Today's "State Kid": No Longer "Orphans of the Living," Foster and Adopted Kids Celebrate Christmas with Loving Families.

It was one joyous madhouse of happy families celebrating Christmas at the North River Community Church in Pembroke, Mass. Kids were getting their faces painted, having their pictures taken with Santa, playing in the game room, browsing in the Book Nook for free books -- not to mention free home-knitted winter hats -- and filling up on a delicious free buffet.

It may have been pouring rain outside and there would be no hay rides or pony rides, but inside the packed auditorium things rocked. With all the hyper-excited laughter coming from painted and unpainted faces alike, you couldn't hear yourself think. Hordes of happy kids were having the time of their lives.

You would never know that many of the youngsters were foster and adopted kids. What? Kids from broken families in which the state had to intervene finding families and love and being treated like normal kids?

Take the family of Bill and Toni Maher, for example, pictured here. Toni calls it her "crazy" family. All families should be so crazy. Dad Bill is holding adopted twins Rena and Robbie. Next is Andrew, Mom Toni holding Emma, and Connor. Andrew and Connor are the oldest and Bill and Toni's natural born children. Emma is in the process of being adopted.

What is critically important about this family is that I am making these distinctions, not Bill and Toni. They make no such distinctions. They have five children, period. They love them all, period. They are one family, period. And seeing them together, noting how Andrew and Connor pitch in to care for their younger siblings, I see one loving family.

Or take this family below from Plymouth, Mass. Maria, right, is the mom of five, but four of the five are adopted. She was the birth mother only for her son. But watching how proud and devoted she is to them all as they have their picture taken, I see one loving family.

And then there is Patrice and her husband who, after taking the required 8-week training program, have been approved as a foster and adoptive family. She received her first placement a few weeks ago, a beautiful 2-year-old boy. "We have been blessed," she said.

Patrice is shown here painting the face of a little girl. An accomplished artist, every face painting of hers is a work of art. In the other photo is a happy little girl Patrice had given a robot face. Toni said the photo "makes my heart sing!."






My, how times have changed.






Writing as one who spent most of his childhood (age 5 to 17) in the Massachusetts foster care system, along with my four younger siblings (Marion, Ruby, Vic, and Reggie), it never used to be this way. Then the norm was physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and poor people taking in bereft wards of the state for the money. I wrote about this in my novel, "State Kid."

The scene at this Christmas party was something that I and my four siblings could only have dreamed of. Adults who loved us and treated us like family? A stable home? Being treated as if you were – gulp – actually normal and worthy of parental love and not some kind of resident alien?

This joyous Christmas party, this celebration of love, family, and faith, filled me with ... How can a 71-year-old say this without being thought emotionally immature? Well, think what you will, here goes: it filled me with envy. May I be forgiven. May I grow up some day. Pray for me.

During my years in foster care, I had a social worker stop by the foster home every so often, but mostly she talked to the foster parents. I don't remember ever having a one-to-one conversation with my social worker. Probably it was because both the social worker and the foster parents knew she would get an earful-- which she would have.

The only time I recall being alone with a social worker was in a car, going to or leaving a placement or adoption party. And then it was all social-worker happy talk which, as a grizzled veteran of the foster care system, I knew enough not to take seriously.

And the idea that I the state kid and my social worker would have fun together at a rollicking, boisterous Christmas Party like this one would have been, like over the moon, like out there in fantasyland. But that's exactly what I saw social workers MaryAnn Vautrinot, Kathy Shea, and Paula Boudrot, pictured here, doing at this Christmas party.

They are clearly a new breed of social worker. They can have fun with their young charges while never ceasing to be their dedicated advocates. From initial placement in foster care to, hopefully, adoption, they pursue the best interests not of the state or foster and adoptive parents, but of every child in their care looking for love and family.

There has always been a shortage of foster and adoptive parents and that is true today. First, it is not easy taking in an often traumatized and emotionally needy child. It takes a special kind of person with a big and unselfish heart, one willing to give and give and give for the sake of a helpless and vulnerable child.

Toni and Bill are two such people. Maria is another. This party was filled with foster and adoptive parents just like them. They are on another level from the foster parents that I and my four young siblings encountered. They are givers, not takers. And they have met stringent state standards for foster/adoptive parents.

The second big reason for the shortage of foster and adoptive parents is that many people cannot meet the requirements. Social workers screen carefully, as one emphasized to me at the Christmas party. They make sure candidates want to foster and adopt for the right reasons, that they have enough room, that the home is clean, that they are responsible, that their influence on the child will be positive. Candidates must pass a rigorous 8-week course in order to be approved for fostering/adoption in Massachusetts.

For the official requirements, click here.

I doubt that the foster parents I and my four younger siblings had in our many years in foster care could have met today's stricter standards. Not one of them would have been caught dead at a Christmas party such as this one – if there had been one, that is. A seemingly unbreachable emotional wall between foster parents and their foster kids stood in the way.

Yet at this Christmas party, foster and adoptive parents and their kids had fun out in the open and together, for all to see, not caring what anybody might think. That old emotional wall that I knew and felt daily was nowhere to be seen. I was envious. I wished I and my siblings had been so lucky.

And then there are the volunteers whose selfless hard work made this wonderful Christmas party possible, like Chickie and Dave Celli. They are shown in this picture with Bill and Toni Maher as they raffle off prizes. Of Chickie and Dave, Toni said that without them, "this party would not be possible."

Food, oh glorious food! When I was in foster care, it was no seconds and one little glass of milk when I could clean a plate in a minute and chuggalug a quart of milk in about two seconds. At this Christmas Party, however, the kids ate like royalty – and as much as they wanted, all donated, prepared, and served by Cabby Brini. He is the owner of Cabby Shack Restaurant on the Plymouth, Mass. Waterfront.

Of Cabby, Toni said, "Without his help, this party would not be what it is today."

Chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, stringbeans, desserts ... you get the picture. Naturally, making up for the starving old days, I ate more than I should have. In the photo, a foster mom is taking some leftovers home. Also shown is Al Kapple, a volunteer and NRCC member. That's Cabby between two of his cooks, Lee and Keith. And of course that little walking work of art on the right is by Patrice.

The mind was fed, too. In the reading room, kids could browse tables covered with books. Each youngster could pick five books to bring home, free. There were plenty of books to choose from. Altogether, Borders Books donated 30 boxes of books for all ages.


There was even a game room, pictured here, staffed by the NRCC Youth Group which is made up of kids from 6th to 12th grade. These volunteer students organized the gaming under the leadership of Melinda Bertoni. The Game Room, new this year, was Melinda's idea – and it was a huge hit.

Also volunteering was none other than Bill Maher's mother, Grannie Maher. All year she has been knitting wool hats to be given free, "with love," to the kids at this Christmas party. The photo shows Grannie's hats. I was dying to grab one and would have if my wife Barbara, knowing me, had not given me a "don't-do-it" look.

I thought: hey, I may be emancipated from foster care, but I did my time. I want one of those hats. They were pure wool, hand-made, beautiful, and free. I felt that I was owed one of Grannie's hats. My wife Barbara shook her head no in that stern foster parent way I knew so well. Soon after this photo was taken, Grannie's hats were gone.

Yes, I know I should be happy for the kids who got them. I'm trying. I'm trying. But you know, besides hats, many of these kids also got something else I and my four siblings never got: adoption. Adoption is the Holy Grail of every foster child.

I remember going to adoption parties. Even if I stood straight as a ramrod and smiled until my face hurt and sold, sold, sold, all I ever got were lookers. Finally, when my social worker said she was going to take me to an adoption party, I refused. At that moment, I decided to be my own mother and father. I was nine.

In those days, "career" foster kids like me and my four siblings were common. Admittedly, with five of us, we were were in the hard-to-place category, along with kids with emotional and physical disabilities. But even kids without such impediments to adoption often spent years in foster care.

That was considered okay. Today it is not. Longterm foster care is now recognized as not in the best interests of kids and even emotionally hurtful. I can attest to that. For a child yearning for family and the unconditional love that goes with it, longterm foster care is like living with an open wound that never heals.

Today the goal is to get kids off foster care and back to their families as soon as possible. In Massachusetts, foster home placements last from three to 18 months. If reuniting with family is not possible, then the goal shifts to adoption.

This Christmas party is the glorious end result of that enlightened policy. Most of the kids at this party have either been adopted or on track for adoption. They had every reason to soak up the joy that was everywhere at this Christmas party.

One of the volunteers, Rick Harrison, really got into the spirit of things. He was there for parking lot duty, as he is for all NRCC events, but you would never guess that by looking at him. Here he is with his face painted and making with a growl.

A growl – that's what I got when I asked him to smile. But, as this photo shows, my wife Barbara had no trouble getting a smile out of him. Rick may be a grown man, but Toni says that he is also "a big kid."

At this great Christmas party, so was I. I was that foster kid of a half century ago at a Christmas party that has been a looooong time coming. And you can take it from me;I know this kid. The party made him feel like he had always wanted to feel ... just like any other kid.

So long and keep moving.


P.S. In a thank you note from Toni Maher, Bill Mayer, Chickie Celli, and Dave Celli to all the Christmas Party volunteers, they wrote:

"We want to thank you so very much for your hard work and loving spirits at the Foster/Adoptive Christmas Party. This party could not happen without volunteers like you.  To see such happy children during one of the most difficult times of their lives had our hearts bursting with fullness of joy.

You were Jesus' hands' and feet on Saturday.  You made a difference.  The bible has so many fitting quotes that I can't list them all here, however, one came to mind that was in James 2:24    "So you see, we are made right with God by what we DO, not by faith ALONE." 

We hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did!  

Flu-Delayed Halloween: Seasonal Flu and H1N1 Could Not Stop These Other-Worldly Creatures from Scaring the Neighbors.

The neighbors didn't know what to think.

Though Halloween was days past, a marauding pirate, a white-gowned “corpse” princess fresh from the grave, and various scary monsters and other-worldly ghouls, gathered at our house. On an otherwise beautiful and peaceful Sunday fall afternoon, they menaced every human being in sight.

Neighbors peered warily out of windows and cracked-open doors, wondering if they should call the police or at least Animal Control. One drove by several times trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Was the Pollock household, rumored to be, well, “different,” finally showing its true colors?

I hear murmurs of assent, loud ones.

The gavel pounds. Order in the court. Order in the court. The defense will speak. Go ahead, counsel.

