A Tree Grows in Officeland

The Weed Tree, Westville, New Jersey in 2011

The first time I met Milroy Lee, a high functioning gregarious developmentally disabled client, we were crossing paths outside my satelite office...Since it was a hot day, we decided to chat underneath the comfort of a shade tree where an arbor used to similarly sun shield a wooden picnic table. Milroy asked me how long I have been working for my particular agency as a social worker. With the arbor gone, I tried to equate tenure with our immediate environment.

I answered, "I've been working here since before this tree was here that we are standing under. It used to be a sapling that Crew Labor clients forgot to mow..I almost hanked it out of the ground one day but thought better of it. Eventually, it got big enough that nobody bothered to mow it down. It stands here wondrous now casting welcome shade, kind of like we are..here by both design and by happenstance....like accidental intention....Do you understand me, Milroy?"

He grasped what I was saying in his own world. "Yeah, like how your co-worker transferred me to you. She had a plan to bring us together. She thought I needed a male case manager."

A friendship grew as a decade passed. I learned of Milroy's death at work on the telephone from another stuttering disabled client whose only clarity included the unbelievable sentence, "Milroy Lee is dead!"

Startled and stung, I hung up the phone and ran out of the building short of breath to the point of hyperventilating. I stopped by that same tree....I thought of that first conversation I had with Milroy here underneath the tree. The ironic madness made me cry...knowing Milroy was killed accidentally as a pedestrian on this same damn street and now only me and the tree were left by accidental intention. Milroy was gone.

Penchant for Pensions

While lobby waiting with my develomentally disabled client for his outpatient psychiatry appointment, I received a text message on my cell phone. As a single-minded guy back on the meat market, I checked my incoming text. Luigi, who is illitierate but inquisitive, asked me who the text was from.

I replied for the sake of argument. "I suppose you could call her my girlfriend."

Luigi, "No chance getting back with the old lady? Is your marriage definitely over, Joe?"

"For all intents and purposes it's over but I have few regrets."

"Where does this woman work?"

"She works for the Division of Youth and Family Services."

I noticed that Luigi's neck crooked more my way than in previous dialogue but it was his smirk that garnered more of my attention.

He inquired, "Doesn't your ex work for the government too?"

"Outstanding memory. Yes, she sure does."

Luigi draped his arm around me for emotional support....."Trying a little too hard to get back that lost pension, aren't you, buddy?"

A receptionist announced Luigi's name to be seen. Luigi stood proudly. Slump shouldered, I sulked all the way to the psychiatrist looking for a couch.

Flowers for Alfrednon

I attended a school meeting of a precocious 17-year-old girl diagnosed with mild intellectual disability and oppositional defiance disorder, the latter of which is more relevant to our story. Doreen is succeeding rather colorfully by parental arrangement in vocational technical school learning the fine art of horticulture. Her social skills are a different subject all together.

During the meeting, Doreen brought it to everyone’s attention that she desried to give her brain-injured teenage boyfriend her latest floral bouquet creation. The mother kept saying men do not accept flowers, do not embarrass him on the short bus, the last of which is a pejorative descriptive term to say the least.

My client felt the need to advocate for herself. She replied that horticulture was her career choice. Doreen proudly wanted and needed to show him what she created. She also wanted him to take the flowers home for him to display as a show of her affection. As her social worker, I felt that she made a good argument from her polarized perspective but she pouted under her mother's dominion.. The mother finally relented that her daughter could do what she wanted but that she was going to be sorry.

Doreen sprouted right up in her chair, much like a morning glory...She barked, "No, I won't be sorry. If Alfred doesn't accept my flowers, I'm going to punch him in the f**cking face."

Throwing Shoes

Scientists claim that genetically human beings are only three people apart. Genetic code understood, it is the interplay of people that come into our lives whose imprint makes our experiences unique.

In my twenty-five year career in human services, I have been rarely caught unprepared but that is what happened when I let the file of a new case sit unattended on my desk. While I only had time to peruse it for a few minutes, it proved enough time to glean a nightmare. I scheduled an initial home visit to explain my agency services because I recognized the immense needs of a disadvantaged disabled teenage girl.

However, weeks later I showed up at this home without the file and only a haunting sketch memory of the cold read of the newest client on my caseload. Doreen sat quietly at the kitchen table of her impoverished home environment. With her head lowered in deliberate shyness, Doreen’s mother explained the reason for her distrust of men. That is when the sordid details of the case came flooding back to me. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be here. I took a deep breathe of compassion and exhaled preconceived notions.

The mother’s face could best be described in the single word of stress. She appeared as though Father Time had worked twice as fast on her watchtower. She warned, “Consider yourself lucky if Dorie doesn’t throw her shoes at you. She does that to all men to let you know she ain’t going anywhere with you and to keep your distance.”

