When an old friend of mine was a child, her parents used to threaten her when she misbehaved with these words:\u00a0 \u201cPack a bag!\u00a0 We\u2019re going to drop you off at the orphanage\u2026right this minute!\u201d\u00a0 These days, of course, no self-respecting, child-development-guide-reading parent would use those words and, in fact, my friend tells me that she never really and truly believed her parents meant what they said to her, anyway.\u00a0 However, she still remembers hearing those two oft-repeated sentences of doom, so they must have resonated with her to at least a moderate degree.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the memory might account for her making a yearly gift of $1000 to Save the Children Federation and\/or her habit of filching dinner rolls when dining out in four-star restaurants, then stowing them in a second-hand Dora the Explorer backpack behind the platform bed in her luxury high-rise condo.\u00a0 Of course, I could be wrong.\u00a0 Nah\u2026I\u2019m probably not.<\/p>\n
It was on January 15, 2014, that I, at the ripe old age of 63, became an orphan upon the death of my mother. She passed away as she lived\u2014serenely, even beautifully\u2014but, still, leaving me bereft and making my five younger siblings orphans, too.\u00a0 I seem to recall that the big fear of many people back in the \u201colden days\u201d was that a family of orphaned children would be split up; some would go straight to the loving arms of an adoptive family.\u00a0 Others, perhaps too old to be deemed adoptable, were farmed out by authorities in fledgling social services\/child welfare organizations as apprentice workers or sent to learn a useful trade at an industrial school created specifically for parentless children.<\/p>\n
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