Defense counsel: So many of the kids had the flu on the actual Halloween that it had to be canceled. They didn't get to wear their costumes, didn't get to do Trick or Treat, didn't get to take part in this hallowed rite of childhood. So the Pollocks simply rescheduled a Halloween II.They did it for a bunch of kids that the flu had cheated out of Halloween I.

The defense rests. The jury, now out, will decide if Halloween II was a good idea or not.

Of our nine grandkids, eight had been sick. Aidan, 7, and Nathaniel, 4, who are brothers, both got fevers. Aidan got Influenza A, a form of H1N1 or swine flu, which turned into pneumonia. Nathaniel had a fever, but managed to avoid the flu. Their parents gave antibiotics to both.

The two of them gave their parents, who are well aware of what pneumonia and flu can do, many anxious moments. Thankfully, the boys responded well to treatment. Both received the anti-viral Tamiflu. On the morning of Halloween II, a restored-to-health Aidan and Nathaniel put on an impromptu heavy metal (literally)concert in our living room.

Aidan and Nathaniel were overnight guests the night before Halloween II while Mom and Dad went off for a breather from days of sick watch. The boys could not stay for Halloween II because of a previously scheduled gig for the Pollock Band, a birthday party. The Pollock Band is going to be big.

Sisters Mia,7, and Bella,6, both got the seasonal flu. They are shown here. Mia is Her Majesty the Queen, royalty from crown to toe. Bella is the undead princess whose ashen face and blackened eyes mark her as a creature fresh from the grave. Max is the swashbuckling pirate. I am the out-of-place grownup male human.

In the third household of four grandkids, only Seamus, 6, did not get sick. His sister Riley, 2, and brothers Liam, 4, and Connor, 9, all came down with the flu. Riley is the large ladybug, Liam the little green monster, and Connor the bruising Boston Bruins defenseman.


At Halloween II, all the grandkids were their old healthy selves. They spent the afternoon chasing each other and pretty much acting like fiendish ghouls, grrring monsters, and slashing pirates. In the process, they trampled plants, spread mulch where it shouldn't be, and toppled my stone walls in two places.

I didn't care. I'll rebuild the walls and put the yard back together again. Healthy again and full of it, they had a great time. They played games nonstop, pausing only for eats and a group picture on the back porch. Here is a shot of the gang on the back porch, with little Seanie charging the camera.

The most popular game by far was banging out the candy stuffed into a pinata dangling from the garage entrance. With the smallest ones going first, the kids took turns banging for the candy. They cheered whenever candy fell out and raced to scoop it up. The photo shows Liam smacking the pinata with all his considerable might.

With flu pandemic having invaded my little world by attacking my grandkids, I began to pay attention. I found myself watching C-span and listening to Rear Admiral Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

In her crisp U.S. Navy Admiral's uniform and quietly authoritative speaking voice and manner, Admiral Schuchat, a medical doctor, explained the flu pandemic for an increasingly frightened American public. She said that an estimated 22 million Americans have been sickened with swine flu since April. Of these, 3,900 have died.

She said that the data relected the virus's toll in its first six months, through October 17. Flu season in the U.S. Lasts through May. “I am expecting all these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise,” she said.

The CDC has announced that of the 3,900 deaths since April, 129 have been children. The agency estimates that 8 million children have had the swine flu, or H1N1, and that 36,000 have had to be hospitalized. Most of the deaths, about 2,900, have been people 18 to 64. The elderly, over 65, accounted for 440 deaths. Us oldies -- I'm 71 – apparently have built up some immunity to the H1N1 flu from exposure to similar viruses.

Admiral Schuchat acknowledged that vaccine shipments have been delayed and that many people have had difficulty getting the H1N1 vaccine. She asked Americans to be patient. “It's a marathon and not a sprint,” she said. “More vaccine is being ordered and delivered and used every day.”

The U.S. has ordered about 250 million vaccine doses from five manufacturers, with the largest orders made to Novartis AG and Sanofi-Aventis SA. But as the manufacturers struggle to grow the virus used to make the vaccine, estimates of its availability have been repeatedly been scaled back.

Admiral Schuchat makes the assumption that the vaccine is safe, without harmful side effects, and that all Americans should get flu shots. “We haven't so far seen anything that is of concern or extra concern,” she said, “but we're reviewing reports that we get every day.”

For a video of Admiral Schuchat new conference and further U.S Government information on the flu, click here.


The reality is that there is a good deal of ambivalence out there about the H1N1 vaccine. One doctor, Perri Klass, whose clinic vaccinates children against the H1N1 virus, wrote in The New York Times that his nonmedical friends seem evenly divided into two camps.

One half says, “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn't have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my god, that brand-new vaccine – do you really think it's safe?”

Dr. Klass says that many doctors are getting frantic calls from parents desperate for the vaccine. But, at the same time, these same doctors are coming up against parents “who are determined to refuse that same vaccine,” Dr. Klass wrote.

And wouldn't you know, I happen to have my own expert on the H1N1 vaccine: my sister Marion. She is an R.N who was formerly Executive Director of Nursing at a large Massachusetts hospital. She is running H1N1 clinics for the Massachusetts Public Health Department.

She says it has been crazy. She described the scene at an H1N1 clinic she did this week at Galvin Middle School in Wakefield, Mass. “They start lining up at 2:30 for a five to seven clinic and the parents are there with babies, strollers, kids – lots and lots of kids – and the line is way down the street. The local paper, the Wakefield Daily Item, published a picture of the line.

“With one hour of prep, it is three hours of nonstop work with needles and injections. The little ones wiggle and squeal and it often takes two nurses to hold down a child. It's still like trying to hit a moving target. We give the H1N1 first and then the seasonal. You should hear the parents. They are so grateful. 'Oh, thank God,' they say. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you...'”

Marion said that so far it has been “an awful year.” Despite the clinics working 24/7, she said, “we have just not been able to keep up.” She has now run out of seasonal flu and does not know when she will be getting more in.

Our sister Ruby, a social worker and manager at a rest home, has the same problem. Normally she would have had all her residents vaccinated by now, but her outside supplier does not have the vaccine. As of this writing, Ruby does not know when her residents will get the vaccine. Living in a group setting, the residents are considered high-risk.

Marion said she is going to pass on her next scheduled H1N1 clinic. “You know what,” she said. “It's been too much, too much of a crunch. Plus I got a little sore throat. When you think of it, at the clinic there's lots of passing germs around.”

With a meeting coming up with my health care provider at the VA on December 1, I have some decisions to make. I have already decided that I will get a shot for pneumonia. Based on my age and health profile -- over 65 and no underlying health issues -- the VA has told me that I am not eligible for the swine flu vaccine.

Even if I were, I could not get it. As of November 15, the VA clinic in Worcester, Mass. where I go had run out of it. But should I get vaccinated against the seasonal flu and H1N1?

“Absolutely,” Marion said. “I've had mine and I've given my son Jimmy his.” That's one strong argument. Marion is an informed expert who falls squarely in the corner of those who believe strongly that the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines are a must and completely safe.

But there are plenty of physicians who disagree. Dr. Joseph Mercola is one of the fiercest critics of flu vaccines. “Studies show that flu vaccines are unsafe and ineffective,” Dr. Mercola says flatly. He describes influenza as a contagious viral respiratory infection that is typically overcome naturally after two or three days of bed rest.

He says that death caused directly by the flu virus is very rare. The vast majority of “flu deaths” are in fact due to bacterial pneumonia and a weak immune system, he contends. He writes: “For most people the flu shot does not make you healthy; it does just the opposite and weakens your immune system. If you follow a healthy lifestyle, you will not have to worry about getting the flu. Take it from me – I've never received a flu shot, and I haven't missed a day of work due to illness in over 20 years.”

For more on Dr. Mercola's views and studies on which they are based, see mercola.com.

Another influential critic of flu vaccine is Dr. Larry Palevsky, a Board-certified pediatrician who trained at New York School of Medicine. He favors natural immunity over vaccine-induced immunity because the natural illness has greater influence on the health of your body.

Says Dr. Palevsky: “In medical school, the mentors that I had saw children in their practices in the 40s, 50s and all the way up to the 80s getting these flu-like illnesses who were properly treated with rest, fluids and proper supplementation.

Those kids had developmental growth spurts after the illnesses were over.
There is something to say for these viral illnesses that impart a certain boosting of the immune system of your children. And if we’re not letting them have these illnesses, what are we doing to their immune systems? Aren’t we actually hampering their overall health?”

Dr. Palevsky goes on: You need to understand that there’s a significant difference between natural immunity and vaccination immunity. When children are born, they develop natural immunity to hundreds, thousands, millions, and even trillions of microorganisms that they breathe in, eat, and touch through their skin. Their immune systems at the lining of their airways, at the lining of their intestines, and on their skin are actively protecting their body from the outside world.

Those immune systems that are intricately and specifically located in the linings are very important to create memory and protection to the organisms that they continue to breathe, eat, and touch. That immune system response then has a domino effect on creating other memory and immune responses that give your body antibodies and protection.

That’s a very important step for how the immune system matures in our children. From the linings, the immune system receives information, sends out signals to all other parts of the immune system, and creates an immune response, memory, and antibodies.
On the other hand, when you inject materials into your body, you are bypassing that crucial first step called the primary line of defense.

With vaccination you are just creating an antibody. That does NOT impart long-term immunity because it does not create the kind of memory that occurs when you breathe it in, eat it, or are exposed through the skin, and then go through the course of the natural disease.

For more from Dr. Palevsky, go to drpalevsky.com.

Now I understand better why my naturopathic friends go apoplectic when I say that I am thinking of getting vaccinated for seasonal flu and H1N1. But I also cannot take lightly the strong support of the flu vaccine by Admiral Anne Schuchat of CDC. Nor can I discount the advice of another expert that I respect, my sister Marion.

And just the other day, The World Health Organization declared that antiviral medicines and antibiotics used in a timely manner can help save the lives of people sick with the H1N1 influenza. The WHO also issued updated recommendations through its Medical Officer in the Clinical Aspects of Influenza, Dr. Nikki Shindo:

“Firstly, people in at-risk groups need to be treated with antiviral medicine as soon as possible when they have flue symptoms. This includes pregnant women, children under two years old and people with underlying conditions, such as respiratory problems. Secondly, people who are not from high-risk groups, but who have persistent or rapidly worsening symptoms should also be treated with antivirals.Thirdly, people who have developed pneumonia should be given antivirals and antibiotics because bacterial infections can develop.”

