early, but I was anxious to see him, and he must have felt somewhat the same, because as soon as he was in the doors, we were hugging, something that was new for me, and I felt good doing it, my parents had never hugged me. He had hugged me yesterday, but it was more of an instinctive action for me then, until I felt myself emotionally responding to him.

He seemed eager to get me signed out, to get our weekend started. I plunked my dufflebag in the back seat and buckled myself into the seat belt. By then, Mr. Clark had buckled himself in and had the car turned on. He was waiting for me to be settled in before backing out of the parking spot and beginning our trip to Granby and his home. He did answer a lot of my questions about the city as we had to drive through it to get to the branch highway that would get us to Granby through small parts of both Chicopee and Ludlow. About a mile or so past the grade school in Granby, he turned onto a country road. Shortly after, we drove into the driveway of his homestead. Off to the left was a very large old colonial, but it looked freshly painted, and the grounds were very neat, and the grass well kept. On the right of the drive, just a bit further, was a large barn with a fenced paddock or coral on each side of it.

Mr. Clark pulled up in front of the house on the curved portion that swung around the whole front of the house. He told me that he did so because, for my first visit to my new home, he wanted to have me enter from the front door. That made me feel really good, and wanted, him calling this my new home. The building looked huge to me, but then I had been living with my parents in a four-room cottage. As I got my duffle from the back seat, Mr. Clark explained that he really didn’t like small rooms in a house he lived in, so after inheriting this place, he had all the walls removed on the first floor, well, all except the outer walls and the walls for the laundry room and the pantry, and the shower bath.

He unlocked the front door and held it open for me to enter. WOW, what I entered was a glass-walled foyer (he called it that, I think it means like an entry hall). Right in front of me was one of those glass walls, and you could see all the way through to one side what must have been a kitchen on the back right side, a really big sitting area with a huge television. There was a closet on the outer wall to my right and a bench where you could sit and put on or remove boots in the winter in the foyer. On the opposite wall, there was a large glass door opening into the house. Mr. Clark led me through that, and he placed my duffle on the big wide staircase, telling me he’d give me a tour of the downstairs, and then we’d take my bag upstairs to my room. Just beyond the kitchen were the partitioned areas he had mentioned before, the pantry, the shower bathroom, and the laundry that had a back door on the side wall. He told me that if he got filthy outside, he could come into the house this way and not track the dirt into the house.

He had explained the glassed-in entryway as like an airlock. In the winter, the house heat wouldn’t be sucked out, and the cold air wouldn’t come in. In the summer, the air-conditioned air wouldn’t leave the house, and the hot air wouldn’t come in. He showed me that even the back door had a lot of insulation in and on the edges and that there was a storm door on that door also. Just past the kitchen area were French doors out to a huge patio, part of which had a roof over it to provide shade for an outside table and chairs. This patio had a gas grill on it, and the whole area had a good view of the in-ground pool that had patio stones all around it, wide enough that several lounge chairs were placed here and there around the pool.

The rest of the first floor held a dining table and chairs and a china cabinet and sideboard (he said he’d never even used this space yet) and a more formal sitting area. We then moved to the staircase that was right in the middle of all this, and taking the dufflebag; we went up so he could show me my room.

He opened the doors as we went down the hall to the right. There were three bedrooms and a bath and a half in that section of the upper hall. On one wall was another door that Mr. Clark said was a linen closet for sheets and towels, a few extra comforters for the bedrooms, some supplies for the bathrooms, and a few extra light bulbs and trash bags. The left side of the central hall had a bedroom on the left, a shower bath right next to it, and another linen closet for the rooms at this end of the hall.

The next room he showed me was his bedroom (he called it a Master Bedroom and puffed his chest out slightly, so I knew he wasn’t taking the room’s title seriously). Boy, what a great room. It seemed huge to me. There was a huge bed, he said it was king-sized, and then there was a small couch and a coffee table in front of a really good-sized fireplace, then a huge walk-in closet with a lot of drawers under the rods with the hanging clothes and a shoe rack on the back wall. The door next to his closet was a door to a bathroom, not just any bathroom; no, this one had a urinal that must have been installed while Mr. Clark was standing there, because there was no way I could have used it without a stool to stand on! He was like 6 1/2 feet tall, and I was only like 4 ½. There was a whirlpool tub and a shower stall that looked as big as my bedroom at my old home, and the toilet was in a tiny room all by itself.