I lifted the vinyl tablecloth covering the round end kitchen table in a quaint suburban home. I looked underneath the table at Doreen, who immediately squirmed.

“Nah, I think Doreen likes me. See that? She is barefoot and has nothing to throw. She’s not giving me the boot just yet. I think she trusts me as her social worker.”

A smile ruptured on her infantile face. A giddy laugh squeaked out before she caught its contagiousness like too much of a good thing turned bad. After that inroad, Doreen began to warm up to me but her soft voice seemed congruent with her damaged self image and low self esteem. She deferred to her mother in the beginning until I eased her with more simpleton humor. After the first hour, she began to maintain eye contact. She started to intently listen and related her ambitions in concrete terms…first with single word phrases expounded by her mother then actual burgeoning conversation starters. She became my favorite client because of what I perceived to be her sense of survival to endure.

Her biological father languished behind bars for unspeakable felonies. Before his incarceration, Jed led a relatively quite life by repeatedly physically abusing Doreen’s mother’s body to the point of his removal from the house via restraining order. Jed's exodus occurred not before the children witnessed the domestic abuse during their impressionable developmental years. Doreen’s mental retardation made these pivotal years arrested development in more ways than one. Raising two daughters and a son by herself below poverty levels, Doreen’s mother next took in a transient man for financial support and to help parent the children. The man decided to sexually abuse the fledgling daughters behind closed doors of mistrust. For the next eight years, he violated both children. Unbeknownst to the mother, it turned out to be a family secret reinforced by not only threats of harm against the children if they told anyone but eventually Doreen’s older sister ending up the strangled victim in an unsolved murder. God saved Doreen’s brother of harm maybe by only gender design.

Like a breath of fresh air, Doreen fondled a live flower bouquet on the kitchen table for a second time.

As I worried if they were for her sister’s grave, I had to ask anyway. “Doreen, what do you want to tell me about those flowers?”

The mother answered overtop her daughter’s slow to move lips. “She excels at horticulture. That floral arrangement won first prize in a juried exhibition. Dorie wants your approval.”

Doreen reached and raised the flowers to my nose. I smelled its marvelous fragrance then complimented her creativity.

The mother seemed pleased by the bonding. “Your’e doing remarkable with her. Dorie doesn’t open up to adult men. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Doreen put down the flowers and got up and retrieved her purse. She reached into her private stock and pulled out a color brochure of a nearby apartment complex. I learned in conversation that the complex dedicated a few new units for subsidized housing. She showed me the schematic floor plan by pointing emphatically to a 12x10 bedroom. It was already established that she slept on a couch, suffered flashback nightmares and relied on tranquilizers to gain shut eye. Doreen knew my role in her life and I already knew where she was headed. She just needed help getting there. I inferred that Doreen wanted me to fund the move to a new apartment to exorcise the demons of this falling down house of horrors.

I leaned as close as Doreen let me without invading her personal space. I lowered my voice to just above a whisper. “If I could assist, would you bring your shoes with you to your new home or go barefoot?”

She answered, “I’ll keep the shoes on my feet there. I promise.”

Doreen took the life out me like flowers dying in the hard sun. This social worker broke the eye contact that he worked so hard to establish with his client. I turned away to let the salty tear finish running down my stunned cheek. No file review could have prepared me for this heavy moment anyway. If human beings are indeed only three people apart, because of the last two evil men in her life it only took two good people to feel as one. I never felt more compassion to any other child so quickly in my life.

Leading Off

First and foremost, Frankie Davie professed to be a diehard sports fan. He lived his whole life a baseball fan with blinders to his moderate mental retardation. He always played favorites and seemed to prefer teams over individual people. I tried to play more of the field working in developmental disability yet I privately considered Frankie one of my favorite clients.

I last parted company with Frankie when he dwelled in a behaviorally challenging cottage in a government run institution nestled in the Pinelands. Not as I would have hoped, Frankie’s last words to me did not resemble a classic goodbye. Instead, he whined why the box score in the sports section showed his favorite team losing by five runs to an underdog. While some people are not good at goodbyes, what I did not understand back then is that Frankie could not comprehend finality because he perpetually lived in the moment.

Proving that time waits for no one, our quirky sendoff occurred a quarter century ago. Turn the page to 2010. While recently entering a community based day program, an older man wearing a ragged baseball cap tapped me on the shoulder.

“Joe, why did the Milwaukee Brewers lose last night?”

"What?" I turned to address the speaker then screamed surprise. “Frankie Davie!”

