Contrast

In response to public review she left, I wrote Daizy~wetandcoldbrr the following message and got this back from her:

AJ You need to post this in your portfolio!!!!!!

Gps coming back to you. YOU deserve them!!

Nancy

So, here I am posting this.

One thing more...Russell and I are nearly a dozen years apart in age--which means that...

When this picture of me was taken

he had already been sent to reform school by the orphanage where he had been staying.

When this picture of me was taken

he had already experienced two lashing sessions with a leather whip and was either still in reform school or else was about to be sent to a foster home.

Finally, when this picture of me was taken

he was already an inmate in an adult prison.

I don't know about you, but there's something about knowing this that both makes the hairs on my body stand up and breaks my heart...


Thanks for keeping up with Russell and continuing to encourage him!

I can't even begin to imagine the kind of life he lived.

When I was nine years old, I had loving parents who spent lots of time with me, and I never felt alone. When he was nine, he came home from school to find out that both his parents and his home had disappeared and he would be on his way to the orphanage.

When I was eleven years old, I remember being indulged by my folks when we were at The 1964 World's Fair so that I got to ride the It's A Small World ride at least once everytime we went there (we were in the area for about a week) and, on our last night there, they let me ride it three times in a row! When Russell was eleven years old, the orphanage had decided that they didn't want to mess with him, so they sent him to a reform school where he got two lashing sessions within an 18 month period--one time for smarting back to an authority figure and the other time for simply not making good enough grades.

When I was 14 years old, I was a high school freshman with a boyfriend named Chad. The two of us and my folks would often double-date to go out to eat at favorite places, as I wasn't allowed to go on a car date until I turned 16. When Russell was 14, he was placed in a foster home that he would be leaving when he was sixteen.

When I was sixteen, a big fuss was made over my birthday--just as a big fuss had been made over every birthday before--and my folks were there for me through thick and thin. The second car in the family was a turquoise blue Camaro, and I had it decorated with flowers, love beads, and other sixties-style stuff--and my dad got teased when he drove it to work, but he didn't mind a bit! When Russell was sixteen, he was thumbing his way across the country--destination: California from Florida--and landing in different juvenile halls along the way.

When I was seventeen and eighteen, I was enjoying my senior year of high school, graduating, and getting ready to go to college. When Russell was that age, he was in an institution for youthful offenders.

When I was 19, I was finishing up the first semester of my freshman year of college and writing a column for the campus newspaper. When Russell was 19, he was already serving what would turn out to be a total of 44 years in prison.

Our lives were so different--yet, we've now come together with each of us having something to offer the other one.

I want my happiness and sense of family to rub off on him. I wish that he could have been as blessed as I was then, but I hope that I can show him some of the comfort and love that he missed out on growing up.