Given Away

It was one of those cool October days when the California wind was slowly bringing the air a chill. October in California can be bleak and a little depressing. I was about to find out how depressing it could be. I was nine years old, on that cool October day. As I came home from school I noticed all my belongings; clothes, shoes everything I owned in a cardboard box on the front porch of the little clap board house where we lived, in bean town, just outside Clovis California. As I climbed the steps to the porch that day, my mind searching for an answer, the front door opened and my stepmother stepped out with a big smile on her face. “Why are my things out here on the porch”? I asked, “Your dad has given you away” she said. What did she mean given me away? You can’t just give someone away. But what she said was true, my dad had given me away to a man to be raised, as he saw fit. Given me away to someone I did not know, to be taken away, to some faraway place, 1500 miles from here. Is that possible? Can your parents just give you away? Can they do that? Oh! Yes, they can do that.