His hair needed reseeding and it had turned a battleship gray. I put my arm around him but he returned no affection, no obvious sign of attachment. He had uncannily remembered my name and recalled that baseball was a frequent conversation but the human connection escaped him. The only emotion that he showed was to his bad news boys of summer.

He added, “Why do the Brewers have a bad team?”

The beleaguered Milwaukee Brewers franchise must have lost 2,000 games since I last saw Frankie but he began right where he left off. He remained stuck in the moment. Clinicians keeping score might call that symptomatically retarded. I considered it the top of the first inning again. Leading off with a proper hello...Frankie Davie.

Cheeseburger in Paradox

One of my developmentally disabled clients stopped by my satellite office for an unscheduled greeting. He muttered frustration under his breath. "Joe, I need to talk to you. My girlfriend is receiving too much services. You know, the same services as me only way more and different."

I smirked, "Don't say support services like it's a bad thing."

"Joe, it's good and bad. Since my gastro bypass surgery, I lost 170 pounds, you know.”

“You lost a whole person. You look fantastic.”

“Thanks. I must finally look trim enough because I attracted a girlfriend. She asked me out. I'm trying to gain a sweetheart after losing a person, you might say." He smiles cheesily. "For our first date, we go to Ruby Tuesday's for a cheeseburger. She has her agency chauffer pick me up at my townhouse. What's that all about? While I tolerated the free ride to the restaurant, she says that this cool program she is in, Real Wife Choices, comes with a driver.”

“That’s not the name of her program but the devil is in the details. Go on.”

“Anyway, we get to Ruby Tuesday’s and her chauffer doesn’t wait in the car. The driver brags about being hungry. The chauffer comes in and sits down at the table with us. It's my frigging first date and she is reading the menu to me. It's bad enough I got to pay for my date when Joe, well you didn't even get my voucher approved. No way was I paying for the lunch of a chauffer. Bottom line. Your workers got to stop coming on dates with me. Joe, you got to do something about this program of hers. I’m telling you she's spoiled rotten and I don't need a chaperone."

House of Hoarder

A blizzard of snowfall anchors a triple dresser in the modest front yard. It's an oddity the way the unprescedented deep snow surrounds it. It looks more like a wooden casket than a piece of furniture not in its own house. Its woodenness occupies my attention as I trudge through the long winter to make it to the covered porch of a three-story century old house.

As I maneuver around pratfalls of junk, I realize that the integrity of the porch’s subfloor is failing. It is an environmental hazard further compromised by my client’s weekly ritual of picking curbside trash then bringing it home to pile in the way station of her porch. The otherwise benign term “covered porch” carries new meaning with me. The screen door flaps in the wind, a thin wooden barrier separating the big world chock full of customs and socially accepted mores from Rochelle’s hock of a dysfunctional home.

Barging my way through the breakers, I knock on the door. Scheduled by appointment and now let in by invitation, I enter the house of this reclusive hoarder. The transparency surrounding us evaporates privacy. She presents a tight smile but my saucer eyes have social worker written all over them. Her living alone status makes her responsible as head of household.

We begin to talk about the neutral subject of weather when she pressingly says that she knows what I am thinking. Rochelle sheepishly confides that she owns no shovel to have done snow removal and apologizes if my shoes are not waterproof. After a long awkward pause ending with my head nod, she offers me a seat. I wish to accept her honorary hospitality but at first glance I do not see four-legged availability. I pace. She pulls piled clothes from the back of a spindle chair then stacks of newspaper and cardboard from the seated cushion. Short of shouting eureka, I see the bottom of a chair and accept its respite amongst clutter to the infinite degree.

Situated lower to the floor now, a mitigating foul smell hits my nostrils as if Beowulf lurks under the dining room table. Although Rochelle swears she is continent and owns no pets, the smell of stagnate urine overwhelms my senses. In an agitated tone, she admits to once owning a miniature collie named Waterloo. Rochelle insists she has seen through Waterloo’s passing to a pet cemetery in the northwest corner of the backyard. I do not own a compass to begin identifying the right quadrant for excavation but I presume now that she once owned a shovel to carry out grave digging. She conveys “inhibiting factors” that prevented her from walking the animal outside when poor Waterloo was alive, if not well. Posthumously, I cannot indict the creature for using every inch of the downstairs shag carpet for relief because it was a matter of cruel necessity.

Rochelle blurts, “It is why I never wanted children. They're too much work.”

A hardbound book “How to Fix Things in Your House” catches my eye on a bookcase shelf. She grants me permission to pluck it like an oddball from a shelf dedicated to themed outdated gardening books. I open up this vintage book in a house of disrepair. A random page reveals a time-stamped drawing of a refrigerator alongside a glowing narrative spouting the preservative benefits of chilled food and the wondrous invention of pliable copper tubing to supply water to make ice. The world has passed her bookcase by and her carpet smells like an unfixable toilet this book did not reference.

