Trying to Remember, Needing to Let Go

I know, on some level, that it has been half a year since I last called a child my own. It’s been half a year since I got spit up on, or accidentally tasted baby food that got splattered on my face. Half a year since I changed diapers and sang the ABC’s while washing hands. It’s been half a year since five little babies tore our house apart when the new foster parents tried to take over their care, calming instantly if and, ultimately when, I would step in again. Half a year should be enough time for broken hearts to begin to heal, and for me to move forward – remembering fondly, but no longer achingly. It should be. But half a year isn’t long enough a time for me to forget how our little two year old would look me straight in the eye with a toy xylophone in his hand, and chuck it against the wall, barely missing his sister. Waiting for me to react. Wanting me to react. Wanting me to be his parent again, and reaffirm that another adult wasn’t going to let him down. Six months isn’t long enough for me to forget the last time that I sang my kids a lullaby, and told them that it was my time to go but that I would still love them, watching helplessly as they dissolved into tears and sobs before crying myself. Because I knew that they wouldn’t understand that I didn’t want to leave them. Half a year isn’t long enough for me to forget what the weight of a slumbering infant felt like on my chest at 4 am. I still remember with perfect clarity each and every one of my goodbyes, even if some of my kids’ individual nuances are now getting blurred.

Is it healthy? To constantly re-watch videos of children I’ve loved and lost, and will never see again? To tear up in the middle of a lecture about umbilical hernias, remembering my babies who had them? To get updates on some of my kids who are still in the neighborhood, and hear that the little 14 month old that I fell in love with is now running and talking and I’m not there. To hear that another child got glasses, and still another one is going to get a (hopefully) happily ever after? To catch myself signing “please”, or “more”, or “help” out of sheer muscle memory – months later? Healthy? Maybe not. Probably not. Almost definitely not. But while I recognize the necessity of moving on, I’m terrified of forgetting. I don’t want to forget how, within a week of being placed with me, most of our kids already sought me out as a safe place when they were scared. I don’t want to forget being awake at 6 am with our one early riser – reading books and cuddling, and consciously feeling myself fall just a little more in love with them – as if that were possible. I don’t want to forget falling in love with each of my kids, and even if I wanted to, I can’t ever forget how it felt to let them go.

The holidays are a time for family, togetherness, and love. I was (and am) so thankful to be able to spend this year with my own family, especially after missing all of it last year. And yet, a large part of Thanksgiving day was spent on the verge of tears – remembering how my two year old spilled her water all over me at Thanksgiving last year. Falling on the floor with hysterical laughter, retelling the story in broken words to anyone who would listen for weeks after. My walls aren’t covered with handprint reindeer and footprint snowmen to get me in the spirit. And on Christmas morning, it will be hard to stay present while remembering and quietly celebrating the second birthday of one of our dearest little girls. Realizing that it’s been almost a full year since we taught her to use sign language, and crawl, and eventually walk. Since I chased her around the living room, or heard her laugh. The significance of the 25^th of December is forever changed. I am forever changed.

So maybe it’s ok to Facebook creep and try and find my kids somewhere out there. Maybe it’s ok to still feel a stab of pain and a prickle of tears when I am remembering. It’s ok to feel torn between the past and the present while I try to find that balance between remembering and letting go. In the meanwhile, I will see the big scar on my elbow and laugh at what an idiot I was to think I had the coordination to walk backwards with a child in my arms. That same scar will make me so thankful that she was unscathed (though frightened) from the fall. I will send my secret santa gift to my sister wife, and wait to open mine until we set up a four-way skype. Doing our best to stay together when we’re so far apart. When feeling sad and nostalgic, I will send them group messages about milk poops (which are real things, by the way), and how one baby’s diapers turned me off cookie dough for weeks (which I didn’t think was possible, but…), and our kids’ fears of showers, and videos of chasing them around the living room with the Christmas tree shining brightly in the background. I will hear Silent Night on the radio and remember the serenity of rocking my kids to sleep. I will finish my scrapbook (or, at least, work on it), and gain some closure. I will turn in my paperwork to become a volunteer at a local residential foster care facility in Grand Rapids. I will make a count-down calendar until March, when I will see my housemates for a reunion.