He then took me next door to what he had been calling my bedroom. My room looked really new, just as his had. The full-sized bed seemed very big to me, and there was a desk over by the windows that had a new computer on it and a printer on top of the right-hand bookcase next to the desk. The left-hand one had about half the shelves filled with books. My closet was a smaller version of his, and right next to it was a full bath of my own, with its own shower stall and a urinal placed at just about the right height for me.

What surprised me was this room was painted in a specific color scheme, green, my favorite color. The walls were amazing. A band of very dark green started the gradations of color at the baseboard, then the next shade lighter had been painted on and the two shades blended, so on and so on right up to the ceiling, about seven or eight shades of green all the way up. It made my room seem a lot taller than the others. Scattered on one wall were a bunch of framed pictures, and when I looked closer at them, I realized that they were ones I’d drawn or painted during our art classes back in the 3^rd grade while I was in Mr. Clark’s class. I turned and just hugged him. I was a bit choked up and had a few tears on my cheeks by then, and he got on his knees and asked if that meant I liked my room.

I just kept nodding, as I couldn’t form actual words just then, but he looked so pleased I figured he got the message I was trying to convey. A few secs later, we began to unpack the dufflebag. Once that was done, we went downstairs for a late lunch before he gave me a tour of the outside property.

The house itself looked even larger as we walked around it. I now knew that those big, tall windows behind the big staircase to the second floor were really great big sliders that led out to the patio and pool. It was so cool. Mr. Clark showed me that even I could easily open and close them. I got to see the big barbecue grill out there, and then we walked over to the barn. That was the first time I had ever been in a barn, and man, was it big in there. He had a truck stowed in there along with a huge riding mower that he said could also be used as a plow in the winter if he needed to, but he said he hadn’t done that yet. There was other stuff stored in there like a few rakes, some shovels, and other gardening stuff he told me would be moved to the storage shed up by the pool, which also had the pool equipment stored in it.

The barn had ten stalls in it, and they seemed very roomy. The barn had been gone over too; the outer walls had been made secure and then had been insulated. The earthen floor, he told me, had been evened off, and a new concrete one, complete with drains, had been poured. On the loft level in the far back was another structure, a small apartment, that had its own staircase down to the ground on the outer back wall. The apartment had a small kitchen, a full bathroom with a shower in the tub, a good-sized bedroom, and a nice Living Room. The rest of the loft area was designed to store the hay and feed for the animals that Mr. Clark said he would be getting; he was just waiting for me to help him with them. We both chuckled, but I sensed he was somewhat serious, and I told him I would like to help him.

As we walked around the paddock, he explained that he not only wanted some horses and ponies, but a couple of dogs and cats as well. I told him I never had a pet, but if he showed me how I would be happy to take care of them. He thanked me and explained further that we would need the dogs and cats as being out here in the country, the barn would soon attract some varmints, like mice and raccoons, and we didn’t want them in the barn contaminating the feed for the horses. He told me that the dogs would act like guard dogs, letting us know if a larger animal approached, like a bear from the woods, or chasing off possums or raccoons. Basically, the cats would take care of the mice or rats that might be attracted to the feed or hay kept in the barn.

The tour around the buildings over, we went for a walk down the dirt road through the fields. He explained that the fields were rented out to nearby farmers who needed more land, but either couldn’t afford it, or the land was too far from their own operation to make it worth their while to prepare the ground, plant it, tend it, and then harvest it. He told me that the rental of his fields just about covered the taxes he had to pay every year. He said that once we had our own livestock on the property, he would negotiate with a farmer to plant a field or two to grow our own feed for the horses we’d be getting.