However, Dr. Shindo does not recommend antiviral treatment for people not at high risk and who are experiencing only mild illness. At 71 and in good health, that would be someone like me. Does this give me an out on my getting a flu shot?

Yet, she goes on to say: “The pandemic virus can cause very severe pneumonia even in healthy young people, though rather minor in proportion. And the virus can take lives within a week. The window of opportunity is very narrow to reverse the progression of the disease. The medicine needs to be administered before the virus destroys the lungs.”

So long and keep moving.

P.S. For good basic offical U.S. Government information about seasonal and swine flu, see flu.gov.

Hail the Queen: On Her Birthday Weekend, the Queen's Wish is my Command. I Bow and Scrape Like a Foot Servant.

Barbara and I recently celebrated her birthday, a big one, her cough-cough fifth. For an entire weekend, she ascended a queenly throne and I was her slave, bowing and scraping before her. Her every wish was my command.

She ordered me around like a foot servant and I obeyed like one, scurrying here and there with lowered head and clasped hands. All weekend, she said, “I want this” and “Do this” and I said, “Yes, dear, yes dear. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

On Saturday morning, we went for a walk around a nearby college. When I started to go one way, she said, “That's not the way I go.” I stopped in my tracks, smiled and said, “Your way is my way.” And we went her way.

It was a gorgeous fall day and she thought it would be a good day to go for a ride. “Anywhere you wish,” I said. “I'll drive, you sight-see.” She smiled. Barbara enjoys being driven. I would be the Queen's chauffeur.

We had already talked about a slow, backroads drive to Connecticut. I suggested that while in Connecticut we might visit my former wife Phyllis who had entered a rehab facility. She was dealing with serious health issues.

Now I was fully aware that I was suggesting something your average wife would do only at gunpoint, if then. I was fully prepared to have her say no, accept it, and leave it at that. After all, that would be perfectly reasonable and understandable.

But Barbara, speaking and acting like a true queen, said that visiting Phyllis would be fine with her. “I think it would lift her spirits,” she said.

She suggested that we could take our time and go the back roads and maybe stop for lunch at an out-of-the-way place. “You got it,” I said. She mentioned that there was a great place that she once ate at with her (and now my) daughter, Misha, but wasn't sure where it was. “We'll find it,” I said, “and if we get lost in the process, it might be fun.”

So I chauffeured the Queen up and down Connecticut back roads while she took in blazing autumn color and country homes. We stopped by my old house on Hidden Lake in Higginam, where we had gotten married overlooking the water. The new owner took our picture on the spot where we had exchanged vows.

In a leisurely way, we managed to end up at the restaurant that she loved so much, The Cooking Company. On a beautiful, sunny fall day, we ate outside and I have rarely seen Barbara enjoy a lunch so much.

But don't take my word for it. At the end of this post is a short video – under a minute – of Barbara having lunch at her special place. Lunch was topped off with coffee and scrumptious pastries. Now I hate to spend money. I rarely go to a restaurant or store without complaining about the prices.

However, the Queen saw no sour look and heard no exasperated word from me about prices. Stepping completely out of character, I threw paper money around like confetti.

After lunch, we meandered around Connecticut back roads in the general direction of Middletown where Phyllis was in rehab. There was no hurry; Phyllis said we could get there when we got there. There was no schedule to worry about.

Between nine grandkids, and keeping up with people, and running complicated lives, Barbara is normally like most of us -- juggling a schedule. But today the mighty, all-controlling schedule was, along with me, a craven servant of the Queen.

In keeping with the aimless spirit of the day, when we got to the rehab center, we were in no hurry to leave ... and Phyllis was in no hurry for us to leave. We chatted for a while in her room. Then I pushed her wheelchair down the hallway to a porch where she could look out upon a beautiful day.

We stayed nearly two hours. Mostly, Barbara and Phyllis, wife and former wife, chatted away like only two women can do, while I took it in with some amazement. Though on oxygen, though in a wheelchair, though deeply worried, Phyllis, the mother of my two sons Greg and Jon, clearly appreciated our visit. She was as talkative as I have ever seen her.

As I pushed her wheelchair back to the room, I couldn't help thinking back to when Phyllis and I were young, got married, and ran off together to a great adventure – three years teaching in Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. I remembered her courage in having a baby, Greg, in a little bush clinic in Kenya and then dealing with a toddler son surviving both malaria(Kenya) and dengue fever (Nigeria), deadly diseases that kill millions of Africans today.

I could never have imagined that some day we would both be old and that I would be pushing her wheelchair in a rehab center. Where did all the years go? Saying goodbye and kissing her on the cheek, I saw a picture in my mind's eye of the way she was all those many years ago.

By the time we left, it was late afternoon and the sun was still shining brightly. Normally, we share driving. But on this birthday weekend, I was the birthday girl's chauffeur. I meandered over country roads in the general direction of home. As I did, Barbara was a tourist, taking in the passing scene: old homes, farms, barns, country stores, people on bikes -- a moving, living, authentic New England panorama.

She was like a wide-eyed little girl, entranced, content, relishing being out and about on roads and in places she had never been before. She looked just like she did years ago when I took her on her first trip to Europe and my son Jon drove us through Germany, Austria, and other parts of Europe.

Normally, Barbara is the adult and I am the kid. She worries about everybody and everything, does whatever must be done, and does it to perfection. I wing it and, if I am lucky, muddle through. (A question I have never been able to answer is: What the hell is a perfectionist like Barbara doing with a flawed character like me?)

Her feelings are easily hurt. Mine aren't (though my sons disagree with this). Though great with the grandkids, Barbara likes to be with adults and do grown-up things. I could play with grandkids all the time.

Yet as I chauffeured her through the Connecticut countryside, we switched roles. She was the kid and I was the adult. She was a little girl looking like she didn't have a worry in the world, exactly what I was a striving for. I wanted this to be her best birthday ever.

I worried, again stepping out of character, that it wouldn't be. And that was the only worry I had on this weekend in this crazy, economy-crashing, warring, self-obsessed, trouble-plagued world. Barbara and her feelings were all that counted.

Sunday was the Birthday Party, with a luncheon and cake at high noon. I organized it, doing the calling, making it happen – and somehow it did. It was small with just family, with lots of kids, and a few friends. We ate, laughed, sang happy birthday,and presented Barbara with flowers, cards, and gifts.

She was happy, laughing and carrying on while I videotaped her. When I presented her my gift,a new digital camera, I told her that I fainted twice in the store -- I hate to shop -- but that "they revived me quickly." There were lots of kids, such as Liam and Bella, pictured here.


When the party was over, the celebrating was not. That night we went out and did Karaoke and a group of us sang for Barbara. She surprised everybody by going up there and singing with us and two good friends Larry and Dolores. A special moment for Barbara came when daughter Misha, son-in-law Ed, and their girls, Mia, 7, and Bella, 6, sang as a quartet.


We still weren't done. The next day, Monday and Barbara's actual birthday, was another masterpiece of a fall day. She said she would like to go for a ride. Another one. With me driving, of course. Her Highness likes having a chauffeur. I knew she liked being driven. I didn't realize she loved it.

I asked her where she would like to go. “I don't know,” she said. “Somewhere.”

“What if we just drive and see where we go?” I asked.

Totally not her usual plan-everything-to-the-tiniest detail self, she liked that idea. Where was my worry-wart, perfectionist wife?

After breakfast and a nice long, brisk walk, I steered our trusty old Corolla toward western Massachusetts. More countryside. More leisurely turns onto backroads that went who knows where. We sure didn't know. Nor did we care. Much of the time we were half lost.

But the Queen sat there watching the autumn leafy show go by as if she didn't have a care in the world ... which, for her, a total departure from her usual self. She didn't know where we were going to end up and didn't care. She was -- gasp-- winging it!

I had never seen her so childlike and irresponsible. Yes! Another kid for me to play with!

Oh, by the way, I, the supposed adult, didn't know where we were going, either. But, somehow, we ended up in Amherst, Mass. I made like I had planned it all along.

“Surprised,” I asked, “at how well I planned this?”

“Yes.”

Of course, she knew I didn't. We were in fantasyland, exactly where I hoped Barbara would be on this birthday weekend. No responsibilites. No serious thoughts. No fears. No expectations. We were leaves blowing in the autumn wind, except we were alive.

Really alive.

We walked around the center of Amherst, which was swarming with college students from UMass and Amherst College starting on a new school year. Barbara is shown here in Amherst looking -- and acting -- like a college student. There's something refreshing about milling on the streets and cafes with young college students.

Somehow the students pull you into their aura of youth, which is all about today and tomorrow. Even a brief visit into their world, where everything is exciting and everything is possible, makes you forget that you are ancient.

And wouldn't you know, but the perfect place for us to have something to eat called out to us. I pretended that I planned for us to eat there and Barbara pretended to believe me. It was aptly named “The Loose Goose.”

We ordered delicious fresh salads and sat outside watching the parade of college students chattering away, treating us to snippets of breathless conversation about romance, studies, parties, sports, petty conflicts.

Then we walked around Amherst center some more. And, you're not going to believe this, but the perfect place beckoned for us to have coffee and dessert. A table for two waited for us on the sidewalk. I snapped this picture of the table and two chairs before we occupied them.

“I had them save this spot for us,” I said.

“Good job.”

We lingered. We sipped coffee. We treated ourselves to scrumptious pastries, whose outrageous cost I accepted without a peep. We talked. We enjoyed the bright fall day and each other.

The drive home, with me the chauffeur and the Queen the rubbernecking VIP, was unhurried and mellow. I had done my best to make my Queen happy on her birthday weekend. Had I succeeded?

While I was writing this, I asked Barbara to rank her birthday weekend from one to ten with ten being the best. She gave it serious thought. “I don't usually give out tens,” she said. “How about a nine and a half?”

“I'll take it,” I said.

But she came back to me later and said, “You know, I think I have to give the weekend a ten. Thank you for a GREAT weekend!” Exclamation mark needed! Big emphasis on “great.”

It came with smile as big as her heart and a hug as genuine as she is. She meant it.

I may be just a kid, but I can tell when my wife means it and when she doesn't.

So long and keep moving.

65 Long Years Later: Five Former Foster Kids Meet Their Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Diane,Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Cheryl.

65 years is a long time.

It is especially so when that's how long it has been since you were handed over to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, shipped out to ever-changing foster homes, your family disappeared -- and you've been wondering why ever since.

For the five of us – Reggie, Victor, Marion, Ruby, and me – wondering recently gave way to answers. We suddenly learned that we have had family all those years. And, miracle of miracles, after all those years of longing, we got to talk with, hug, and laugh with members of our long-lost family.

