Tag Archives: PINS Petition

Chasing Home

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Published in 1961, the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary defines home as “One’s own dwelling place…the house in which one lives with his family” and “a place of refuge and rest.” It seems like I have been chasing home all my life.

Losing home at any age is soul-splitting. It wounds the heart. It slaughters hope. It can utterly exterminate one’s sense of worth. When a child loses home it can be emotionally lethal. Loss leaves gaping holes. When a child loses home and family any sense of safety in the world is pulverized and any sense of belonging in life may perish.

For a child, the loss of home and family leads you to feel and believe you are nothing, and if, by chance, you are left with any residue of self at all, it’s not much. This is exactly what happened to me. I now believe what I have been chasing no longer exists for me because family no longer exists – at least none that I grew up with – and home, I am learning, is best found in the rooms of one’s mind. I certainly think the notion that home is where you hang your hat is absolute rubbish. Quaint phrase, I grant you, but absolute rubbish nonetheless.

My relationship with home and family ended in 1969, 16 weeks after my father died unexpectedly at age 55. I was 15. Sixteen weeks later my mother placed me in reform school on a PINS (Person In Need of Supervision) petition. When I was released 13 months later, I was not allowed back in the family and so, at age 17, I was homeless. My life with a family had come to an end.

I don’t know if I can stop chasing home, chasing that place of refuge and rest that is or feels like it is immune from assault from without and within. Even though I intellectually understand it does not exist, my heart remembers days when I was a boy and everyone was still alive. Days with my father and Poppop, my grandfather on my mother’s side, when I knew I was the safest most loved little boy in all the world. That were a bomb to drop from the sky their presence would assure my safety. And while some might say all this makes me a hopeless romantic, it is who I am. And I spend my life with who I am.

To be continued…

Saving My Sister

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I love my sister. Nothing that has happened and nothing that will happen will ever change that. If she keeps drinking, she will die; from the sounds of it she may not have long.

Our father died on August 16, 1969. I was 15 and my sister (how I love the words, my sister) was 10 when, 16 weeks after he died, my mother placed me in reform school on a PINS (Person in Need of Supervision) Petition and subsequently disowned me. In those days a PINS often meant a family saying to the court, I don’t want him, you take him. While I lost my father and  family in a 16-week span, my sister lost her father and brother, a brutal event for any 10-year-old.

We would run into each other from time to time over the years. When my mother and I began to reconcile in the late 1970s, it was because I’d begun to visit my sister who shared a split-level home her. We came together for a short time when our mother committed suicide in August 1992.

My sister has three children, one boy and two girls. The boy is the oldest and at age 35 is a remarkable young man. Recently he reached out to me to let me know my sister is in bad shape. She can’t (won’t) stop drinking. Her body is breaking down (she’s 52), she has a hard time opening her hands and refuses help of any kind, including medical help.

I am a recovering alcoholic and know damned well you can’t make another person get sober or make someone choose life. I also know I can’t make someone discover their value and worth even though it’s there.  At  the center of who my sister is, behind the horror and dysfunction and pain, is a gloriously wonderful person.

She used to enjoy telling the following story about us. I’d been out of the family for a couple of years. She was 12 or 13. I was staying not far from where she lived with my mother and grandparents. One day not far from her house she was  being harassed and threatened by three boys when, as she describes it, “My brother came flying out of car, challenged them all to a fight, and they ran.”

I’ll try to save you again my precious sister, but I can’t do it without you.

MY FATHER, MY EVEREST

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A reporter asked me today to describe what it was that made my father so special. I didn’t know what to say. I knew there was no way I could put it into words. Much like a recent blog piece about the extraordinary look of a woman’s face being out of the reach of words, so it is when it comes to explaining what it was about my father that makes him the greatest gift life has ever given me.



Here is what I did say. Trying to describe my father would be like looking up at Mount Everest and trying to describe what I was seeing to someone over the phone. I wouldn’t stand a chance. I’d certainly give it my best shot with words like majestic, magnificent, magical, breathtaking. I could keep adding words too, but never would the person on the other end of the phone understand what it was like to see Mount Everest in person.



My father was as accepting and loving as a human being can be. Never did I have to be anyone but me to be loved. I did not have to live up to something, or achieve some high standard somewhere in order to be fully loved and accepted. When I was 15 and he died at age 55, my ability to feel safe being me in the world died with him.



The difficulty feeling safe in the world was no doubt compounded by the fact my mother placed me in reform school 16 weeks later on a PINS (Person in Need of Supervision) petition. In those days PINS petitions were often a matter of the family saying to the court, we don’t want the child, you take him. Children are heard a bit more today then they were in 1969.



I never fully regained the ability to feel safe being me in the world until I got sober more than six years ago. My father is my Everest. He is a constant reminder that real love between two people is possible in the world. And as you probably already know, it’s just as impossible to put real love into words as it is putting Everest into words or, for me, my father into words. But they are all real, and you will know it if you see it, or feel it.



Just keep your eyes and your hearts open. After all, everyone deserves an Everest or two.

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