Another literary preference is the largest collection of yellow page phonebooks that I have ever seen assembled in one place. Many volumes are from the same county in which she lives, multiple phonebooks of the same year perhaps stolen from her neighbor’s driveways. I ask the obvious question regarding the need for redundancy. Her answer rings more gongs of mental illness than mental retardation.

“People change their phone numbers all of the time. I can’t keep up. The sheer numbers are overwhelming.”

Her eyes follow mine. With that in mind, I do my best not to pass judgment with my social cues but this proves difficult around this excellent observer. I look away for convenience sake. Beside a rickety piano, a sandwich board professionally advertises the headliner, “Appearing For One Night Only, Rochelle.” It was an extraordinary prop that just needed a tip jar to complete the stage.

When I swing my head around, Rochelle is gone. I hear her feet trampling the staircase then overhear her voice upstairs. She returns to the dining room wearing an uncomplimentary Goodwill cocktail dress. This is not the one night stand scenario a male social worker wants to foster when alone with his female aspiring client. I feel like the talent agent in that signature movie scene from “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” The thought crosses my mind to check the upstairs floors for wire hangars and hostages. I excuse the remote possibility that while Rochelle was upstairs she may not have been talking to me but a bound captive. My distraction and uneasiness continues as she sits down and plays nimble fingers across an out of tune piano with the ivory literally worn from the keys. Some keys stick, she plays one handed and belts out an Elton John song like she is chilling bones. Hearing the drone of a foot pedal, I look down and see her curled toenails working barefoot from a hairy leg.

Oh God Almighty! I need to create space here as much as she does. I politely remove myself from the living room and enter the kitchen. Big mistake. I scoff how surprised I am by its deplorable condition. The chances of catching salmonella and ptomaine poisoning are a distinct possibility. Mice and cockroach might not even eat here. Food spores, greased pans and dirty dishes are everywhere. If I had a dime for every empty sugar packet I saw from his main food group of coffee, I could retire early never to hear Rochelle botch another song. Encased with hardened food, the microwave looks like a fire hazard.

The strangest curosity about the house is that there is no indoor trashcan or wastebasket. Star Trek’s Spock might say, “Factual observation reveal conditions barely sustainable for life in a hardscrabble environment where nothing seems categorically disposable.” Psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Spock might simply conclude that she is somebody's baby. Entertaining both spoofs, I come to the illogical conclusion that a hoarder does not find need to dispose of things. Captain’s log…diagnosis of a hoarder's cluttered mind, there is no addition by subtraction. Beam down empty dumpsters and an ensigns weilding phasers set to shun.

As if to illustrate how comfortable she is at home in her surroundings, Rochelle pours expired milk into her dirty cold mug of instant coffee. I try to convince her not to drink it. She bends an elbow. I reach my hand out as if I am prepared to intervene but she recoils not unlike a toddler denied her way. I remind her of her recent hospitalization due to eating bad food. She rationalizes that the coffee is older than the spoiled milk. I watch her gullet double swallow. My stomach curls like the milk in question. She silhouettes dysfunction standing before samples of her artwork. Hanging on easels and the wall are architectural drawings of famous buildings she somehow rendered to exact scale. They accompany her oil paintings of shadowy human figures that are as beautiful artistically as they are Rob Zombie horrific in subject matter. She finishes her milk in front of a backdrop of pure genius. I think of Hannibal Lector's decorated cell although I do not conjure any danger of her eating me before my expiration.

The newly activated landline phone rings like a whistle-blowing referee between us. My hopes that it is her treating psychiatrist calling become dashed by familiarity of conversation. I find myself cleaning her kitchen. I tackle expiration dates on food packages and scrub everything in my wake using a dirty washrag that looks like it cleaned up the killing of a dog named Waterloo. While I clean around her stationary perch, Rochelle cogently talks to a dear cousin from Georgia about the systemic obsolesces of down spouts during 100-year storms. In another hour, I will be off duty. Ah, the Sandman slowly shifts time for a social worker trapped in a health inspector’s nightmare.

Vacation Driveway Getaway

It took me two hours longer than I estimated digging out from the last snowphoon. When walls of snow almost better measured in Buffalo feet than inches blankets everything in its wake, how long it will take to shovel is not an exact science. By the time I dug out and drove to work safely, it was 10:30am. I was physically exhausted. Understandably, the office was a ghost town except for the occasional voice or swish of snow pants rubbing together when someone walked by my desk.