And here are photos of them, live and kicking, proof that they are absolutely for real. Vic and Reggie sit on a couch swapping war stories with Uncle William. Ruby hugs Aunt Lillian with all her might. My niece Linda Halloran chats with Cousin Ginny.


















These joyful scenes didn't just happen. They happened because Vic decided to put flowers on our father's grave, and made a startling discovery in the cemetery: there were two George Pollocks buried there, a short distance from each other. Curiosity picqued, Vic embarked on a geneological investigation – and it led to our lost family.

The initial prod came from Vic's soulmate, Marianne. She bought flowers to put on her parents' graves for Memorial Day, which she does every year. But this year, because she knew Vic's family background, or lack of it, she bought extra flowers in case he wanted to put them on his father's grave. Since she had the flowers, Vic thought it would be a nice thing to do.

On Memorial Day, after placing flowers on the graves of Marianne's parents, the two of them went to Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston to do the same for Vic's father. When they asked a cemetery caretaker where the grave of George Pollock was, the caretaker came up with two George Pollocks.

Two? Yes, the caretaker said, he had internment cards for two George Pollocks. He led them to the first gravesite, that of our father, George Pollock. He is shown in the photo. Vic is a spitting image of him. Vic placed the flowers at the foot of the headstone. Then the caretaker carefully led them to where the second George Pollock was buried, some 50 yards away.


The caretaker stood on the spot, which was unmarked, and said, "here, along with two infants." Vic looked at Marianne. Marianne looked at Vic. Vic decided then and there to find out who this second George Pollock was, who the infants were, why the grave was unmarked, and what happened 65 years ago.

Vic and Marianne went to the Massachusetts Office of Vital Records. There they found that the unmarked grave was that of our grandfather, George Francis Pollock I. His death certificate said that his death in 1937 at 47 was a suicide, by "luminal poisoning." The certificate said that he had swallowed a fatal dose of some 100 tablets. His occupation was listed as "limousine driver."

The two infants with him were Clarence R. Pollock, one year, 11 months, buried November 8, 1924, and William H. Wilkins, one year, five months, buried on July 8, 1925. Clarence's parents, at least as of now, are unknown and William's parents were Aunt Pearl Pollock and Gerald Wilkins.

Our grandmother, Evelyn, who died in 1956 at the age of 64, was in the habit of having a child almost every year. Altogether, she had 17. Vic suspects, but cannot yet confirm, that she had one child before her marriage to George Francis Pollock I. Family rumor has it that the child was put up for adoption.

In 1916, after three girls, she had her first son, George Francis Pollock II, our father. Also according to family rumor, our dad had a twin named Patrick but Vic has not found documentation for this. He has documented that I am officially George Francis Pollock III.

As an official "the third," I felt like I got a big social promotion. I was no longer some common former ward of the state. I had three roman numerals after my name. I had pedigree. My body language said, a little respect, please.

However, this noblesse has a somber side. Of my two previous namesakes, one killed himself at 47. Why? The other, our father, died at 27 of a cerebral embolism brought on by rheumatic heart disease with mitral and aortic stenosis. At 71, I've lived almost as long as the two of them combined.

Here's the bottom line of Vic's research. Of all those children our grandmother Evelyn had, four are still alive. We have three aunts: Lucy, Lillian, and Barbara and one uncle, William. We have 51 first cousins. These are not distant relatives. They are close blood relatives.

Bingo! We have family!

Vic was blown away. Questions flew inside his head. What were these relatives like? What could they tell us about our father? What kind of person was he? What really happened way back in 1944 when the five of us were dropped into a black hole for 65 years?

His inner geneological sleuth now fully engaged, Vic went online. He researched ancestry.com. He came across the name of Diane Bowden and noticed that her family tree intersected with ours. She is the granddaughter of Mildred Esther Pollock, our father's sister. She passed away in 1997. Vic got in touch with Diane Bowen through Facebook. She is shown in the photo with Aunt Lillian.

She was surprised, to say the least, to learn from Vic that he was one of the five kids of her mother's long-deceased brother, George. An avid geneologist (talk about timely!), she quickly appreciated the enormity of the moment.

Recalling the initial E-mail from Vic, Diane wrote:

"I was so excited to get that email! I still have all of Victor’s early e-mails and I can remember reading them and at times having tears roll down my face when I learned of your early lives. YOUR email when you said something like – “for the first time in our lives we have what everyone else has – a family” – had me bawling like a baby. Family is so important to me and over the last two years, finding out all about my extended family has made it even more precious.

"The kinds of things that went through my head re: you 5 Pollocks? I just could not imagine not knowing where I came from; if I had family out there, etc. I wondered how you felt on occasions such as weddings, births, etc., - what went through your mind i.e., wishing that your parents were there to share it with you. I thought about you guys constantly and just wanted to do whatever I could to help you all find as much info as possible.... So, that, in a nutshell is what spurred me to help and do whatever I could. And besides – you’re family!!! Family helps family, right??"

When Vic asked Diane if she could set up a meeting with Aunt Lillian, she excitedly agreed – and promptly did so. And so Vic and Marianne trooped down to Whitman, Mass. to meet Aunt Lillian and Cousin Diane Bowen. Vic brought along a copy of my book, "State Kid," which has a photo of the five of us, and he flipped through it with her as they talked. Diane, now a full partner with Vic in geneological detective work, took pictures and videotaped their meeting.

In the video, Vic told his Aunt Lillian that she is "the first person I have ever met who was close enough to my father to touch him." He asked what kind of person her mother Evelyn, our grandmother, was. She said she was "great." It was clear, however, that the family lived in grinding poverty, with all those kids growing up on AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children). Yet somehow our grandmother "aways managed to put food on the table," Aunt Lillian said.

She said that sometimes neighbors would complain about the kids, "noise, smoking and drinking, nothing serious," and AFDC would hold up Evelyn's check. She would have to go down to the agency's office and stay there for hours begging for her check and being criticized, Aunt Lillian said.

The answer to why the grave of George Francis Pollock I was unmarked could not be more mundane. If Evelyn, left with a houseful of kids and no means of support, could barely put food on the table, she certainly could not afford a headstone on her departed husband's grave. She was as poor as a church mouse.

Vic is troubled that our grandfather's grave remains unmarked. Characteristically, he has volunteered to do something about it. He says he is going to "get it done soon" and keep the rest of us informed. We'll all chip in for a marker.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian what our father, George Francis Pollock II, was like. She lit up. She said he didn't drink, smoke, swear, or get in trouble and was just a "good guy." His death certificate listed his usual occupation as "none." He was apparently not healthy enough to hold a regular job, though he had mechanical ability and fixed radios at home. He was also "good-looking," Aunt Lillian said.

You can watch this video on my Facebook profile.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian if she would like to come to a family reunion to meet his four siblings. She was thrilled at the idea. Of Aunt Lillian, Vic said, "she was so warm I could hardly believe it. She just about hugged me to pieces."

When it was time to go, there were warm hugs all around. Vic, Aunt Lillian, Marianne, and Diane all agreed the visit had been all that they could have hoped for. Ruby was crying. Vic and Diane were on a roll.

Next, Uncle William.

William Henry Pollock is 78, a year older than Aunt Lillian, and our uncle. Yet he is only seven years older than I am. He was born in 1931. I was born in 1938. We are contemporaries. Aunt Lillian has a nephew older than she is. This is what can happen when there are a lot of children over a long period of time, which was the case with our family.

As our point man, Vic made the call to Uncle William. He quickly connected with "Uncle Willy." They have a lot in common. Vic spent 24 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He is shown below as a young marine. Uncle Willy served 22 years in the U.S. Navy. As they talked, ice melted away. Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty, his wife of nearly 50 years, agreed to receive Vic, Reggie, and me into their home in Dighton, Mass.

Determined to make the best possible impression, I wore an ultra patriotic hat which I felt sure would warm the heart of a military man. It had an American flag, an eagle, a big USA, and braid on the visor suggesting a high-ranking officer.

Walking down the driveway to Uncle Willy's home, Vic and Reggie designated me to say the first words to him. When Uncle Willy opened the door, tentatively and with the look of a man wondering what he was getting into, I said, "Uncle William, I'm your nephew George and these are my brothers Vic and Reggie."

He motioned us in and before he could say a word, I grabbed his hand and said, "I owe you an apology. I've been meaning to get in touch with you, meaning to get in touch with you, but before I knew it, it was 65 years. I'm sorry."

I got a crack of a smile. I thought it was funnier than that. Oh well, I thought, maybe it will get better. It did, much better. We sat at the kitchen table where Betty had set out homemade blueberry bread and cheeses, and we ended up staying for three hours. I did little comedy routines, getting a laugh here and there, and took pictures while Reggie and Vic swapped war stories with Uncle Willy. In this photo, Vic,Reggie, Uncle William, and Aunt Betty look over the family tree.

During the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, all three were in Caribbean waters aboard different warships. While the three of them were defending our country, I was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts consorting with left-leaning academics.

My standing slipped even lower when Uncle Willy noticed that he, Vic, and Reggie had tatoos on their right arms, in the same place. Tatooless, I slunk in my seat. A lot of good my super patriotic military hat did me. I would have done better to have gone out and gotten a tatoo. In the picture, the three war heroes proudly display their tatoos.

Later, when I told my son Jonathan about this incident, he said, "Dad, face it. You are not military." I'm not and Uncle Willy saw right through me. It's a good thing Vic and Reggie are military, though. Their swapping war stories with Uncle Willy was just the right way to pull him into the family. How could the poor retired naval man resist?

By the time we said goodbyes, Aunt Betty was relaxed, chatting away, and laughing easily. Uncle Willy is quieter. But he, too, gradually warmed to the idea of five lost Pollocks coming into his life. We talked about an upcoming reunion. Two or three times, he volunteered that he would like to go.

By odd coincidence, it so happens that Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty live just six miles from my son Jonathan. Jon lives with his wife Laurie and two of my grandchildren in the next town over, Berkley.

It gets even odder. Practically around the corner from Jonathan lives a Matt Pollock, about the age of Jonathan (41). Vic and Diane say that there is a 99% chance that Matt Pollock is family.

OMG!

Now the main event: on a gorgeous late-summer day, a reunion at Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass. The photo is of a lakeside scene.

With three roman numerals after my name now and a certified member of the genteel class, I arrived appropriately late. "Here's George," Vic said for everybody to hear, "late again." Reggie growled, "Where you been?"