I will be grateful for all that I had, as well as all that I have. And I will remind myself that it’s a work in progress.

Happy second birthday little one, and Merry Christmas.  I will always miss you. 

Sister-wives

Time has gotten away from me. Writing is cathartic, but lately there hasn’t been much time for it. Things have slowed down (probably only for the week, but I’ll take it), and so – while I have a chance – the November edition. The thankful, and grateful, and not-as-sad edition.

I spend all this time remembering, mourning, thinking, and talking about my children over this past year, and the relationship we had, and the joy and pain that that brought me. And that was a major part of my year. It definitely made up the bulk of it. But while remembering my children, and laughing about their unique mannerisms, and mourning not having them, I have neglected to include in that emotional formula the role my coparents had on me. In truth, they are the sole and only reason I made it through this last year of turmoil. They were my supporters, my encouragers, my sympathizers and my allies. They were my comic relief and my shoulder to cry on. When I had a difficult day with one of our kids, they were the ones I took it out on, and they were the ones who didn’t hold that against me. When I lost a kid, WE lost a kid, and we traveled that road of mourning together. They are the only ones who also laugh hysterically at the antics of our children, or who cried tears of happiness over their success. Because they have also been on this journey with me from the first day that child came to our house. We navigated the smoke-and-mirror world of the foster system together. Not very well, not without setbacks, and tears, and no small dose of frustration, but we did it. Together. And so, when I left at the end of June, I absolutely mourned leaving my kids, but I also mourned leaving my coparents. My sisterwives.

Maybe you have or are raising a child with someone, and know how reliant you become on that other person during the experience. Maybe you have a sibling, and know that you would do anything for them while simultaneous wanting to rip their head off sometimes. Or maybe you have a best friend, who you can tell anything to. Who you know would never judge you. Who will always be on your side, even when your side is wrong. Maybe you are one of those lucky ones, whose sibling (or significant other) is simultaneously your best friend. I was blessed in that the people I parented with became my best friends, and felt like my siblings. They were my husband, wife, sister, friend and colleague all rolled into one (well, four) packages. They were all I had, and luckily for me, they were all I needed to make this past year a memorable and positive and heart-filling one. Which made our departure from each other into things unknown all the harder.

One of the hardest and scariest things about moving on is the chance that you are doing it at the expense of what you have NOW. The fear of forgetting is so, so real. Me forgetting someone, or someone forgetting me. The fear that I’m messing up a good thing, and everything else will always lack in comparison. There are tons of country songs written about it, I’m sure. But it was a huge weight on my shoulders as I left the world of foster care to enter the one of medicine. These people, this family that we had created, were such a huge part of my life, and suddenly we were on opposite sides of the country, doing opposite things with our lives. Maybe I need to have a little more faith in the connections that I forge, and in the family that we created. I didn’t doubt them because they weren’t real. Instead I doubted my ability to maintain their realness as we moved forward. Separately. I feared that because our lives were going to be so different, we wouldn’t know how to bridge that gap anymore. That we wouldn’t have anything else to talk about except for what was, and that would eventually dry out too. That once we were no longer raising kids together, we would have nothing in common.

5 months have passed, which seems like ages even though I know it's not. 5 months since I said my tearful goodbyes to my children, my home, my sisterwives, my family. Since I took that scary step forward. One is still in Texas, one in DC, one in Maine, and one in California. It feels like we are worlds apart. And yet… our conversations haven’t run dry. We talk about the past, because it helps us cope. It helps us remember. But we also talk about our present, and our futures. Long distance relationships are hard – romantic or not. But we’re making it work.

