By Elaine Carlson

I don't remember much about that visit other than seeing what looked like several lines of dots on the carpet in our living room. And the lines those dots were on weren't drawn but they were absolutely straight. I guessed each one was about a foot. And each line had three or four dots.

Uncle Ralph said mice had gotten into the house since we were gone. So those dots were their bowel movements. Then I knew people, cats, and dogs have them so it seemed logical to me that mice would have them too. And since mice are such tiny creatures, it would follow that their dots wouldn't be big.

What really got to me was that everything looked so empty. My mother's coffee cup was not on our dining room table, there were no newspapers or magazines on the couch or on the TV. Also, there was not a stack of clean laundry ready to be folded and put away.

My mother was in the hospital because she got Hepatitis. My two brothers went to live with our grandmother. And the family of the minister of the church we went to took in my sister and me.

I never figured out why our uncle picked me up and took me there. And I don't remember if he also brought my sister along. Sometime, I will ask her if she remembers the dots. And I never figured out how they were all gone when we finally went back there to live.

My mother stayed in the hospital for two months. When she got out, she picked up my sister from the minister and his wife but let my grandmother keep my brothers. She didn't think she was strong enough to handle four children.

She made arrangements for my two brothers and me to go into the Masonic Home after she decided her recovery was taking longer than she thought it would. My sister couldn't go with us because she was 4 – they only took kids who were at least in the first grade. She told me I would like it there because they had a swimming pool.

The Home not only had a pool, but they maintained a stable of horses. It was fun to go out riding. They also had an auditorium where they showed movies every Friday night. Several times the only people in the building were three of us Junior Girls in the front row (except of course for the teenager who was the projectionist). One of those times the three of us watched Elvis Presley's Jail House Rock.

Once when our House Mother was on a break the woman taking care of us took us to the mountains for a picnic. When we were out walking there was a big dot in the middle of the trail.

One of the older girls said, "Oh look that was what a dog left." And the adult leader said, "Yes and the dog used toilet paper." She said that because right on top of the dot was a candy bar wrapper.

We didn't stay in the Home long. Our mother said she wanted to take us back and raise her own children. She told them her brother (Uncle Ralph) would be go there and pick us up.

And the truth was that my mother was struggling financially and needed the money she was paying them to take care of her children. The Masonic Home never turned away children because of a lack of ability to pay but they preferred that parents pay something. The Social Worker told my mother that she could decide how much she would pay.

She thought it was only fair that she pay something but the amount she agreed upon left her short. She started to think that she would get a job but then she thought it would be better if she took her kids back.

I was very happy when Uncle Ralph drove us into our driveway. Of course the swimming and the horseback riding were nice. I won't deny that. But altogether there is nothing better than being at home (and not in the Home).