Roman numeral-bereft commoners, I thought.

Before I could condescend, Aunt Vivian was in my arms. We wrapped ourselves around each other. I held her close and tight. She hugged me back, her head nuzzled into my shoulder.

Holding this little white-haired lady in my arms, I felt all those 65 years of pent-up emotions rushing to the surface. I took her head in my two hands, looked into her beaming face, and kissed her on the forehead. I felt complete.

Composing myself, I took her hands in mine and said in all seriousness, "Aunt Lillian, for 65 years I have been waiting for you to call. I keep asking, 'Did Aunt Lillian call? Did Aunt Lillian call?" and now, finally, you are here."

Then I made a big show of leading her away. "We have a lot to talk about," I said for everybody to hear."Let's go somewhere where we can be alone."

She giggled. This is a buoyant, beautiful lady with a sense of humor.

Aunt Lillian's daughter Virginia, whose nickname is Ginny, was there, eyes filling, taking it all in with her teen daughter, Kristen. The photo shows the three of them. Aunt Ginny had driven her Mom to the reunion. She was finding it hard to believe that all she was seeing was really happening.

Cousin Ginny, seeing how her Mom hit it off with her new family members, and especially with Ruby, said that she has never seen her mother so happy. "I've never seen her like this," she said. "Since she found out about you guys, she's so happy she's like a totally different person." Cousin Ginny said she was willing to "drive my mom anywhere so she can be with her new family."

Later, on my Facebook page, Cousin Ginny wrote: "I'm still amazed that we have all found new family after all this time. I am so happy that you all have come into my mom's life and our family."

I met Vic's partner in all of this, who was so instrumental in making this reunion possible, Diane Bowen. She's an RN who loves geneology, computers, and her young daughter Lilla who was there. She also likes her privacy. She tried to get a little with Ruby, Lillian, and Ruby's son Glen.

But a snoopy photographer (me) climbed up on a balcony and took this photo. That hand gesture she gave me means, "I love you," right? That's what I thought. Hey, that's what family is all about.

Diane: We will never forget everything you have done to make the Pollock family finally whole. You are family now. (That means you can never get rid of us.) I love you, too.

Ruby was all but overcome with what was happening. When I greeted her with a hug, she had obviously been crying. I don't think I have ever seen Ruby so happy or so emotional. She cried at the beginning of the day. She cried when the day was over.

Throughout the day, Aunt Lillian and Ruby gravitated to each other, hungrily piecing together family history, laughing, hugging, making plans. They decided to go to Aruba together on May 14 for a week at Aunt Lillian's time share, which she has had for 24 years.

Usually, Aunt Lillian goes to Aruba with a daughter (she has three daughters and a son) and the daughter's husband. She lost her own husband in 2004 and soon after the restaurant/bar they had owned and operated for many years was sold.

Since then, Lillian has often felt "like a third wheel," she said. Ruby and Aunt Lillian decided that now that they have found each other, neither one of them has to be a "third wheel" ever again.

They also talked about Aunt Lillian spending a week at Ruby's home in Oxford. They would hang out together and visit with Ruby's kids, Glen and Linda, and grandkids who live nearby. (Speaking of grandkids, as you can see in this photo, they had a ball swimming in the lake.) Ruby said that she also lives alone and that she "has plenty of room for company."

No one could have guessed that Aunt Lillian had come to the Pollock reunion under a dark shadow. Her daughter, Susan, 58, was in the hospital, a large mass having been discovered in her hip. Susan has a history of breast and liver cancer. Leaving the reunion, Aunt Lillian and Ginny went straight to the hospital.

We all expressed amazement that Aunt Lillian was able to muster up the willpower to make it to the reunion. Ginny said that her Mom "just couldn't not come. She just couldn't." Aunt Lillian, you are one courageous and determined women. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Susan is now home from the hospital but is still in pain and is undergoing cancer treatment.

Uncle William did not make it, but not because he did not want to. He was too nervous about driving so far in Labor Day traffic and getting there without getting lost. Cousin Ginny said that she would have picked him up if she had known. She said she would certainly do so for the next get-together. It is already being planned, including transportation for Uncle William.

Cheryl Chamberlain, a cousin we had met a few week's before at Vic's place in Sturbridge, Mass. could not make it. Cheryl, you were certainly missed. I'll never forget that you were the very first of our lost family that I met.

Cheryl's grandmother (Mildred Pollock) was our father's sister. Which means her mother (Theresa June Adams) - now Chamberlain - is a first cousin and Cheryl is our second cousin. Her father's name is William Henry Chamberlain Jr. Her brother is a III and he has three sons -- one of whom is a IV!!!!!

So let me get this straight. Immediately after learning that I am a III, I find out that there is a IV in the family. My "the third" crown is barely on my head when a "the fourth" rises from the unwashed ancestral masses.

And now I hear Vic and Reggie chortling, "a contender for the pretender ... a contender for the pretender..." Very funny, little brothers. By the way, in these parts, it's pronounced "contenda" and "pretenda." My goodness, does sibling jealousy of a legitimate birthright have no bounds?

Thanks for opening up this can of worms, Cheryl. But, since you are now family, I have to forgive you, don't I? So I do. The truth is, Cheryl is a sweetie. In fact, she describes herself this way: "I am a bit like an M&M; I have a tough shell on the outside but am a softie on the inside."

Of the five Pollock siblings, one has not yet been mentioned. That is Marion. Conventionally speaking, as in being able to see her, she was not there. But just because she was not there in this sense does not mean that she was not there.

She was, very much so.

She may have chosen to spend the weekend at her beloved camp in New Hampshire with her son Jimmy -- the last weekend they could be there together – but she was also very much with us at Ruby's. We have photos of four of us each hugging Aunt Lillian. But I also see Marion hugging Aunt Lillian.


In the group photos of four of us with Aunt Lillian, I see five Pollock siblings. Marion is there with us. Look at the photo of Marion below. Now look the group photo. Do you see Marion? No? I do. Look harder. See her?

Like many of us, me for example, Marion has her own way of thinking and going about things. She will go about meeting Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Diane in her own way and on her own schedule.

She does so with all our love.

The next day, Ruby and I sat at the cottage looking out at the lake and talking about the reunion. Both of us wanting to share the day's wonderful happenings with Marion, Ruby called her and put her on speaker phone so the three of us could talk. Marion was hungry to hear it all and we did our best to describe the indescribable.

Marion said that she and her son Jimmy are planning to visit Aunt Lillian at her home in Whitman, Mass. But as she talked about actually meeting Aunt Lillian after all these years, and of being reunited with her lost family, her voice began to break. She choked up. "I'm sorry, " she said, beginning to sob, "I can't talk any more."

As for the great journey into our past that Vic has been on, he said that he has "finally been able to look out the window and see the past that is MINE." He says that he feels good about clearing up "issues that we all have been carrying around for too many years." As for the future, Vic sees us maintaining contact with Aunt Lillian, Uncle Willy, and Cousins Diane, Ginny, Cheryl and other family members yet to be met.

In other words: We lost our family once. We're not going to lose it again.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. Two Puppies Steal the Show! In my mind, I was da man, the George Francis Pollock III, the family patriarch, and finally getting the attention I deserved. Then, suddenly, all eyes were on something infinitely more interesting: two puppies, Lucy and Mia. Their affection for each other and their determination to be together completely upstaged me. Me! With my three roman numerals! My niece, Linda Halloran, captured it on video. Cheryl, as an animal lover, this will resonate with you. Enjoy!

P.P.S. Neither puppy was hurt.

A Family Saga: From Childhoods in Foster Care, Five Siblings Find Their Way in the World -- and Each Other.

There are five of us. Count them from left to right: Reggie, Marion,George, Victor, and Ruby. I'm George, the oldest. On November 19, 1943, our father, George Francis Pollock died of a cerebral embolism at age 27 in Boston, Mass.

In the summer of 1944, our mother, poor and unable to cope with five little kids and with no one else able or willing to take them, handed us over to the Department of Social Services in Boston. At the time, I had just turned six and Reggie, the youngest, was a baby; he was just three months old.

Then our mother disappeared from our lives. So did whatever family we might have had.

With adoption out because our mother would not give up parental rights and with no family willing to take in five foster kids, the state did the only thing it could do: it split us up like puppies. Marion and Ruby shared some foster homes and so did Reggie, Victor and I. But for the most part, we all grew up in separate, ever-changing foster homes.

We all spent our entire childhoods wondering why other kids had a family and we did not; always asking what we had done to be so utterly abandoned and unloved; fantasizing about how wonderful it must be to have a mother and a father; feeling an awful emotional void trying to pull us even lower into the muck of life; struggling with the daily invisibility and rejection that comes with being a resident alien.

Recently, Marion did something that I had never seen her do. At Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass., she talked openly to Ruby and me about what her life in foster care was like. When I asked her what one particular foster parent was like, she instantly replied, “She was a witch.” And she proceeded to give examples of emotional and physical abuse that brought all three of us to tears.


Listening to Marion and Ruby talk about their lives in foster care, it's clear that they had it even harder than their three brothers. I asked them both, “How in God's name did you survive?” The question stopped Marion. She said she found it impossible to answer now because for so long the real question was "whether I would survive or not."

Ruby, after days of reflection, put her reply on paper. She wrote:

“The first reason is that until I was fifteen, I lived with my sister Marion who was two years older and she was family. She protected me as much as she could. I remember me getting a beating by my foster mother and Marion crying, 'Leave her alone!' The foster mother shouted, 'Shut up or you'll be next'!”

“I remember being in a different home where the foster parents had a 19-year-old biological son who was retarded. He was so big that I was afraid of him and he chased me around the cellar. I told Marion that I did not feel safe. Marion said that we could make a pact that we would never leave each other alone. I remember Marion canceling her first date because I would have been alone in the house. Marion and I have maintained this strong bond throughout our entire lives.

“However, when I had just turned 16, Marion went to nursing school and I went to a new foster home. I felt so totally alone. Again, I was afraid because of the way the foster father looked at me. At one point, he tried to grab me. I began locking myself in the bathroom when the foster mother went out.

“Finally, I ran away. I called the state but refused to give them any reason for my running away other than I was unhappy. At that point, the state told me that no family wanted a 16-year-old and therefore I would have to go to reform school. I called a former foster parent who was ill and begged her to take me in, which she did. This home was a place where I was happy and I stayed there until I graduated. Marion visited me there on weekends or when she had time off from nursing school.”

