[RavenSong]

Bravo, Janey, bravo for telling us that part of your story. You've got a lot of guts, girl...a lot of courage. When people say that financial situations, i.e., poverty, should never factor into adoption decisions, I want to strangle them...tell them to open their eyes and get a clue. Of course being in dire straits factors into the relinquishment decision -- why wouldn't it?

When I became pregnant, I was 16 years old and living in a foster home. My foster "mother" was a drunk...she passed out every night at 8pm on the couch after drinking two bottles of Pink Duck (is that what it really was called, or am I not recalling the name right?) I was allowed to eat twice a day -- a mustard sandwich for lunch (that's right, just mustard between two pieces of white bread) and a Banquet pot pie for dinner, which I heated up and ate before I left for night school. (I had to finish high school at an adult "night" school because pregnant girls weren't allowed to attend the same regular high schools where the "nice" girls went. God knows, we might contaminate them...)

Even at 16, I knew that one mustard sandwich and one chicken pot pie were not enough nourishment for a pregnant teenager and her unborn baby. So I panhandled most afternoons down on the boardwalk at the beach. I was good at panhandling...I was a downright pro at it. I'd started panhandling when I was 14, when neither of my parents could be bothered with feeding and clothing a teenager. I knew how to coax the kids flipping burgers at Jack In the Box into giving me a burger or taco on the sly. The teenage boys at the Wienerschnitzel went even further...they always threw in a large Coke with the hot dog...if I was lucky, they gave me the fries they were about to throw out into the garbage can.

I panhandled each day at the beach and turned my quarters into Stuart prenatal vitamins and stuff that sounded nutritious to a 16-year-old, like Kern's Apricot Nectar, Knudsen's Buttermilk, fresh fruit, etc. My foster mother had a meltdown when she found my stash hidden in the refrigerator. She screamed bloody murder and told me that anything I brought into her house belonged to everybody, not just me. I learned to eat my illicit food stash down at the boardwalk, to never take it into her home again. I dreamed of going home to my abusive mom's house, where it was warm and the refrigerator and cupboards overflowed with good, solid food. The woman was an absolute sadist, but darn it, her children never starved in an unheated room.

It's hard to be a kid who nobody gives a crap about. It's hard enough to be a teenager, with all the hormonal stuff and drama. But throw in pregnancy and having to make adult decisions...it takes my breath away just to remember it all.

Your pickle story and C.J.'s peanut butter story remind me of the time I had to feed my baby sister a bowl of Cornflake Crumbs (they came in a shaker can for coating chicken), covered with water instead of milk. I left my drunken father's home shortly afterwards and returned to my mom's house to live. I had just turned 15...