Reading memoirs -- getting inside others' lives, situations perhaps
unfathomable to the reader -- is so fascinating and revealing. But,
unfortunately, many memoirs these days seem so sad, so narcissistic, so
full of "look at me, I'm in pain."
Paula McLain's memoir of growing up as a foster child does not seem to
be one of these. Even though Like Family is about a situation most of us
cannot begin to fathom -- not getting to know one's biological parents in
one's formative years, never having a real "home" -- she tells her story
with amazing insight and humor and, yes, some sadness. But the sadness
does not tip the scales. McLain, a poet who now lives in Wisconsin and
teaches poetry at New England College, has an even hand. She has gained
enough distance from her extremely unsettled childhood. Despite some
terrible occurrences, and because of a great love she shares with her
sisters, she gets through and is able to write about it in an amazingly
objective way.
The three McLain girls' mother leaves them when they are very young
(the author is four at the time); their father is in jail. They live with their elderly
grandmother and an aunt for a while, but these relatives are unable to keep the
girls for long, so they become wards of the state. Through the '70s and
'80s, their early childhood through teenage years, the sisters live in
several foster homes in California, the longest with the Lindberghs, a
couple with a daughter, horses, and dogs. In all fairness to the foster
parents, the sisters do have some wonderful experiences: sailing,
camping, having their own ponies, getting new bicycles, throwing parties
at home, and more. Yet along with these quite usual and some idyllic
family events, they also experience some extremely strict rules and some
horror. At one home, all the furniture is covered with plastic; they
can't walk on the rugs. They can't lean on the refrigerator in such a
way. Aside from not knowing why their mother left them and never seeing
her for sixteen years (by the end of the memoir, they are reunited with
her; she is on her fifth husband), Paula also goes through several
traumatic experiences -- including physically abusive incidents with two
foster dads. Her last foster mother, Hilde, a large, cold woman and the
mother they lived with the longest, is also abusive, literally tossing
the teenage girls around, swatting them with a broom, and never, ever
hugging them. Here's how the author describes this "mother":
"All you
had to do was look at Hilde, her mouth in a hard line as if a ruler had
slapped it there, arms crossed severely over her heart, to know there
was no map, no access, no turnable knob to the door that was her ? at
least not for me and my sisters."
Ever resilient, the girls love and protect each other. They hang out
together, discussing clothes, their periods and boys. Teresa and Paula
even get jobs at the same nursing home, in which one of the happiest
anecdotes is embedded: the sisters sing to a woman who hasn't spoken in
years, and she begins to sing along with them. Within two weeks, that
elderly patient is living a much more "normal" life than she had in
years.
Although the sisters maintain ties to a few blood cousins, aunts and
uncles, the three of them remain their only reliable family. After high
school, when Teresa leaves to try living with their real mother, Jackie,
and she and Paula have left on a sour note, Paula writes, "in losing her
I was losing a foot, arm, heart chamber, an anchor, an every godamned
thing."
However, this reader wishes there were yet more detail of these
relationships, more of their conversations. By the book's end, I felt as
though I know something of Paula, how she felt about the various
placements and abuses, but much less about Teresa's or Penny's feelings
or questions. Admittedly, Teresa, slightly older than Paula, "wasn't
like me .She was the tough-skinned one, the turtle girl. She didn't look
at anything too closely, didn't ask questions she didn't want to know
the answers to." Paula was always asking questions, at least of herself;
obviously this book was an attempt to answer some of them.
This is a warm, courageous, page-turning memoir, one that is at heart
about survival. Despite extremely high odds against her, its
author has turned out well. Many of us cannot imagine having no one
stable home, but all of can appreciate the love that saves us and allows
us to develop in healthy ways, no matter where we find it.