Ruby also recalled the time when I drove around to each foster home and picked up four younger siblings and took them to Boston to see a movie. I had just turned 17 and had run away myself (or, more accurately, “walked away.” I didn't think anybody would come for me and I was right; one less foster kid for the state to support.) I had a job, an apartment, my own car, and money in my pocket. I happily plunked down cash for the movie, popcorn and candy, and ice cream afterwards.

Of that day, Ruby wrote, “I remember praying that the day would never end. I knew that my brothers and I had a bond and that we were a family. I vowed that day that we would be together again.”

One motivation for Ruby had to do with our mother. “I had often been told that my mother was no good and that I would also be no good. This made me angry enough that I directed myself to be good so this prediction could never come true.”

Another savior was her love of reading. “I read two or three books a week,” she wrote, “often late into the night. Books became an escape from reality.” I relate to that. Left alone for long periods, as we all were, I also became a reader. I was rarely supervised and could always come and go as I pleased.

The same was true of Reggie and Vic. Much of the supervision Reggie got was from his older brother, me, when we were in the same foster home for several years. Just as Marion protected Ruby, I tried to look after Reggie. When I was nine and he was only three, I took him to a nearby public pool and taught him to swim. I was responsible for getting him there safely, making sure he didn't drown, and getting him back safely.

At one time in Stoneham, Mass., the five of us were as close to being together as we ever were. Reggie and I were in one home (with the Foleys). The next street over, Ruby was with one family (the Mullins) and Marion was with another (the McLaughlins). Across town, Vic was with yet another family (the Kenneys). Talk about weird!

Meanwhile, shortly after I walked away from the Foley's, Vic departed from the Kenney's in spectacular fashion – by heaving a brick through the kitchen window. But he didn't have to live in the streets or in the woods. Vic said, “The state told me that there was a vacancy at the Foley's and they were willing to take me in.”

Vic agreed and thus began a brotherly bond between Vic and Reggie, with Vic just a year older than Reggie, that continues to this day. They like nothing better than spending a day together fishing on Walker Pond at Vic's place. They became family and protectors for each other just as Marion and Ruby did.

Of my four younger siblings, whom did I bond with? I like to think that I bonded with them all. But my guess is that all four would probably describe me as a kind of odd man out – which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Nearly seven years ago when Vic was ripping up his whole life in Oklahoma plus facing a health crisis -- an intestinal failure arising from grenade wounds in Vietnam -- Reggie and I flew out there. The three of us drove Vic's pick-up truck, pulling his mobile home behind it, from Oklahoma to Massachusetts where he would stay with Ruby until he got his own place.

Early on, while I was driving, I hit and severely damaged a small car while pulling out of a shopping center parking lot. Not realizing what I had done, I just kept going. We found out what I had done only because a driver flagged us down and told us. He also said the police were looking for us.

Well, they never caught up to us, but Reggie and Vic made fun of my driving all the way to Massachusetts. And no matter what the issue, from driving to politics, it was always two against one. Vic and Reggie pretty much think the same about most things. I think differently from the two of them on most things. But, and this is what is important, we are brothers and family and that never changes.

However, Vic and Reg, I must ask you both a little question: Have you ever had a street named after you? No? Well, not to rub it in, but I think that this photo of me at the intersection of George Street and Pollock Street speaks for itself.

Marion read the above about how she and Ruby had a special bond and Reggie and Vic had a special bond and how I, the oldest, was the odd man out -- and demurred. She called me and said, "Yes, you are the one who is alone but it is because you are at the top of the pyramid. You are at the pinnacle and by definition there is only room for one there. You have always been the one that we looked up to. You are the father of our family."

"How can I write that?" I asked her.

"If you are a writer, you can write it."

So, there, I wrote it.

Separated in early childhood, unwanted and unloved, emotionally abused, depending entirely on ourselves and each other, the odds against the five of us were impossible. We were marked for failure and misery. Instead, all of us not only survived but thrived.

Marion went to nursing school because, as she is the first to admit, it offered a place to live. To pay for tuition, she got scholarships, took out loans, and worked part-time. After that, she went to Salem State and got a B.A Degree in nursing. She didn't stop there. She went to Boston University and received a Master's Degree in nursing.

Marion eventually became Director of Nursing at a major hospital. Today, turning 70 in January, she still works part time as a nurse seeing elderly patients and helping them with such things as prescriptions.

Ruby left her foster home at 18 and immediately got a job at an insurance company in Boston. Her strategy was "working harder than other employees." Her goal was to "reunite my family." To save on rent, she took an apartment with another young women. She worked, saved, and went to college. She eventually earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from Worcester State College and today is responsible for the care of residents at a large and respected rest home.

Vic, Reggie, and I all ran off into the military. Vic and Reggie joined the U.S. Marine Corp. I went into the U.S. Army. See how different we are? They do the same thing; I do something different. Vic made a career of the U.S. Marines, rising to the highest enlisted rank and serving as a Drill Instructor. He also took college courses over many years, earning a Master's in Public Administration.

Reggie left the U.S. Marine Corps after serving four years. Unlike the rest of us, he has no academic gene. Instead, he started out as a welder and went up from there, eventually earning a good living in New Hampshire as an expert metal craftsman. If it's metal, Reggie can make it do anything. He built a beautiful metal bench for me, for example.

Unlike Vic and Reggie, I was a lousy soldier. At a Nike missile site in California, I scanned a radar screen for Russian aircraft. This was at the height of the cold war, 1956-58. I didn't like how an arrogant, Napoleon-like battalion commander talked to me during a barracks inspection, and told him so.

I immediately got busted from Specialist Third Class to private and barely escaped being court-martialed. The only reason I wasn't was because I was a short-timer, with only a few weeks to go. As soon as I got out of the army, I applied to college having no idea how I was going to pay the tuition or living expenses.

But good fortune smiled on me. I made the Merrimack College varsity hockey team as a freshman and got an athletic scholarship. That took care of tuition. Thanks to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, I got loans that, along with working part-time in a supermarket, covered living expenses. I paid back every cent over 10 years.

After graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass, I went to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts where I received a Master's of Arts Degree. I became a teacher for three years in Africa, first in Kenya and then in Nigeria. I spent the rest of my career in publishing as a writer and editor of classroom learning materials.

Today, the five of us have each other, our own homes, families, and full lives surrounded by what we all dreamed of as foster kids – family. Just look at this picture of the Pollock gang at a recent family reunion. How far away is that from where the five of us started?

So long and keep moving.



P.S. Next time: Vic, a fellow with a curious mind, investigates our father's family and makes some remarkable discoveries. He finds that our father was one of 15 children, that we have three living aunts and one living uncle, and that we have 51 first cousins. And, wonder of wonders, we just had a joyous reunion with Aunt Lillian, Uncle William and long-lost cousins. Thus do the Pollocks come full circle, from no family to a large loving one opening our hearts and homes to long-lost family members. It is all that we have ever dreamed of -- and far, far more. Next time, Aunt Lillian and Uncle Willy.

Surging E-Books: The Beginning of the End of the Paper and Printed Book?

Around the corner from me, Tatnuck Bookseller closed about two years ago after more than 20 years and I still haven't gotten over it. Every time I drive by the cookie-cutter casual restaurant that has opened on the spot, I recall how much I used to enjoy going to Tatnuck Bookseller to browse, check out new books, and hang out.

There is nothing like wall-to-wall books. They fire up the brain. All that knowledge! All that adventure! They feed the soul. Any number of books beckoning to satisfy your deepest yearnings!

My wife Barbara, shown here reading, is a dedicated book reader. When a new book comes out that she wants to read, she gets it from the Worcester Public Library – free. She and millions like her expect her beloved books and the public library to go on as always. But, sorry dear, they may not – as we shall see.

While I read more newspapers, magazines, and online blogs than books, I occasionally ask Barbara to pick up a new book for me from the library. I'm too cheap to pay $27.50 for a new hardcover. At Tatnuck Bookseller, I used to dip into lots of different books and go away satisfied for the cost of a cup of coffee and The New York Times. Maybe if I and others like me were more willing to spring for $27.50 books, Tatnuck Bookseller would still be in business.

But the fact is that Tatnuck Bookseller is no more in my neighborhood (though it still has a struggling store in Westboro, MA.) and it's fate is shared by more and more booksellers across the country. The book industry is under pressure as never before.

Book publishers, though still pushing big-name authors (Dan Brown of the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code”) and ghost-written, news-pegged books (by Joe the Plumber, by the mistress of Bernie Madoff) and $100 textbooks (in every college bookstore), are in a monumental struggle for survival.

Why? Price resistance for sure, in these hard times. Yet the high cost of books is no new problem. What is new is the recent, rapid rise of formidable new competition: Electronic Books.

After years of promise and little more, sales of E-books are soaring. They hit a record $24 million in June, a 136.2 percent increase from a year earlier. Sales of E-books are the fastest growing segment of book publishing, increasing 68.4% since 2007. These figures are from the Association of American Publishers.

The sharpest increases came early in 2008 just after the release of Amazon.com's Kindle. The Kindle is an electronic device that emulates a book and whose reading experience, in the words of Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, makes the device “disappear.” The first two Kindle releases sold out quickly. In the first quarter of this year, Forester Research estimates that more than 900,000 Kindles were sold. (Amazon does not disclose Kindle sales.)

The Kindle -- thin, book size, 10.2 ounces, able to hold 200 full-length books – offers free wireless connection almost anywhere via Sprint 3G network. E-ink technology gives text a print-like appearance. It has a keyboard. It includes a Web browser. You can browse the Web, send and receive e-mail, and play games.

When you're reading a traditional book and come across an unfamiliar word, it's a pain to pause and flip through a 5-pound paper dictionary – if one happens to be at hand. The Kindle has a built-in dictionary. You just click on an unfamiliar word and its definition pops up. A built-in vocabulary-builder. Text too big or too small? You can adjust it.

With Kindle, an E-book from Amazon's vast digital library is available almost instantly, any time, from anywhere. No ten-ton printing presses. No “dead-tree” paper. No warehouse. No shipping and distribution. No big price. Just $9.99, even for bestsellers.

Yes, the Kindle is one hot 21st century digital communication tool. Oprah Winfrey told millions of her adoring fans that it is her “favorite new gadget.” No wonder the book industry is in a state of panic. It should be.

