"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old,
he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)
I guess we need to back up a bit and tell you about Zoey and Bryan and their friends. Zoey was a plain young girl. She had deep beauty but outwardly many folks called her plain or homely. Zoey came from a rough and ragged background. As a child, Zoey remembered cleaning her mother up after a drugged and drunken fight between her feisty mother and easily angered father, before he left on what her father would call a "working dinner."
Zoey and her mother and anyone else who knew them knew he was meeting his co-worker for sex and to get drunk or high. Her mom on the other hand lived in denial and was always drunk or on drugs of some sort, as she lived in depression and pretended everything was fine. Eventually, her mom was so hurt by her father's cheating and lies that she began not coming home at night. She would find a bar to hang out in, she would be sleeping with anyone just to feel something, anything, and was either drunk or high if she were awake. Zoey became the true adult in the home at a very, (too young really) age. Many nights Zoey's grandmother, who she called Gram, would come to the apartment to pick her up and take her to her house to be safe so she was not all alone. Gram knew about the drugs, the drinking, the adultery, the cheating, and lies. Gram tried to help for many years, but it hurt her on the inside trying to be strong for Zoey. Gram knew how much it embarrassed Zoey because of who her parents both were. It was also hard on Gram to see her daughter this way. A teen mom, a college dropout, a beautiful person inside and out who could never really find where she fit in. Gram had tried to take her to church and build up her self-esteem but unfortunately sometimes no matter how much unconditional love there is, some people will always find a way to be the victim. A way to live in denial. They spend too many years chasing their demons and following the wrong paths. In this case, this was both of Zoey's parents.
Gram had them both committed for evaluation, and both checked themselves out. She reported them both to social services and had them both arrested. Unfortunately, the jails were overcrowded and there was nothing they had officially done wrong other than being sorry excuses for parents and addicts. Zoey loved her parents but at the same time, she had a deep fear of being around them. Zoey never knew what would set one or the other of them off. Zoey knew one thing for sure. She was determined to make things better for herself and remember to be thankful for all she had, and all Gram had done for her.
The apartment they lived in was an old factory building, revamped to home low-income families. Not a lot of conveniences and definitely not luxury; but it was a shelter from the rain. When the clunky radiator worked, Zoey was thankful for the warmth on a cold windy night and imagined the loud noise as if it were a rock concert the two guys next door were playing. The building mind you, were an old, red brick building built in 1914 and was originally a factory for textiles. Zoey had only heard the stories about the beautiful textiles made, from her grandmother who worked there when she was young. The factory was also where Gram had met and fallen in love with Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop had passed away when Zoey was an infant, so she only knew of pictures and stories of him. She loved to hear the amazing stories of love and passion that her grandparents shared through cold, famine, and the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
