County's Juvenile Welfare department took another decision that impacted my future in a predictable manner. Eager to wash their hands of the business of finding an appropriate residency program for me, they took a shortcut and qualified Mom for the guardianship and handed over my rights and me to her. Ms. Holland, the attorney who saved me from going to jail, had gone to rescue another rebellious teenager. Mr. Roy, as I told you in the prior chapter, showed reluctance to take the custodial responsibilities of me and did not object to the arrangement. One more event of not recognizing me as a human being and treat me as a livestock that can be passed on to anyone without consent completed the saga of Taylor Mountain Mobile Home Park and I was on an unknown path charted by my destiny.

I dreaded the thought of living with two strangers and imagined scenarios that were frightening. In one such projected episode, I found myself lying in a meadow surrounded by the standing crops of Corn and Wheat, and facing an azure, cloudless Sky. I wondered if that was my subconscious desire to be free; total freedom from human society. In another moment, I saw myself interacting with Anton and mom in a joyful environment of a County fair. Perhaps, this was my hidden dream of be living in a normal household of a dad, mom and maybe, a brother. But then, those were fleeting moments triggering random and unattainable thoughts.

The loading of our few belongings that included my home-library, and Anton's stuff was completed and yet I did not know where we were moving. I had no input in the selection of town, city, village or the state and I showed no curiosity or interest in knowing the destination and at the moment, it did not matter. The news of moving far away from Pappy and my river, had numbed my soul. What difference does it make where you go when you have no choice of destination? Like the driftwood fallen in the river does not have a choice but to go with the flow, my body was floating, perhaps like the deadwood without my soul in it. I learned that we were heading towards the mountains of Colorado. While on the road, Anton and mom forgot I was in the rear, and began discussing the places to take breaks and other details to set the time for the arrive at the Rio Blanco County of Colorado; Meeker town to be precise.

During that long journey, mom did nothing else but keep babbling about her dream house and settling down. Anton was a strange bird. He said few sentences and neither disrupted mom's chain of thoughts nor expressed his desires or ideas of how he wanted his life to shape. For the most part of that journey, he remained indifferent and uninterested in her plans. From my advantageous observation place, I could watch his face. I am not sure, but I think he is from the Aegean Sea area; a Greek-Egyptian mix race like the Ptolemaic Hellenistic stock. His dark hair and strong jaw persona and a strong muscular body must have attracted my mom to him. He spoke an accented English that made him a foreigner instantly. I think that's why he spoke only when necessary. Mom of course wasn't in the truck; she was floating on the clouds that was taking her to the destiny she must have designed in her heart in her teenage years; about two decades ago.

For the first time I had the opportunity to look at her from a close proximity and listen to her feelings. I then realized that I had no place in her dreamed world. All her thoughts were centered around her life with the man who was, as she was convinced, going to deliver her the life she wanted so badly since a longtime. I was an unwanted product of her one-night stand that happened during that dreaming wild days of youth that nearly derailed her dream of a long time.

Today, I hear heated demands, coming mostly from the male politicians and the preachers, of using force on the women to keep the undesired pregnancies and give births, as their faith dictates. I want to scream at these hypocrites,and their faith. Both don't care to know what happens to those unwanted children who burden their mother's finances and become a clog in the plans of achieving a dream that many teen-aged women live for.

My grandma had a large volume of Jerusalem Bible. Out of curiosity, I opened it and found a section called 'Ecclesiastes,' and read it without understanding. I read it and had asked my Pappy to explain this passage; mind it, them I was just 10 years old. He held me to his heart and said, 'You are a precious gift to me; not a crooked one in any means; don't read that crap again.'

Later in my mature years, I went back and read that part of Bible again. It made me think about my life from that perspective. I am quoting that passage here so you may get some idea about how society looks upon people like me, who do not match its Biblical concept of perfection of a birth that the clergies claim as god's will and a design of two genders. Forcing one to be born is how far their religion goes; life and death after birth is not of their and God's concerns.

I think Koheleth; King of Israel in the Ecclesiastes wrote this with those hypocrites in mind:

"Vanity of vanities, said Koheleth; vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
What is crooked will not be able to be straightened, and what is missing will not be able to be counted...I spoke to myself, saying, "I acquired and increased great wisdom, more than all who were before me over Jerusalem"; and my heart saw much wisdom and knowledge...And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I know that this too is a frustration....For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge, increases pain."

Am I not that soul which perhaps the Son of King David spoke about? To be honest, I did go through a period of instant madness and folly in the last days of living in West Virginia, and I told you about it. My pain did not increase with knowledge since then and in fact, it's the lust for knowledge that redeemed me from the horrors of our criminal justice system; I am sure of that.

I imagined that it was my good luck that Pappy was there, or else, mom would have put me in a basket and let go of me in the Kanawha or Elk river, like Mosses' mother had done. I do not resent her nor blame her because, somehow, I understood her dilemma. At the age of 18 year, coming home three months after running away in search of love and paradise, and that too with a child of an unknown man in the womb. It wasn't exactly a 'return of a prodigal son' scenario of the Bible. My grandparent came from a respectable middle-class Presbyterian stock. Pappy then was in uniform awaiting a retirement in Virginia. Grandma had moved to West Virginia, waiting for his return with my mom and then, all that happened. Upon my mom's returning home, my grandma slammed door and told her to stay away until Pappy came home. A Bible guided mother had no place for the sinner in her heart or in home. Mom managed to survive and right about the time Pappy returned home, I came in the world. Learning the events of returning and my birth; he came and brought me home with him. Grandma mellowed after seeing her grandchild and then, I found a home and with that, mom regained her freedom when the responsibilities of taking care of a child shifted to her parents.

Now while traveling to new home, and watching my mom's joyous visage, I realized that she had some attractive features and at that age of 33, she looked like a matured, delicate female beauty, with brunet silky hair, delicate nose, and full lips, bit rundown perhaps. I wondered, why I did not get the attractive features of her body? Don't they say daughters get father's looks and boys mother's. So much hogwash that is for one with a manlike body and mindset in a woman's body! I felt betrayed by nature that cut off my mom's looks. It sure was a gender confused birth.

In that journey to Meeker in the Rio Blanco County, I had enough opportunities to think about that passage from the Old Testament and do some retrospection. I was sure of one thing that I was not crooked in any meaning of that word. No crooked thought occupied my mind and speaking about my physical body, everything was in its place as per my age; I was just different when it came to feelings and attractions. I did not find any attraction to boys then and also later at adulthood, to men. I was told later that I am, 'Asexual', with mild attraction to women in someone may say a platonic way. I ignored that psychological profiling done by a High School Psychologist during the final assessment before recommending that at home education. By the time we arrived at the destination, I had put all that behind me.