The Aug 3 issue of The New Yorker has a great article on the Kindle by Nicholson Baker. In the story, Baker describes how the Wall Street Journal cultural critic, Steven Johnson, was alone in an Austin, Texas restaurant with a Kindle 2 when he was “seized by the urge to read a novel.” Within minutes, thanks to Kindle's 3G hookup with Sprint wireless – called Whispernet – Johnson was reading “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith. The experience convinced Johnson that “writing and publishing would never be the same.”

Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group confided to Newsweek that for weeks he had been doing all his recreational reading on the Kindle 2. To him, the Kindle 2 offered a “fundamentally better experience” than did a paper and ink book. Weisberg said that he believed that Jeff Bezos had built a machine to make a cultural revolution.

For a still-young (45) former geek and Princeton graduate, this would be Jeff Bezos' second making of a revolution. The first was creating Amazon.com to sell books online, which made him a multibillionaire (along with his lucky parents who put up almost everything they had). And now, with the Kindle, he is out to revolutionize the book itself.

Bezos praises the traditional book as an admirable “perfection” that deserves to have thrived for centuries.Yet -- there is no polite way to say this -- his Kindle is out to kill the book as we know it. With the Kindle (along with new competitors -- read on) he is well on his way to doing so.

Jacob Weisberg has pronounced the book, after 500 years, to be on its deathbed. He said, “Printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.”

In an article in Slate entitled “How Kindle Will Change the World,” Weisberg wrote:
“The notion that physical books are ending their life cycle is upsetting to people who hold them to be synonymous with literature and terrifying to those who make their living within the existing structures of publishing. As an editor and lover of books, I sympathize. But why should a civilization that reads electronically be any less literate than one that harvests trees to do so? And why should a transition away from the printed page lessen our appreciation and love for printed books? Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects.”

Weisberg is less optimistic as to the fate of book publishers and, by extension, book sellers. He wrote:
“Amazon, which is selling most new books at a loss to get everyone hooked on the Kindle, will eventually want to make money on them. The publishers will be squeezed at best and disintermediated at worst. Amazon is already publishing Stephen King. In the future, it could become the only publisher a best-selling author needs. In a world without the high fixed costs of printing and distribution, as the distance between writers and their audiences shrink, what essential service will Random House and Simon & Schuster provide?”

E-books? Don't be surprised.

Amazon may be the first out of the gate in the race to capture the lion's share of the E-book market, but powerful competitors have quickly jumped in. Sony Electronics just introduced two new electronic reading devices to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition. The new devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader. They will sell for $199 and $299 respectively and will go on sale later this month.

Sony's devices are available in retail outlets like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, but their sales have lagged those of Amazon's Kindle, which is sold only online. To compete with Sony, Amazon recently reduced the price of the Kindle from $359 to $299. For its part, Sony has met Amazon's e-book price of $9.99.

Sony's new devices and price cuts may not be enough to help it catch up to Amazon. Unlike the Kindle, Sony's electronic readers cannot connect wirelessly to an E-book store. Owners of Sony readers must plug their devices into a computer to buy and download e-books. Sony has also not yet developed a version of its software for other devices like the iPhone.

Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookstore chain measured by revenue, has also jumped into the nascent E-book market. Seeing the writing on the wall in the form of declining book sales and rising E-book sales, Barnes & Noble has announced that it will launch its own e-bookstore. It will sell bestsellers for $9.99, in line with Amazon.

Barnes & Noble says it will offer more than 700,000 titles (including 500,000 public domain books from Google Inc.), and expects to offer more than one million E-book titles within a year. Amazon.com's Kindle store currently sells about 300,000 E-books. Sony's E-book store sells about 300,000 E-books, while offering free access to about 500,000 out-of-copyright books collected by Google.

What Barnes & Noble has done is make the most of its greatest assets: physical stores and a strong national presence. It has integrated its physical stores and E-book store, primarily through the iPhone. At the moment, Kindle E-books cannot be read on iPhone and other electronic readers but soon will be.

If the paper and printed book is indeed on its last legs, that does not necessarily mean that Barnes & Noble is. It is a powerful national bookseller. If it can no longer sell books, it will sell E-books. It is either that or go the way of Tatnuck Booksellers around the corner from me.

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the seeming inevitability of eventual E-book supremacy are our young people. In their readiness to accept and adapt to new technology, they seem wired differently than earlier generations. Many of today's 12-year-olds have their own cell phones and routinely chat up their friends on Facebook and tweet them on Twitter. The internet to them is as natural as breathing.

Books? For many young people, books are stodgy throwbacks to their parents' school days, soooooo last century. The young woman shown here reading a Kindle on the beach is more normal. What voluntary reading they do is online.

They read old-fashioned books when they have to, when old teachers (pushing 30!) say they have to if they want to pass. They transition seamlessly from the paper book to the E-book.

Educators who have always revered the book and assumed that it was both essential in learning and would last forever, watch their young student texting and surfing the web on cell phones and other mobile devices – and see their world of books being turned upside down. Like Barnes & Noble, they must do a major transition from traditional school books to E-books or kiss professional lives goodbye.

Except for some veteran educators resisting the trend toward E-books (dead-enders?), education is moving headlong into an E-book future. In this not-too-distant future, high school students will carry in their backpacks not books but a laptop and an electronic reading device. They will be walking virtual libraries connected to electronic reading 24/7.

At Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA., that future is here. There 16-year-old Tia M. Alliy, who aspires to become a doctor or an engineer, is getting ready to begin her junior year. Like most of her friends, she does most of her school research online with her laptop. The laptop is a school requirement.

She rarely cracks open an actual book. Ditto her classmates, many of whom have never used a library card catalogue or checked a book out of a library. And now the library at Cushing Academy is a mirror image of them. This summer the library underwent extensive renovation to reflect this wholesale transformation in student reading and studying habits – away from paper and print and toward digital reading and learning.

The library at this independent, coed boarding school has been transformed into a cybercafe and coffee shop, with a faculty lounge for more interaction between teachers and students. The library's 20,000 traditional volumes are being replaced by electronic texts, and E-readers – such as the Kindle. The books are being donated to other area schools and charities. Soon the library at Cushing Academy will be virtually bookless.

Headmaster James Tracy, an avowed book lover, finds a bookless library exciting. He says that the library is “going from 20,000 books to millions.” He says he loves the idea of “carrying in the palm of my hand the entire Library of Congress. As a lifelong learner, there is nothing more exciting.”

At the college level, the $100 and even $200 textbook is common. For decades, publishers and authors of college textbooks have fed on a largely captive market. If a $200 textbook is required for a course, the student has had no choice but to buy that book. Professors routinely assigned their own books and colleges have traditionally looked the other way.

Serving what economists call a “non-elastic” market in which customers have no choice but to buy, textbook prices have risen much faster than inflation. Financially, it has been sweet for textbook publishers and authors but decidedly bitter for college students and their families struggling to pay for college.

But now, with a surge in E-textbook sales, traditional textbook publishers are rushing to defend their lucrative turf in college bookstores. Pearson Publishing, the largest textbook publisher in the U.S., is in the forefront. Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokesperson, said, “We believe the world is going digital, but the jury's still out on how this will evolve. We're agnostic, so we'll provide digital, we'll provide print, and we's see what our customers want.”

Much will depend on California and Texas, which together dominate the nation's textbook market. As these states go, so do most other states. This summer California has announced an initiative that would replace some science and math texts with free “open source” digital versions. California hopes to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year – money that big publishers like Pearson will not be getting.

“In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks, “said William M. Habermehl, superintendent of the 500,000-students Orange County, Calif. Schools. “They can be better that traditional textbooks.”

Eyes squarely on the rich textbook market, Amazon.com this June came out with a bigger machine, the Kindle DX. There are new pilot programs at several universities, including Jeff Bezo's almer mater, Princeton, testing the Kindle DX's potential as a replacement for textbooks.

Bezos also sees the Kindle DX as the new digital platform for struggling newspapers, such as The New York Times. I read The New York Times every day and have done so for a half century. Am I addicted? I guess.

But I am tired of paying its price, which has gone up faster than even college textbooks. Six bucks for the Sunday Times is too rich for my blood. It was $3.50 two years ago. I can subscribe to the Times on the Kindle DX for $13.99 a month.

Meanwhile, the big general-interest book publishers are taking a deep breath and diving into the E-book waters. After dithering for weeks, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group just announced that it was going to release Dan Brown's new book, “The Lost Symbol”(a follow-up of his blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code”) as an E-book “simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15.”

I don't have a Kindle ... yet. I can't bring myself to pay $299 ... yet. It's not easy being an old tightwad. But, just as Tatnuck Bookseller had to sell books or die, I have to read or die.

There is no question that it is only a matter of time before I dig painfully in my pocket and give in to the inevitable and buy a Kindle – and read E-books and my beloved New York Times on an electronic reading device that I carry everywhere and can't live without.

So long and keep moving.


P.S. On a personal note, my novel, “State Kid: Hero of Literacy,” is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store for $9.99. The hardcover version is a 407-page coffee table tome costing $89. When you read my novel on your Kindle, you save $79! What a deal! Order today! (The previous link takes you to a sales pitch for the Kindle. Jeff Bezos knows how to sell! Search for "State Kid: Hero of Literacy." The book title and cover will come up. Click on the title and you get a summary of the book. You have to have a Kindle to read E-books in the Kindle E-Book store.)

P.P.S. Hey, I gotta live, don't I? That reminds me of a story. Years ago when I was an editor at an educational publishing company, I was begging my boss for a raise. “I got a wife and kids, a mortgage, bills,” I whined. “I gotta live, don't I?” He paused, leaned forward, and said evenly, “not necessarily.”

Transgenders: Either You're a Boy or a Girl, Right? If Only It Were Always That Simple.

Having just played a tough, grunt-punctuated game of singles tennis, I stand in the men's locker room stretching in front of a full-length mirror. I'm soaked with sweat. I straighten, tighten the abs, and pull my shoulders back. In the mirror, I see something startling popping out of my wet top – a couple of nipples.

I immediately go over to Jim Kane, minutes before my enemy on the court but now my post-combat friend. “Look at this,” I said, rearing my shoulders back. “I'm growing breasts.”

“I see them,” he said with a big smile and chuckling.

“But you can't feel them; you can only look.”

We both have a hearty laugh.

Notwithstanding my flaunting my nips in a locker room, there is no doubt that, with my bald head and grey goatee and deep voice, and despite the pink water bottle I carry (with a breast cancer symbol on it), I belong in the men's locker room and not the women's. More to the point, I have no doubt that I belong there.

