Brightside was the name of the orphanage. I don’t at the time of this writing recall the day they came to get me.
I don’t recall if my grandmother gave me any warning or if I was just tricked into the vehicle and taken away.
The total lack of memory leads me to believe that there may have been some confusion/trauma involved, but that’s just a guess.
This was my 1st time at the orphanage and I think I was probably around 4.
I was taken to live at Brightside on 3 separate occasions. I still remember the 3rd time they came and took me away but not the 1st or second.
More about those other times later.
I don’t recall my arrival at the orphanage but I do remember a little about my 1st night.
Brightside seemed pretty big. There was a big main brick building where the “toddlers” were housed. There were other structures called “cottages” where the older kids were kept.
On this first stay I was housed in the “toddler section” which as I remember was pretty large, institutional and cold in its feeling with long corridors.
During the course of my stay there, I had seen the building from the street on several occasions so I know that it actually was pretty big and didn’t just seem that way because I was little.
First night. Lost in the shuffle.
There was a main kinda room where we were kept a lot of the time. This is where I was now on my 1st day.
When bedtime came the nuns, (Brightside was a Catholic facility) told the children it was time to go to bed and the kids and nuns just started moving in their different directions until I found that I was standing alone in a long hallway wondering what to do next.
Earlier in the day I had seen a room that was full of cribs so I decided to go and find that room again so that maybe I could go to bed too.
I found the room and started looking for an empty crib. I found one and climbed up the side, and went to sleep.
When the next day came I just blended in with the rest of the children and followed the group wherever it went, thus I was able to eat and be bathed, etc., but when bedtime came I was on my own again and would head off to the crib room.
I’m not sure how long it lasted like this but it seems that it lasted a while since I recall many nights in the crib room.
At first I had claimed my own crib and it was just mine, but sometimes there would be a baby in it and I would have to find another empty crib.
I remember I didn’t like that because I felt that it was my crib and not theirs, but what could I do? So I would just find another empty crib and go to sleep.
Then of course there were the times when there were no empty cribs at all.
That especially sucked because then I would have to share my bed with an infant.
So I would look for crib that wasn’t wet or worse and whose occupant seemed ok to me and then climb in and call it a night.
I remember I was very unhappy about sharing space with infants and I would curl up in the corner of the crib to try and avoid being wet upon.
More times than I recall I would wake up on wet smelly sheets and sometimes I would change cribs in the night if it got too bad.
I vaguely recall one baby that I seemed to like pretty well, or maybe I just got used to it. I shared that crib for a while and kinda felt friendly towards that one and less upset about having to share, but finally one night my crib-mate was gone and I was back to sharing with strangers when there were no cribs empty.
I also recall times when for whatever reason I would just be walking the halls alone maybe looking for the group or exploring or whatever.
Once when I was walking into a large lavatory there was a janitor mopping the floors and he told me I couldn’t come into the room and that I needed to leave.
I don’t recall what I was thinking but I just stood there and didn’t move. Maybe I was confused?
Anyway he kept telling me to leave. Did he say “scram”? I think so. I think he said a few things like that and I probably didn’t understand what they meant. Finally he got upset and yelled at me in a different language, upon which time I found my feet again and ran.
My own bed.
One night when I was about to enter the crib room, one of the nuns saw me about to open the door to the room and said that I couldn’t go in there and then she wanted to know what was I doing.
I said I was going to bed. She said that’s not where you sleep and I said that yes it was.
And so ended the wet, smelly crib sleep adventures!
Yay!
I don’t recall what happened next but only vaguely.
Nighttime. Darkness. A bed in a room that I think had a few other beds as well.
I seem to recall breakfast the next day. I think I had been missing breakfast before, since the children were rounded up for breakfast from their rooms every morning and I wouldn’t have been a part of that. Yes that seems right, and why I would recall that breakfast.
I recall oatmeal and toast. I didn’t like oatmeal.
Mostly it’s not having a bed and the adventures connected to that experience that I remember most from my 1st time at the orphanage.
The few other things I recall are there was a kid named Brian that I liked. I think we may have become friends.
And there was a little girl that apparently had a prosthetic leg or foot.
I remember sometimes her foot would be on backwards and I think it was Brian that would call a sister to fix it.
Some events I’m just not sure if they happened during my first time in the toddler section, or my second time.
And then some things I’m sure must have happened both times. Like bath time.
I don’t really recall how I felt about bath time. I think a lot of it had to do with the nun bathing me and if she was nice or not. Gentle or not.
They bathed us like on an assembly line. One after the other. Vague memories of a tiled tub? The smell of a washcloth. Nuns in their habits. They wore habits back then. That’s what their clothing was called. Black and white. Clothed from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes.
Bath time was pretty quick as I recall. Nothing sensitive or loving about it since it was an assembly line experience, but some nuns were rougher than others and it seems to me that on occasion there were a few that actually seemed nice.
Sometimes I would get mail from my mom and one time she sent me a little doll of an Indian.
I made the mistake one day of taking it to bath time with me and to my horror and shock the sister (sister was another name for nun) tore it from my hands and threw it across the room.
I was very upset about that and cried through my whole bath. I tried to find it later but it was gone.
There were a few nuns that I liked. I recall two that i liked especially well.
One seemed a bit older and maybe felt more formal somehow but nicer and friendlier, and one was younger who dressed differently from the rest. Maybe that one wasn’t even a nun?
Anyway whether she was a nun or not, she was really nice and found my Indian doll and brought it back to me several days later. It was broken but at least I had it back.
I liked her a lot. She said she would try and fix it for me. I don’t think it ever got fixed but her kindness stayed with me my whole life. I don’t think she was around very long or maybe I left the orphanage shortly after meeting her. Either way I thank you for the kindness you showed to the little boy you met and I hope that life has been good to you.
Has anyone ever done a study on why catholic nuns are so mean? Just wondering.
Maybe it’s different today but when I was a kid Catholic nuns had a pretty bad and well deserved reputation, where the nice ones seemed to be the exception and not the rule.
Three trips to the orphanage, with 2 stays in the toddler section, so some of these memories may be out of sequence, since it would be easy to confuse some of the events between stays 1 and especially 2, and perhaps even a little (but less so) with stay number 3. I guess I’m fortunate to recall as much as I do either way.
One day I left. I think my mom may have visited me a few times first. Maybe took me out and we spent some time together. I forget but I think that’s probably right since the state owned me.
Yup I belonged to the state. My mom had lost her rights to me when she got sick and so she had to prove she was “fit” before the state would let me live with her again.
She had been institutionalized and was going through her own personal hell while I was making my way through dark corridors of my own.
But finally the day did come and we were reunited again as mother and child.
For a little while anyway…
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