Chance in the World : An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home (9781595554161) by Pemberton Steve

Author:Pemberton, Steve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc
Published: 2011-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Ididn’t begin probing into my family background right away. The summer after graduation in 1989, I returned to the Upward Bound Program in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and threw myself, as usual, into tutoring and counseling work. At summer’s end, I returned to Boston looking for work. The job market was difficult, and I struggled largely because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I only knew I wanted to make a difference. I took the first job offered me, at an auto-rental company. I wore a shirt and tie on the job, but that was where the professionalism ended. The pay was terrible, and I barely had any money left each month for food. All day long I towed rental cars, fought traffic, washed cars, and ruined my clothes with dirt and oil. It was humbling work and a far cry from the meaningful career I had envisioned. In the summer of 1990, I left the auto-rental company to return yet again to Upward Bound’s six-week summer residential program.

My dissatisfaction with work was nothing in comparison to the restlessness I was feeling in my personal life. The summer after college, my longtime girlfriend, Alicia, had stunned me by abruptly ending our relationship. I was too reliant on her and her family, she said, and she wanted “space.” She was there one day, and then the next she was gone, disappearing from my life so quickly I wondered if she had been there at all. With her went her mother, with whom I was especially close. Though I had seen difficult times, her departure brought a new kind of pain. I suddenly lost my bearings, struggling to find the fighting determination that had long been my hallmark.

Holidays came and went that first year after Alicia’s departure, and I found myself in my small apartment, quietly asking the one question I had not dared ask before: What had I done wrong? I had survived the Robinsons and graduated from one of the country’s best universities, and my reward seemed to be this disconnected life. When would I feel as if I belonged to something? To someone?

The coming months brought closure to the end of my relationship with Alicia and in time I would come to see it as a blessing. Though I was grateful to her for the time we had spent, the suddenness with which I became an outsider reminded me again of the importance of having your own family. And therein was my problem. For years I had been trying to replace my family. Everything had fallen short and would continue to, I suspected, until I found the place I had come from. Yet I had no idea where to begin.

I turned again to Mrs. Dottin, asking to speak with her one day after our daily morning staff meeting. I sat down in the chair next to her desk. Behind her, through a ceiling-to-floor glass window, you could see clear across campus. I fidgeted with my hands, not knowing where to begin.

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