Every time he said “we” or “us,” it made me grin. Already he thought of us as if we were living together. I mean, just look at the room he had prepared for me, that took some time to do, so he had been thinking of me all those months he was doing that, and taking the fostering classes and then he had to go through the screening process to become eligible to even be allowed to come to the meet and greet the other night, let alone have me come to visit for the weekend, this guy really liked me, and I felt so special that he did.

As we entered the house through the back door, he said we had to talk a bit before we began getting dinner ready. I was a bit apprehensive after he said that, but he had a big grin on his face while, and after he said that, he reassured me that I hadn’t done anything wrong.
 
 
We sat at the kitchen table with some snacks and Mr. Clark started off by asking me if I knew his name. He didn’t ask that in a harsh or aggressive tone, so I relaxed, but I did wonder what he was leading up to, so I responded honestly, that his name was Mr. Clark, just as it said on the blackboard our first day in his class. Mr. Clark sat there nodding, but looked at me kind of sadly, and said that his first name was Drew, and that today he thought I had called him Mr. Clark about twenty times, which was alright, but we were not in a classroom, and he wasn’t my teacher anymore. Yes, there would be times when we were in school, or out in public when it wouldn’t be right for me to call him Drew, but he would definitely prefer that, at least until he became my permanent guardian, then I would have the option of calling him Drew, but he would prefer Dad.

I was taken aback at that, but his words started to sink in, and I realized that I had somehow hurt his feelings, without even realizing it. Without even giving it a lot of thought, I got up from my chair and hugged him as he sat there. I was kind of emotional as I told him that my own father had never let me call him dad, and I wouldn’t have, that would have implied that there was a certain amount of love or at least respect for him, but there wasn’t, Father was the best I could do. I told Drew that I knew that not only did I respect him, but that I was so grateful that he had tracked me down and gone through what he had to get to meet with me again. I told him that I wasn’t familiar with what love was. But if it was something that made me happy inside whenever I thought of him, or smiled when I looked at my room and thought about what he had done for me in there, or heard him say something about “our” home or “our” pets or when “we” were going to do something, and my heart skipped a beat. If a smile formed automatically on my face, or a happy tear ran down my cheek, well; he had already earned the title of Dad in my book.

Now I did it, he was smiling, and chuckling that deep chuckle of his and the tears were streaming down his cheeks, obviously happy tears, and I was relieved I hadn’t screwed up. I wasn’t used to talking to adults, to actually conversing with them. Miss Lyons had told me that I didn’t sound like a kid, but more like a character in a book, and except on the playground, I guess I did. Still, sometimes my best friend in the world would look at me funny when I was speaking, but then I hadn’t heard from Billy in over a year, but I hoped that once I was living with Mr…… oops! I almost did it again!! Once I was living with Drew, then maybe I could reunite with Billy before school started; I really hoped I could; I sure miss him.

Dinner that night was fun for Drew and me. He had gone grocery shopping sometime during the week, and it seems he had stocked up on a lot of food. We had baked chicken, green beans, wedges of potatoes he sautéed (Drew explained that to me, he had put some olive oil in a frying pan, and then he seasoned it and placed the cooked potato wedges in the pan. He kept flipping the spuds in the pan, and so they got a little browned and covered in the oil and spices, gosh were they yummy). For dessert, there were bowls of ice cream. Yummy!!! Not only did we cook together, but we also cleaned up together, and Drew said we made a great team.

After dinner, we watched a few movies that Drew had checked out of the library. He had selected four, and together we picked out two for tonight. I got introduced to microwave popcorn, and we had a great time commenting on the movie and munching on our treat. By the time I was ready for bed, the second movie was rolling the credits, and it was Drew who suggested I hit the hay. He had some plans for tomorrow that he thought I should be well-rested for. That almost got me fully awake, but it had been a most unusual day for me, and I knew that if I forced myself to stay awake to question him about his plans that I’d most likely fall asleep right there on the family room couch. We dapped hands, and he said he would be up in a few minutes to say goodnight to me.