I started to think that the region's unprecedented excess white weather had something to do with only twenty percent of the workforce reporting for duty. My administration ruled that shoveling out too slow is not an excusable lateness. Employees who braved the elements yet arrived late were rewarded for their conscientious efforts with rejected time sheets. While I was never at risk for docked pay, I did have to use my own personal time to cover the two hour snow penalty.

Now I can fondly look back on this picture of me laboring an ice pick on the driveway scoop to break apart dwarf icebergs. I didn't even need a travel agent for this vacation.

Weighing in On Disabling Diets

Janine Donohue walks into the kitchen and stands next to her social worker as if she has never heard of awarding personal space. She bows, curtsies then handshakes. Janine flips her long hair then introduces herself with a short unexpected biography.

“Glad to meet you. I’m 37 years old, I can’t have children and I weigh almost 200 pounds.”

In her introduction to me, she disclosed the three things I think a woman would be least likely to share to a man. I tilt my head at the critical information overload trying to make sense of it all. She leaves the room as quickly as she came. I start to think to myself when is the next time this oddity will happen? I did not have long to wait.

Janine returns carrying belongings. “I’ll prove it.” She flashes her laminated identification card. “See, I was born in 1972.” She puts the bathroom scale down in the middle of the kitchen. She rolls up a blouse sleeve to reveal a fresh band-aid. “It’s my Depro Provera shot. Mom doesn’t want me to have children.” Her balance is a little shaky as she steps onto the scale. The dial points exceedingly right before it steadies. “What 225 pounds, wow!”

Janine steps down from the scale looking discouraged. She talks closely once more. “I can’t get any younger and I can’t have children but I would like to lose weight. I thought I lost five pounds on my diet. Darn. I ate only a watermelon and a granola bar for lunch. Well, not the whole watermelon, you know what I mean.”

Janine goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a fruit yogurt. She adds loose raisins from the cupboard. After a couple of spoonfuls, she talks about her diet with yogurt lining her upper lip.

I encourage, “That’s a healthy snack. Why don’t you get back on the scale?”

“Already?”

“Yes, I think the yogurt may have done you some good.”

Janine’s compliance rewards her with a weight of 194 pounds. “Now that’s more like it. I’m loving it but that cannot be. That’s a difference of, that’s a difference of, humm, that’s a big difference.”

I ask, “Do you know what the biggest difference is?”

“No, you tell me.”

“I used my foot to step on the back of the scale the first time you weighed yourself. It made you seem heavier.”

She shifted her weight and gave me a cold stare. “Don’t you male social workers know anything about a woman?"

Beasts of Burden

I stood at the copy machine multiplying duplicates of her dysfunctional upbringing on super white paper. This churnng background history would be for the psychiatrist I arranged for her to see.

Her birth was without complication and her parents took her home to their cattle ranch in lonesome Nevada. By the time she was seven years old her biological father was vaginally raping her with atrocious regularity. Her own mother conspired in the silence of denial and cover-up. Nobody lived in earshot to hear her cries. By the time she was a pre-pubescent eleven year old, her body had been sold to many of her father’s so called friends in what she referred to as sleepovers.

She had been sexually abused so many times that when I got her on my caseload as a disturbed adult, this mildly mentally retarded woman still suffering from the sexual shockwaves of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, tried to put her childhood into words that a social worker might understand.

“Growing up, the moo cows were at least slaughtered. I have to live with this pain.”

My moist eyes twittered at the notion. I fought to catch my client’s name off the top of each document that I copied. The name that I read coming off the clanking turnstiles of the copier appeared like a children’s picture book hand-flipped.

What I read literally sickened my stomach because I had never made the absurd connection before. You see, when it was time to give the hospital of her birth an official name, the parents decided on Promise. While everyone hopes his or her child turns out right, these parents gave their daughter promise in name only and they took like beasts almost everything else.

Fire...Come and Get It

The 9-volt battery that recently died in my smoke detector triggered a repressed social work memory.

A long time ago in a rural area of Salem County, New Jersey lived a hard-of-hearing uneducated elderly caretaker and a mildly retarded deaf mute named Little Jeanie. Upon completing an inspection of this quaint and tidy 1950’s built home, I found the caretaker to be almost as limited as the client. If not for the communication deficits of my client, Little Jeanie might be mistaken for Head of Household.

Long before I purchased smoke detectors with a red strobe visual alarm, I questioned their procedure for conducting mandatory fire drills on a monthly basis.

The elderly caretaker, who would die of cancer two years later, expected my question so much that she admitted to formulating a prepared statement for me ahead of my initial arrival.