So, as this is the month of Thanksgiving,  thank you, to the four of you. You know who you are. Thank you for making my experience unforgettable. Thank you for getting me through it. Thank you for the shared cries and uncontrollable laughs. For the commiserating over how little control we had, and all of our pent up frustrations. Thank you for teaching me so, so much about love and parenting. Thank you for the icing fights, and sprinkler parties, and wrestling, and poop talk. Thank you for being my family on the holidays. And for being my family this whole year. But most of all, thank you for helping me maintain the special bonds that we have formed together. Thank you for continuing to be my family, and my friends, now that our paths are separate. I’ll see you in March. XOXO

"Together or apart, no matter how far... We go on together" - Ann Brashares

Baby, Mine

I'll love you forever

I'll like you for always

As long as you're living

My baby, you'll be - (Roger Knapp)

Today was a good day. It was a good day because I saw a picture. Not just any picture - a picture of a child whom I still love. A picture that told me he was ok. That he was whole, and healthy, and beautiful. Today was also a sad day. A day that broke my heart. It was a sad day because I saw that picture. Of the child I still love, on the one year anniversary of when I had to let him go. It was a sad day, because it was one more day that has passed since he was in my arms. It was a sad day because, in the picture, I did not see my 6 month old baby, instead I saw an 18 month old toddler. His hair was longer, he was bigger. He was now standing, and walking, and talking. But even though he had changed, he still looked like the little boy who had changed my life. He had the same nose, and eyes. He was sticking his finger in his mouth the exact way that he did when he was with me. Looking at that picture, seeing him after all this time – the same, and yet so, so different – broke the fragile, mending fissures of my heart once more.

Please understand. I loved every single child who walked into my house. Really, I did. Maybe not at first, maybe not the whole time. But I loved all of them. I love all of them. But with him, it was different. I fell in love the very first time I held him in my arms. His cry could make me cry. When he laughed, I had to catch my breath. He lit up my life, he changed my world, he gave it all meaning, and every other cliché you can think of. He was the first child I got to call my own – handed to me on my 22^nd birthday. And his was the first goodbye that I feared I would never recover from. That I haven’t recovered from. This was the child I had wanted to adopt – if they would’ve let me. And letting him go was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

I was scared shitless when, after two weeks of parent camp, I was handed my first child. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. A lecture on parenting abused and/or neglected children is nothing like living it. I thought they were batshit crazy to think I was ready. To think any of us were ready. Then again, this is parenting. And no one is ever fully prepared for the hoops, hurdles, and joys that it will bring. But when I held him in my arms, and I got him to smile, and he wrapped his hand around my little finger, I was hooked. He was beautiful, and perfect. Confidentiality prevents me from describing his previous home situation, but I will just say that he had had it rough. At 3 months old, he was already a fighter. A survivor of circumstance. His family was broken, and no one – not the caseworkers, not CPS, not us, not even his parents – thought it had a chance of getting fixed. And yet, he would smile and laugh when I played with him on the floor. He loved the bathtub, and the changing table, and when we went outside. He babbled and talked to us. He was happy. He made me happy.

As time went on, and I grew more confident in my role of caregiver and mother, the fear of not being enough for him slowly ebbed away. But, having lost a few kids already, and experiencing that pain, it was instead replaced by another fear. A bigger fear: the fear of losing him. The fear that, one day soon, I wouldn’t walk down the stairs and see his smile. That he would be sad, or hurt, or in pain, and I wouldn’t be there to comfort him. That my shirts would no longer be wet with drool from where he nuzzled. That my chest would no longer be heavy with the weight of him sleeping. That I wouldn’t see him learn to sit up, and then crawl, and then walk. That his first words wouldn’t be my name. A feeling began to surface, as our time together lengthened. The feeling that no one else in this world would love him like I did. His case wasn’t progressing, it was in limbo. And there was now talk of the goal now moving towards adoption. An idea fermented. Once there, I couldn’t let it go. Why not me? Another foster parent in the neighborhood was finalizing her adoption of one of her foster kids, why couldn’t I? I loved him more than life itself. Not a single thing would make me happier. I began to talk to caseworkers about the process of adoption, and how to make myself appear as a worthy candidate. I talked to my mom, just to scope things out, and she said she would help me with him. That I could move in with her, if needed. That we would make this work. I would put off medical school – my lifelong dream – indefinitely, if it meant I could keep him. Hope swelled. It allowed me to forget, however briefly, that the parents had not yet signed over custody. That nothing was final. It allowed me to forget what experience had taught me – that until it happens, it is almost better not to hope. The presence of hope only allows for its destruction. It’s a lesson that too many in the foster system learn. A lesson I perhaps should have remembered.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, there was no happily ever after. Not for me and him. After being told for weeks that the caseworkers were working with the mom and CPS to sever parental rights, and to move him towards adoption, a loophole was found. An alternative placement with a paternal relative was put into motion. And my fragile card house of hope that I had begun to build came crashing down around me. He had just turned 6 months old. We had just received permission to start baby foods with him. He had just developed stranger anxiety, crying if anyone but us held him. And he was leaving.