I did my nightly routine in the bathroom and put the clothes I had worn that day kind of neatly on the chair by the desk and then crawled in the bed. The bed felt so comfortable I felt like I was being hugged, which happened when Drew walked in and sat on the side of the bed nearest me to say goodnight. It felt wonderful, and I thanked him for finding me and inviting me to be with him this weekend. He rubbed my head and told me that he was asking me to share his life, that this was a forever thing, and he wanted me here with him for a very long time. We would make a great team. I hugged him back and said I felt so, too. He kissed my forehead and wished me sweet dreams, and I thanked him again and told him I wished the same for him. He turned off the light and went to his own bedroom next door.

The next morning, I somewhat woke up, swaddled in the bed covers. I loved that feeling. I wondered if I should be getting up, and then I heard it, a soft gurgle from my bathroom (MY bathroom!!). I got up and went there and realized that with all the insulation and soundproofing Drew had installed, that some of the drains were not soundproofed. Because that for sure was a toilet flushing, and it was coming from Drew’s bathroom on the other side of mine. Well, there was another thing we would share, the drains from the toilets! I chuckled at that and realized that was another thing we shared, our chuckling. I got ready to shower myself and finished fairly quickly. I loved the privacy of my own bathroom! Once dressed, I went downstairs, and there was Drew, dressed much like me, in jeans and a T-shirt. We exchanged good mornings, and Drew asked how I slept. I told him it was wonderful, and he smiled.

After breakfast, we made a couple of big sandwiches and placed them into a small cooler with some chips, two 20 oz bottles of ginger ale, and some cookies and napkins. Drew said that should hold us until dinner, but he winked at me, and I chuckled; he wasn’t serious; I knew that a treat would be available if either of us wanted one. As we prepared lunch, and cleaned up after breakfast, Drew explained what he had planned for our afternoon, a canoe trip on the huge lake at the Quabbin Reservoir, a lake created by flooding five towns near Granby sometime between WW1 And WW11. Drew said that his adoptive father had taken him several times out there and that you could still see streets and buildings foundations under the water. He said they had old pictures of the flooding before and after, and we’d use one of their maps as we paddled around the islands in the lake.

I’d never done something like canoeing, but Drew assured me we could do it together, and we’d be wearing life jackets just in case we tipped over. I was excited to try something completely different, and with Drew, as my teacher, I knew everything would turn out fine, and we’d have a great time. And we did.

Drew rented a two-man canoe and picked out a few interesting brochures at the canoe rental place at the docks. He even got two life jackets for us, and the guy in the rental place pointed out a good route to us before we loaded the canoe with our lunch and a blanket for us to sit on while we ate on one of the islands. It really was peaceful out there. No motorboats are allowed, as the Quabbin is a water source for the Boston area, over a hundred miles away, so the only sounds were the wildlife on the land.

That includes the birds that inhabited the property around the lake and on the islands. I became very aware of this as I had to take a piss when we stopped on one of the islands to eat our lunch. I had enjoyed the canoe trip, and Drew showed me streets that were under water and where houses and other buildings had been before the flooding had occurred. But as soon as we pulled the canoe out of the water, I had to take a wicked piss, and Drew suggested I pick a tree and water it. While relieving myself at a tree on the edge of the woods, I heard a kind of “whirring”, and carefully looking around, I saw something poking into a flower near the ground about 7 feet away. Back and forth, it poked into the flower, and I realized that it must be a Hummingbird. I had never seen one in person before, and as I zipped up, I ran to Drew and pointed to where I had seen the tiny Hummingbird while doing my business on the tree. He moved slowly toward where I had pointed, and he was grinning big time when he returned. He had had a chance to see it, too.

We exclaimed about that little bird most of the way back to the docks. Although it wasn’t the only wildlife we had seen, it was the closest and also the most intriguing. We had seen families of deer in the woods as we paddled by, raccoons washing their lunch in the nearshore water, we had seen tons of squirrels, and even a flock of either Eagles or Falcons flying almost in formation what seemed like miles up in the sky. They were so high up; Drew said he couldn’t be sure which they were, but boy was it neat to have seen them.

