Back to Table of Contents

Debra Gwartney
Runaway

In the spring of 1997, I drove across the state of Oregon, from ocean to desert, twice a month. Every other Friday after work, I gathered my two youngest daughters along with baggies of crayons and stacks of paper for drawing; a shoebox of Disney soundtracks, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Mary Poppins for singing-along to; four juice boxes, a package of string cheese, apples, and foil-wrapped chocolate chip cookies for the sister at the end of our trip, and we’d head out of town on the cool McKenzie River Highway. On to the shadowed Santiam Pass. Past Hoodoo, through Sisters: enter Bend. It was the last curve of the road before the relentless strip of asphalt that split Eastern Oregon all the way to Burns.

Burns. That’s where Amanda was staying with a bony rancher, his arthritic wife, and their two cowboy-hatted, tight-jeaned boys. That’s where I’d go to find my sixteen-year-old daughter, who’d been given a title I could not bring myself to say aloud: foster child. …

Excerpted from I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
Copyright 2005 by Debra Gwartney