by Keoni Lewis

Created on: May 26, 2008

I knew little of my mother when I was growing up. Up until I was 5 or 6 years old I never knew I had a mother. As a child, I watched my friends wait after school for their mothers to pick them up. I often wondered what it was like to have a mother like I would see on television in shows such as Leave it to Beaver' or The Cosby Show.' A mother that would wake me up for school, prepare breakfast, shuttle me to school, pick me up from school, have an after school snack and help me with my homework. Make a tasteful dinner and tuck me into bed. But I never knew what that was like. Because I never knew I had a mother.

I lived with an aunty. She was my mother's half sister. She was very strict. It didn't help that I was a very curious and adventurous child. I got into many an altercation with kids older than me as well as with teachers. Being only 5 years old I didn't recognize what I was doing wrong but I knew that I would get a lashing for what the "adults" called wrong. I had gotten myself into some trouble one day and knew that I would receive one of these lashings if I went home. So I decided it was time for me to relocate and ended up running away taking up residence with a good friend of mine. I was ignorant to a time frame but I did remember that I finally had to be brought home because the police were looking for me. My friend's parents asked my aunty if they could adopt me. I only remember my aunty saying "NO!" and later "You aren't living with no n*gg*rs!" I had never heard that word before. But it sounded really bad in the context she used it. I ran to the back of our apartment and hid. Crying from a place deep within that I always kept private. Then, my mother came.

She seemed very tender and gentle. I felt immediate warmth. I could've followed her anywhere. I searched my memory trying to identify this face. It seemed very familiar to me yet very foreign. She brought me to her apartment and as I walked through the door there were 3 other strangers staring at me. I walked in with my stuff in tow and was accompanied to a small room with a bed and army cot. Mother told me the cot was mine. It took some getting used to it since I spent most of my nights on a cold tiled kitchen floor behind a Lazy Boy chair. The 3 other strangers followed us into the room and sat on the bed watching as I unpacked my belongings. They were my sisters and younger brother. I would find out later that one sister was my only real blood sister. The transition took a week or two but

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