Once on dry land again, I hugged Drew, telling him a big thank you for taking me out here. He said if I really enjoyed it, then we could come back often. By then, the clerk in the rental office was off his phone, and he processed the canoe back in, asking Drew if he and his little brother had enjoyed themselves. Drew straightened up to his full 61/2-foot height and said that he and his Son had had a very enjoyable time.

Drew and I chuckled about that as he drove over the mountain to Hadley and the mall there. He told me he had another surprise for me, and we went into Sears. He bought me a few items he said I could keep at our house and not have to lug them back and forth on the weekends coming up. Well, his idea of a few things turned out to be a couple of pairs of Dockers, a few new shirts, heavier socks, and a really nice pair of sneakers. Before we left the shoe department, he asked if my school shoes were in as bad a state as my ratty sneakers were. I just nodded, so over to the dressier shoes we went, and I was fitted with a new dressier pair of shoes as well. He wasn’t done yet though, on our way to a checkout station, he saw the underwear section, and there were new boxer briefs and T-shirts to be paid for as well.

He asked me why I was weeping in the car as he drove us back over the mountain, and I told him that today has been like Christmas, and my birthdays were supposed to be like all my life. He asked if I had never gotten gifts from my parents, and I told him no, not once. He pulled over to the side of the road we were on, and he said to me that I deserved everything we had done today, from the excellent breakfast we both had a hand in making, to the fun day out at Quabbin, to the shopping we had just done. He hugged me over the car’s console between our seats and then started driving us home.

Once there, he showed me how to clip the price tags off of the new stuff that had them and then all, but the shoes and sneakers went in the wash so the stiffness would be washed out. He helped me fold them when the drying cycle was finished, we both helped to put the freshly washed clothing away in my room. He explained that he thought I needed one more treat today, and he explained that we were going out to eat in a restaurant for dinner tonight.

I was curious to try that; it would be one more thing I had never done before. My parents didn’t dine out, at least with me with them. Drew sensed my nervousness, and once I told him I had never eaten in a restaurant, he explained that all you had to do was look at a menu and pick something that sounded good to eat. Then you told the waiter or waitress which meal you wanted, and then about a half-hour later, they brought it to the table, and you ate it. Easypeasy, he said, telling me the best part was we didn’t have to cook; we didn’t have to set the table. And we didn’t have to clean the dishes after, unless he forgot his wallet!

He said we should both shower and then dress in casual school-type clothes; my new shoes would be better than the sneakers. So that’s what we did. We each went to our own bathroom and got cleaned up. Once the clean-up was done, it was time to dress. I chose one of my new pairs of Dockers, the medium tan colored ones, and a darkish green polo, black socks, and my new black dress loafers. I re-combed my hair after dressing and went downstairs to meet up with Drew.

He had just come out from the kitchen area, and we stood staring at each other; we had chosen the exact same outfit to wear. He chuckled and said I had great taste in clothes, and chuckling (I know, is that catching or something?) I told him he did too. We chatted on the way to Antonio’s Restaurant and Pizzeria. He repeated what he had said to me about how it worked in a restaurant, and I felt a bit more comfortable about going in there with him. We were a bit early for the reservations Drew had made, but it was a Saturday night, and this was one of the most popular restaurants in town.

I thanked him again for letting me experience everything we had seen and done out at Quabbin, and he told me another story about a time he and his adoptive dad had gone out there. That time, instead of a cute and fascinating hummingbird, what came out of the woods was a couple of skunks, right between the two trees he and his dad were watering!! I imagined the scene and burst out in a full belly laugh, Drew followed suit, and before long, we had ourselves under control enough to exit the car and enter the restaurant.

We were standing in front of the Host/Hostess stand while the gentleman was seating a group of six at a table. Drew told me about the veal parmigiana meal he has had here a few times, and he thought I might like that for my dinner. We were still waiting on the host to return when from behind us, in the waiting line, we heard, “Cripes! Is that you, Tom? My god, where have you been?”

“Oh, Hi Mr. Clark, good to see you, Sir.”

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