Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Miami Children’s Home, Maumee OH
Courtesy of the Troy Historical Society (www.thetroyhistoricalsociety.org)

Holy smoke!* So I was wandering the halls of the imaginary universe, aka the internet, looking for the trail that continues up through what remains of ‘Home and Heart‘ late last night. One part of writing that I really get a kick from is when I find I need a location or a cultural reference or just maybe just a detail in a character’s personal history. Rather than make it all up, I search the virtual world for it. (The assumption, a subset of the Doctrine’s ‘Everything Rule’ holds that if you look in enough places, long enough, you will find it.)

Example: Sister Catherine. She is a character in both Sister Margaret books. In the current book, ‘Home and Heart’ her character gets to play a larger role. Subsequently we learn more about her. Fine. All the books on writing say, ‘it’s essential that you come to know your characters better than you know your friends.’ I realized that Sister Catherine grew up an orphan. So I went out looking for orphanages. I backed her age off to bracket her childhood. She was born in 1967. In the course of my searching, I came across a reference to the Miami Ohio Children’s Home. A very real place, an orphanage. But that’s not what inspired me to write, ‘holy smoke’ What did inspire me to write ‘hole smoke’ was a page from the Troy (OH) Historical Society’s website titled: Miami County Ohio Children’s Home Index (1879-1930). On the page are links to entries that, presumably, account for all the residents of the Miami Children’s Home between those years. Alphabetically. And, as often happens with alphabetical listings, before the list starts in earnest (Addams, Addams, …Addington etc), there is, at the head of the list, the most outside of Outsiders, those generic entries. ‘no-name baby, last name**’

So I clicked on the last of these unknowns (‘no-name-baby, Ruth -?-) and this is what I found:

baby, Ruth (surname unknown)
Book #1, Page #290 
Inmate # 0579 
Date admitted:19 July 1894
Date discharged: died 21 Feb 1895 
Age: believed to be about 6 weeks
Sex: Female 
Comments: Baby found in basket in front of Home. Believed to be about six weeks old. She died.
“The one that we all loved. But Heaven claims it’s own”

‘She died’ ….’holy smoke!’

A part of me, at this moment, is itching to stay here at the keyboard. There seems to be so much that can, (and in the curiously poignant way of clarks), that should be said. This last is less the endless flow of information that is the foundation of the social contract of clarks, as it’s a need to mark the existence of those belonging to this particular set of outsiders. As such, this clarklike impulse is both sad and heartening.

*  an approximation of my two-word expression of… not sure what the word is, not shock, not surprise, more like finding yourself in the kitchen at 2:00 am for a glass of water and finding a full-sized car tire on the counter.

** presumably the last name of the adopting parents