“I know what you’re gonna say. Little Jeanie can’t hear no smoke detector signal on account of her deafness. What do you think I do? I do the only natural thing left to do. I turn on the oven.” She pointed. “When I open that oven door, bake or broil, Little Jeanie runs for the hills. We got it all worked out.”

“Humm…well that must create another problem when you cook dinner. I’m going to look into assistive device technology for the hearing impaired but in the meantime Little Jeanie has got to be confused big time.”

She agreed, “You got a point. Sometimes I find her standing out by the country road waiting to come in after I put a pot roast in the oven.”

The Spice of Autumn

An unempirical definition of mental retardation is the inability to pick up on social clues that form the basis of and thereby bridge learning experiences.

Outside the looking glass of our meeting room one October day in 1999, a gentle breeze carried the first wave of crisp falling autumn leaves across the chilly sky. For some reason, their fall to Earth reminded me of the feather floating down in the opening scene of the movie Forrest Gump. I looked over at my mildly mentally retarded client who was still dressed as if it were rabid summer. She sat anxiously waiting for others to lead the meeting.

I invited her gaze out the window. “Charmine, look at those leaves falling.”

Not knowing where I was headed with the leading conversation, an esteemed co-worker commented with a frown. “The summer is over. It’s definitely autumn.”

In an attempt to better understand Charmine's wardrobe selection, I asked my client her favorite season.

Charmine raised and pointed a finger at me. “That’s an easy one, Mr. Joe. Give me a harder question next time. My favorite season is paprika.”

During the same meeting, I learned that Charmine suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder. That's when I felt like I needed a spice rack to further discussion.

The Fool on the Swill

Judith “Babe” Mitton is a non-verbal severely retarded female. As long as I have known her, she has worn a cute set of signature pigtails that usually hover overtop a stolen cup of hot coffee.

As a disabled child, Judith grew up in a bi-level house before her parents gave up custody of her then moved to parts unknown never to be heard from again. As a result, the social services agency with whom I work found her a licensed home in the community to live and moved her across the county. Over the years, Judith bounced around different homes but managed to avoid institutional commitment. A thousand spilled coffee cups later, low and behold circumstances dictated another uprooting so she moved back into Gloucester County.

The new caregiver thought Judith made a seamless transition into her new home. Judith seemed intimately familiar and at ease with her new surroundings from the onset. She claimed her own bedroom in the house like an incumbent and chased the kitchen coffee pot from her first morning on. A long honeymoon period followed.

A decade later, a reclusive neighbor ventured outside to get some sunlight on his ashen elder face. He recognized outbound Judith from yesteryear like kindled infinite fate. The facts were checked until they proved undeniable. A mentally challenged person defied all odds and incredibly moved back into her own house with only her knowing it while those who thought they knew better called her retarded. From the mouth of babe came no words, but in life like her coffee, the cream did rise to the top. Sometimes home has an old address.

New Jersey's Budget Woes: Reaching A Greener Forest Through the Trees

These recessionary times have forced me to examine my household budget in order to keep making ends meet. After reviewing my ledger, I arrived at the following conclusion:

One full time job

Three part time jobs

843 FICA Credit Score

A spouse who works full time

No MAC card in the last 18 years.

Pays child support on time without the court garnishing my wages.

No credit card debt

Enrolled in a deferred compensation plan.

Paying down a 15-year mortgage.

Pays bills exceedingly on time. No late fees or cycle service charges.

Proactively uses debit cards.

Clips store coupons and buys generic brand names

Avoids buying retail whenever possible

Owns company stocks

Saves for children’s college

Invests in US savings bonds

Reconciles checkbook.

In order to help fix New Jersey’s irreconcilable budget, the Governor of the thirteenth state of the Union with the highest cost of living in the nation has mandated me to take unpaid leaves of absences from my job… so he can ergo balance his own budget.

Money does not grow on trees but I do not believe it should be deforested from my pocket either. Where does fiscal responsibility begin and end? If a New Jersey budget falls for years in the woods without trimming why wasn't anyone listening?

The Cocker in Spaniel

Brandy Tornatore

About twenty years ago, an adorable picture of my dog Brandy disappeared from the desktop of my office that was located in a sheltered workshop. Soon after surrendering hope that my dog picture would surface, Desmond J. Brentwood sauntered from the bathroom looking rather ragtag even for him.

After reminding him to pull up his zipper and tuck back in his shirt, I made the mistake of asking Desmond if he had dollar bills to make change for a ten spot. He stopped and removed his wallet on a chain. Behind a row of worn dollar bills, his fingertips grazed across something conspicuous. His eyes flashed mine. He is all thumbs now as the beloved picture of my dog falls out of his upside down wallet. My photo had wound up in the hands of a wayward mildly retarded young man who often admitted to engaging in acts of bestiality through a crooked smile. Our minds both race ahead to the unfolding event. Desomond picks up the picture as if it were his and not rightfully mine.