Pink water bottle? Breast cancer symbol? Well, the truth is I have a feminine side that's all about feelings, nurturing, personal relationships, and support for women. I have women friends in which it is all friendship and zero sexuality. When I'm with them, it's like a couple of women talking.

This is not to say that I do not have a sexual interest in women. In this respect, I'm a normal dirty old man. As such, it is easy for me to joke about breasts. At doubles tennis the other day, one of the guys brought a squishy, flesh-colored ball with a nipple on it. We all had fun squeezing it and generally carrying on like like teen-age boys copping their first feel.

But, beneath the hilarity, I have to be honest: When I saw those nipples in the mirror, I didn't much like it. After showering and putting on a dry tee-shirt, I struck the same pose in front of the mirror. No nipples. Good. Still all guy. And it had been good for a laugh in the men's locker room.

Transgenders and their families would find nothing amusing in my little locker room routine. To them, a guy growing breasts or a gal just as fervently wanting to get rid of them is a deadly serious determinant of personal identity and, indeed, survival.

Ethan St. Pierre, 47, of Haverhill, MA, was once a woman but transitioned herself into a man. As she began to look more and more like a he, St. Pierre said it cost him his job at the security company where he worked.

He was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “Once they saw the changes that my body was making, they decided that I could no longer do my job. They started taking my responsibilities away from me one at a time until they finally told me that I was no longer welcome.”

Lorelei McLaughlin is a transgender person from Northhampton, MA who can't get a job. She says she is constantly rejected for positions because of her sexual identity. McLaughin, 36, was born as a male but always felt female. For the past three years, she has been living full-time as a woman.

McLaughlin recently testified before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts Statehouse on H.1828, the Transgender Bill. Supporters of transgender rights say the bill will provide people like St. Pierre legal protections at work, in public accommodations, and in housing. The bill would make “gender identity or expression” an additional category in the state's civil rights and hate-crime laws.

Also testifying in favor of the bill was Enoch E. Page, 58, an associate professor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was born a female but has always felt like a heterosexual male. He had sex reassignment surgery in 1997 in San Francisco.

Opposition to the bill is fierce. Critics say that people like St. Pierre suffer from Gender Identity Disorder and other neuroses and what they need is help, not a new law imposing their problems on everybody else. The Transgender Bill, according to these critics, would lead to a breakdown of privacy in restrooms, locker rooms, and other single-gender facilities. They say that women's bathrooms would be opened to sexual predators.

Kristian M. Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute in Woburn, MA said “This is a far-reaching piece of legislation that will disrupt the privacy of bathrooms, showers and exercise facilities including those in public schools. This bill opens the barn door to everybody. There is no way to know who of the opposite biological sex is using the facility for right purposes.”

Another critic is Chanel Prunier of Shrewsbury, Mass., who is executive director of the Coalition for Marriage and Family. She cites a case in Bangor, Maine -- where a law similar to the proposed Massachusetts Transgender Bill has passed. The parents of a 10-year-old boy in the 5th grade successfully petitioned for his/her access to the girls' bathroom because of his “identifying” as a girl. The School Department had previously accommodated the boy with his own bathroom in an attempt to respect the privacy of pre-pubescent girls and also to protect the boy from harassment.

Ms. Prunier says that we should not have to “indulge” a 10-year-old boy just because he “feels” that he is really a girl. In an op-ed letter, she wrote: “Transgendered is self-defined by the claimant, and is based solely on one's conception of oneself on that particular day. There's no requirement of a doctor's proclamation, surgery, or hormone therapy.”

A particularly harsh critic is Peter Shultz of Assumption College in Worcester, MA. In a letter to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, he wrote: “Perhaps we can find ... appropriate closets where these human beings can go so they will not threaten the moral fabric of our society.”

My wife Barbara has problems with the bill. She said, “I'm sorry, I don't want a man who thinks he is a woman to be able to walk into the women's restroom where I am. I'm just not comfortable with that.” A former second-grade teacher, she also thinks that one 10-year-old should not be accommodated at the expense of all the other students.

She made this analogy: “Just because one student has a peanut butter allergy, do you deny peanut butter to all?” But she is quick to add that in every individual case in schools involving gender, accommodations can and should be made for the student. She says that someone coming into the women's restroom dressed as a woman and “going through the process” would be acceptable to her.

Sponsors of the Transgender Bill say it is a needed expansion of the state's civil rights protections and characterizing it as a “bathroom bill”is a gross distortion. Calling it a threat to public safety from sexual predators, they say, is a scare tactic plain and simple.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Carl Sciortino, Democrat of Medford, said: “What it allows for is that every person, including transgender people, can use facilities that are consistent with their gender identity in a safe and private manner. Anyone that uses a facility to commit a crime or does something indecent can be prosecuted under current laws and this bill does nothing to change that.”

(Of this comment, my wife Barbara said, “It would be a little late after a crime has been committed, wouldn't it?”)

Governor Deval Patrick supports the Transgender Bill, calling it “a very straightforward question of human and civil rights.” He dismissed concerns about privacy in restrooms. “Somehow or other, we manage at home with bathrooms that don't have men and women signs on them. I think we can probably figure that out in public spaces, too.”

A dozen states already prohibit discrimination against transgenders, though New Hampshire recently defeated a bill similar to the Massachusetts bill. Of that defeat, Chanel Prunier wrote: “Outraged mothers recently led a fight to defeat a similar bill in New Hampshire, citing the potential for abuse by predators, and the dangerous ambiguity of who is legally transgendered and who is not... Peeping Toms are certainly a worthwhile concern for women here in Massachusetts.”

On the national level, lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their-kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees. The guidelines are considered a breakthrough by transgender advocates. Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said that President Obama is “making a very clear statement that transgender people won't be discriminated against.”

Focus on the Family, a conservative evangelical group, said the guidelines were “unnecessary political action to appease a special interest group.” The group criticized the new guidelines as “government affirmation” of behavior it defined as “one of the many sexual sins that is outside God's created intent and desire for us.”

The battle over transgenders is joined. The issue is primal. It brings us all the way back to that first question that is asked of every newborn baby: Is it a boy or a girl?

It forces us to go to the heart of just what it is to be a man or a woman. It requires us to try to understand the men and boys living in the shadows among us who feel that they really are women and girls, and for whom breasts are a passionate dream.

We must look into the hearts of women and girls who hate their breasts, are repulsed by the very thought of them, and want passionately to live as males with hair on their chests, not to mention on their faces and legs.

Others are in gender nowhere land. Not sure if they are male or female, they don't know whether they want full breasts or a thatch of hair on their chests. For them, discovering their true gender identity is the driving force of their lives and the source of endless torment.

What we know for sure is that not all guys born male are necessarily standard-issue heterosexuals like me. Nor are all gals born female standard-issue heterosexuals. Ethan St. Pierre is one example out of a female-to-male transgender and Loreli McLaughlin is one example of a male-to female transgender.

Because so many live in the shadows, no one knows how many transgenders, and transgenders-in process, and transgenders wannabes there are in the U.S. The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that between ¼ and 1% of the population is transsexual.

That is not a lot but, counting growing numbers of straight transgender advocates, it is enough to bring about new state transgender legislation and federal anti-discrimination guidelines. Surprising to me -- and one reason I am writing this -- is that the reality of transgenders among us has walked into my little life, and hit me over the head.

I have known Tim, not his real name, almost all his life. As a little boy, he was quiet, friendly, with an easy smile. I saw a boy no different from my own sons, except he wasn't into sports the way they were.

When he was about 20, he decided that he was really a woman and that he wanted to transition himself into one. Now 24 and living with his parents and undergoing hormone treatments, he still dresses as a man but is taking hormones and is slowly transitioning into a female. His breasts are developing.

His parents, friends of mine for many years, have gone from initial shock, to disbelief, to bewilderment, to acceptance. While never wavering in their love for their only son, they do struggle to understand why this is happening and how best to deal with it.

Tim's father wishes that Tim would talk to him more about what he is going through so he can understand and be better able to help. But Tim has not been able to discuss his gender change openly with his father. Tim, if you ever read this, just let me say that your mom and dad and other people who love you are there for you in any way they can. That I know.

Speaking for myself, I see you are changing from a man into a woman, and I know it has to be hell on earth. But, to me, you're still the same old Tim that I have known forever. Say the word, and I will be happy to strangle a demon or two for you.

You are transitioning to a new gender, new identity, and new life. What could be more intense, daunting, and frightening? But if you gather up all the love and support you can get, over time, your being a woman becomes the new normal.


Meanwhile, the subject remains raw, painful, and replete with ambiguities and emotional traps. Will the present path, avoidance and letting things take their course, work? It may keep the pain manageable in the short run, but what about the long term?

I don't know. But I sure am pulling for my friend Tim. As I said to his dad, “I'm looking for the day when we can all joke about this, but right now it just isn't funny.”

This past summer, Barbara and I were visiting a longtime dear woman friend, Elaine, at her lakeside camp in Connecticut. It was a beautiful late summer day and Elaine was in a mood to talk to Barbara. Normally when the two get to yakking, I get restless after a while.

This day I didn't. I somehow sensed that it was important that the two talk without me trying to cut it short. I told them to talk all they want – all afternoon if they felt like it – and I went for a hike around the lake.

They did talk all afternoon. They talked about all the good and bad times they had shared over 29 years of friendship. During all that time, Elaine rarely talked about her brother, but today she did – at length.

Among many other things, Elaine talked about how her brother had abruptly decided late in life that he was a woman. After a long marriage and with three grown children and grandchildren and just a few months after the death of his wife, he morphed from a man to a woman. He went from pants to dresses, from short hair to long hair, from aftershave to perfume and earrings.

Elaine spoke feelingly of the intense anger and confusion that this metamorphosis caused throughout the family. At 70 years of age, dad, gramps, uncle, brother was now a woman and everybody could hardly believe it much less accept it. Elaine asked him to please not visit in woman's clothing. She died a few months later still troubled and not being able to fully accept her brother as a sister.

You know what? My “comedy” routine that I started out with may have gotten laughs, but now I don't think it's appropriate or funny. In the light of what I have just written, I probably should go back and cut it out.

On the other hand, maybe my men's locker room skit should stay as an example of humor that no transgender person would find funny. It can be a reminder to myself and others that while we may be secure in being a boy or a girl, there are fellow human beings among us who are not – and who want that more than anything else in the world.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. To learn more about transgender issues, read Matt Kailey's tranifesto.com. Matt spent the first 42 years of his life as a female. He is now a transsexual male. He is the author of Just Add Hormones.