The Calling.
I know its gonna be a good Mary Chapin Carpenter cd when there is a song that makes me cry. I found one at first listen on Time Sex Love, Grand Central Station upon my first live listening, and now the Calling. The dictionary defines “ a calling as • An inner urge or a strong impulse, or • An occupation, profession, or career. As Mary Chapin Carpenter was starting her professional career, I was starting mine… I am not sure about Mary Chapin but my calling found me….
Mine didn’t begin in NJ or CT or DC, it began in Massachusetts where through older friends or mentors, I decided to pursue a career in Jewish Communal Services but because I was advised that I could not get into Brandeis University and because I am a first generation college graduate and couldn’t afford it, and was made to believed that I wasn’t good enough, I entered Salem State as a Social Work major.. While at Salem two things happened.. (well more than that but those don’t pertain to my calling), I found a child welfare expert to mentor me and the program I was in was accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. My mentor, asking me why I choose child welfare, knew I that I had to tackle the hardest of all disciplines but also knew I that I needed exposure. She sent me to DSS in Lynn. They say…”Lynn Lynn the city of sin, you never come out the way you go in” that was true for me… After working with a 5 year old aphasic child and a 12 year old pregnant with her second baby, I found something I wanted to do…. But I knew I needed more education. Due to a series of missteps and errors, I ended up accepting the Masters Program at NYU. So I moved to NY for one year to attend NYU. While at NYU, I was placed on the lower east side in a child and adolescent mental health clinic. i met lots of kids who didn’t want to talk so I played for hours with them, including the gang wannabe teens. You cant imagine what that experience did to a 23 year old.
After graduating from NYU in 1983, I started working in Foster Care as an emergency worker for 14,500 a year. At that salary, I paid rent, student loans and survived (I guess it was a calling). My calling took to me the South Bronx and most of the project of NYC. It took me prison, both Rikers Island and Bedford Women’s prison to bring children to visit their parents. My calling had me spend countless hours in court and in hospital emergency rooms, including the night I slept on the gurney in a city hospital waiting for a child psych bed to open up at Kings County Hospital. My work exposed me to parents with AIDS and their HIV infected kids, crack addicts, heroine junkies, child abusers, sexual molesters and their compulsions. I had to take toddlers for GYN exams for their molestation. I worked with suicidal children as young as 5 and pregnant teenagers.
I got scabies and ringworm but never the chickenpox. I was peed on, and vomited on but clothes can be cleaned, diapers can be changed and hands can be washed. I met kids who were burned with cigarettes and irons. I met survivors of domestic violence and domestic disputes. I met kids who muled drugs from Nigeria and Mexico. I saw burned out buildings, crack houses and worked with women who prostitute. I met parents who tried to sell their kids at Port Authority and those who abandoned their kids in the hospital.
I was honored to bring children to families that would later adopt them. I attended multiple adoption hearings and testified to terminate parental rights but 85% of the children I worked with were released to their parents or relatives. The rest were adopted by people who wanted to adopt them. And ofcourse, I testified before Judge Judy in Manhattan Family Court.
I parented kids when no one else was there to parent them and I was there to love them when no one else did either. I parented parents because no one else seemed to do that either. I made sure children were safe and even told parents that their children had died when one little boy had a seizure and could not be revived. I have been to more funerals for children than I would have liked to attend. Deaths from Aids, child abuse and SIDS….
I later worked to get teenagers back into school programs or to help their families when they felt their kids were out of control. I helped gay and lesbian kids try to find themselves when their parents didn’t understand them. I helped gang involved or gang wannabe kids, pregnant teens, immigrant teens getting adjusted. I met teenagers with bad skin and raging hormones. I met kids who sold their Nintendo for winter coats and had to work to help their families out. I met teenagers who taught me about Eminem and teens I taught about Bob Dylan. I met their parents who needed help parenting them and many time I was the parent when the parents were exhausted. I met kids on drugs and parents on drugs. I met those kids who were adopted 10 years prior and were having difficulties during adolescents. All I did was help them when and where I could.
I found that I actually acquired a second calling….. teaching. Oh, great another calling where you don’t make much money…( I have made less money in my career than Paris Hilton spends on Doggie Clothes) – I started teaching four years ago on a part time basis- I have taught parenting classes, foster parent classes and college courses. I have taught courses in thing I have known…. Now I am a teacher full time. I teach inexperienced child welfare workers how to figure out if a child is safe and to keep children safe. I am suppose to teach them how to help people and how to form connections. Some come looking for a city job, some come looking for benefits, some come looking for a way to help and some will find that they cannot stand the people that they encounter and some will not care about them but then there are some who will find their calling. And I am sure I will find them….
Just as I was found…