“Desmond, you stole a picture of my dog?”

“Joe, I know what you're thinking. I should have asked you to bring me in another picture from home. That’s all.”

“No, that is not what I'm thinking and that's not all. Desmond, you weren’t….Oh my God…you weren’t….to my dog?”

Desmond showed about as much remorse as boundaries. “I'm afraid so, Joe. You got a nice looking dog here. I love Cockers.”

I swiped the worn picture from his active clutches. I mouthed incredulously, “Leave Brandy alone.”

“I didn’t touch your dag gone dog.” He head nods back to the bathroom he vacated. “I only use the picture like a normal guy would a girlie magazine.”

“Oh my God!”

"Joe, you look like you're going to barf....Do you need to use the bathroom?"

Disarming Demeanor

In my community based social worker career, I have stepped into countless lives and private homes. No two people or homes are the same.

In 1994, a nine-year-old girl came through intake for agency services and wound up on my caseload. When I interviewed her mid-thirty something mother over the telephone, she seemed protective to a fault about her daughter, who held diagnoses of mild mental retardation and cerebral palsy.

Further conversation revealed that this was the mother’s first and only child. The mother did not work outside the home and described her life as evolving around the special needs of her disabled daughter. When I tried to schedule a house call to meet both of them, the conversation cooled and the mother’s voice trembled. The mother was uncomfortable with the arrangement. I offered to show proper identification upon arrival and gave her my supervisor’s name and phone number. Despite my attempts to assure her a home visit was protocol for case managers, she was reluctant to approve of me entering her home. She explained that her husband prefers to be home whenever a man enters the household. Understanding the family dynamics of this old fashioned household, I invited the husband to join us.

On the day of my visit, the school bus was late getting little Eleanor home and the father could not take off from his job. This left me home alone with the jittery mother for the first thirty minutes. I used my charm to appear disarming so that she might feel comfortable. She kept looking at the front door for her daughter’s arrival as if it were also an avenue of escape if need be. I sat at the kitchen table with my hands folded trying to build rapport by discussing her daughter’s interests.

When the short yellow school bus pulled up like a savior on wheels, the mother dashed out the front door. Soon Eleanor walked into the house with a determined gait tethered by her mother’s handheld grip. Eleanor began to play with age appropriate toys on the tiled kitchen floor. With my back to the mother, I kneeled to introduce myself to Eleanor. Through parallel play, we rolled a Barbie convertible car back and forth until she was giddy with laughter.

When I returned home from work, I cleaned out my pants pockets. To my horror, I found a large serrated steak knife sticking high out of my back pants pocket. I had used the sharp knife like overkill to cut a day old bagel that morning at my desk. Before trying to act disarming in a dangerous world, I must remember to drop my weapons before I can expect to drop anyone’s guard.

A Shot in the Dark

Getting hurt at work is no laughing matter but this outtake from my telephone conversation is a golden gem .

This is Joe.

Hello, I’m Olga Sizemore your Personal Care Manager. You will be happy to know, we just setup physical therapy for you. You will be starting physical therapy.

Physical therapy? I haven’t seen a doctor yet…

Hear me out…You go to physical therapy…see what they can do for you.

Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself?

What do you mean?

I need a medical evaluation first.

We have been through this before..

What do you mean like 10 seconds ago?

I know what you’re thinking?

Trust me. You have no idea what I am thinking.

I have a doctor’s appointment set-up..

Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere.

Bear with me. We want you to start physical therapy first.

I don’t think that is protocol anymore than its prudent.

Joe, grab a pen. I’m going to give you…

You’re going to give me agita.

I am trying to give you the name of the specialist you will see afterwards. That is what you wanted, right?

I wanted a specialist not a taskmaster physical therapist.

(Papers ruffling)…I made an appointment for you in Tinton Falls, NJ on.

Tinton Falls? Isn’t that like 75 miles one way?

I personally looked into your case. It can’t be that far.

(Flabbergasted)But Tinton Falls? Why Tinton Falls? What's in Tinton Falls?

It’s just where the doctor is that I want you to see. Hey, it’s right near where we are sending you for physical therapy.

That doesn’t make me feel any better. How long have you been a personal care manager, I got to know?

I spoke with their office. Joe, they’re going to give you an epidural in your ankle…If the pain doesn’t subside…

Let me get this straight…You want me to forgo a medical evaluation, take physical therapy for my pain, then get an epidural. I got to tell you I am not comfortable with this. I’m not even sure I can get an epidural shot with my rare disease.

Mr. Grabekowitz, you always give me a hard time.

Dead silence follows.

Mr. Grabekowitz…Hello? Mr Joseph Grabekowitz of Apple Jack Lane in Scobeyville? Hello? Joe?

This is Joe, all right. ...Joseph Tornatore.

Wrong file.

Obviously.

The Seedy Side of Life

It’s a benign curiosity of mine to ask new employees who begin working with a special needs developmentally disabled population their previous job experiences. Working with some of the most fragile human beings alive often takes a special person and it’s difficult to deny that where people have been helped shaped who they are.

Selena, where did you work before this?

Do you really want to know?

Absolutely. I ask this question all the time. Don't mind me.

…An abortion clinic.

Did the clinic operate under the euphemism of a Women’s Center?

Guilty as charged.

No, I’m not passing judgment just trying to understand what I don’t know a lot about. What did you do for the lovely folks at the Women’s Center?

Abortions. I assisted killing babies. Do you feel me?

Selena began a detailed explanation of abortions. I could not believe the nonchalant graphic detail she provided with no emotional attachment to somebody she barely knew. My eyes pinched closed. I started to only hear certain words....

The day often starts by running by screaming protesters. I got hot coffee and donuts in my hands and these picketers are shaking their signs and cussing at you. I just wanted to do my job. So you get into your scrubs and oh, they recommend wearing a surgical mask so you cannot be recognized in public. About 9am the pregnant strippers and the traumatized knocked up teenagers come in for their abortions. Mother gets needles for pain relief, what’s unwanted inside her gets a needle to stop the heartbeat. That’s when it gets messy. You know the further along in the pregnancy the bigger the instruments gets. By five months, it takes real effort for the doctor to get it all out. Lot of blood, do you feel me? Afterwards, they seal them in transparent jars, add liquid preservatives and a label marking the age of the term. It reminded me of pickling minus the UPC code. Not everything goes in a jar. The afterbirth and goop gets sealed in medical waste bags. A guy pulls up in his truck once a week, like a trash man only different. He picks up a week’s worth of abortions and brings in the sterilized recycled jars. I was responsible for confirming the fetuses or whatever you want to call them were absolutely dead long before the actual pickup day. Check this out. Some of the babies look like they died in pain by their frozen in fear expressions. Their tiny hands used to freak me out, do you feel me? The older ones are tougher to kill. The doctor has to break their necks on the extraction.

Stop! I had enough.

You look white as a ghost. I guess you get the seedy side of abortion. Worst job I ever had, do you feel me? I got fired for telling a mother the dead baby looked just liked her. Just a job, I tell myself. So what. I work with the handicapped now. I don’t even list that job on my professional resume, do you feel me?

I don’t feel anything. I think I’m numb.

I am not sure when life begins but I shed sorrow about how it ended.

A Tree Grows In Bridgeton

Bridgeton, New Jersey has neighborhoods with boarded houses and gritty crime that raises its ugly head along the impoverished landscape. I always keep my eyes peeled when I have reason to drive through its back roads on business.

When I stopped at a red light with my window cracked, I heard a roaring chainsaw start up out of nowhere. I checked my rearview mirror but I was alone at the light plus no pedestrians were in eyesight. As the chainsaw revved, I looked around at a row of plywood sealed rundown houses but the otherwise quiet street did not offer a clue.

Once the chainsaw began sounding like it was having difficulty eating whatever it was being fed, goose bumps hiked on my forearms. As I waited for a green light, I became unnerved over not being able to discern the peculiar situation. Then to my immediate right, a plywood door swung open. A Mexican man walked to a curbside idle truck for tools. His egress exposed the underbelly of what was once a home for humans. Wood chips flew everywhere, raining down on my windshield like strange confetti.

I looked inside the vacant building. A lumberjack of a man worked on cutting down a huge tree that had almost outgrown the width of the building. To my astonishment, I looked up and confirmed that the tree also peeked out the dilapidated rooftop. It triumphed over its surroundings proving bigger than the house that once kept it prisoner.

I wondered what the perseverant tree must be thinking as it drew closer to its last carbon monoxide breath….humans for hire killing the only living thing on an entire block. Humm...this deeply rooted social worker drove on.

Standing Trial

Although Dudley could manage a four-pronged walker with difficulty, he preferred to use his user friendly manual wheelchair for navigation. As I read aloud his subpoena to appear in court to testify as a witness on behalf of the State of New Jersey, he stared at me from his perched position in his wheelchair. A moment of silence followed me serving him the papers.

I asked, “Dudley, do you understand your responsibility here?”

“If I am gonna stand trial, scrap this chariot. You get me new rubber tips on my walker, I’ll stand trial in more ways than one.”