This was a goodbye that I didn’t have the strength to be professional for. He was too young for me to need to fake happiness, and I was hurting too much to try. It went something like this: he had a parent visit the morning he was leaving. After the visit, he would leave with the relative. I said my tearful goodbyes. Sobbing goodbyes. Hiccupping goodbyes. My caseworker was almost frightened by the strength of my emotions, as she carefully extracted him from my arms. But it wasn’t over. My painful goodbye was prolonged. Someone, somewhere along the line, hadn’t processed the paperwork. He wasn’t allowed to go home for another two or three hours. And licensing dictated that he wasn’t allowed to remain in a ‘visit’ with his relatives for that long. So they asked me to come back and pick him up. To hold him, as if he was cargo, for another two hours. One last emotional roller-coaster ride, with the end coming too soon. I came back to the main office, my eyes still red and puffy from crying, my breathing still hitched, and I heard a sound that still echoes in my head in the silence. From the main office reception area, I could hear him crying. No, that’s not quite right. He was screaming. I had never heard him cry like that. Not ever. Impossibly, my heart broke even further. When he was brought out to me, all I said was “hey, little man” and it was over. He went completely quiet. With eyes as red as mine, tears still streaming down his face, he looked up at me from his car seat and smiled. He had recognized my voice. He knew he was safe again. He was attached. That’s when the reality of it all set in for me. I knew then, if I didn’t already, that this was going to hurt. That I might not recover from this pain. That he loved me back. I fed him one last bottle. I sang You’ll Be In My Heart one last time. I redid all my goodbyes, this time attempting not to scare my caseworker. I didn’t succeed. And then he was gone.

I no longer feel hollow, the way I did in the days and weeks following his departure. There are other things that fill up my life now. I have found joy in other things. But I won’t ever feel completely whole again. Always, always will there be an empty space in my life. An absence. A missing puzzle piece. And it is there that he resides. It will never go away. He will never go away. My memories of him will never leave me. Even though he is 18 months old now. Even though that 6 month old beautiful boy that I knew, and that I loved, and that I said goodbye to, is no longer there. Even though he has grown. Even though he has taken steps, which I didn’t see. And has begun to say words, which I will not hear. And even though he has a mom, or at least a mother figure, who is not me. Even though he will not remember me. I remember him. And that is enough. Even though it isn’t… it’s enough. I cherish the pain, and the heartache, that is still there. I remember that, for 3 short months, I loved that little boy with everything that I had. And that our time together was magical, and beautiful, and filled with happiness. I look at the picture that was posted on Facebook by his relative. And although it hurts – although it emotionally, physically, deeply, hurts – I am grateful. 

Real Moms

Thanks for all the positive feedback! It gave me some motivation. Second post within one week - it will probably never happen again. :)

RANDOM MOM: Oh my lanta, my son is two years old, and he has really hit his mischievious age
ME: Oh, I know how that is. Be glad you don’t have twins – those guys build off of each other.
MOM: Oh, do you have children too?
ME: Well, I was a foster parent last year, and I had some two year old twins for a while.
MOM: Oh… [nods indulgently but patronizingly; cue immediate topic change]

This is a scenario that has happened more than once. In fact, it has happened enough times for me to question it. Enough times for me to be hurt by it. I can’t figure it out. Are you uncomfortable with the topic of foster children, and the foster system? Does my age throw you off? Do you want to ask questions, but don’t know how? Or, and this is where my cynicism comes in, do you think we are so different – you and I? That fostering a child is not the same as having one. That being a foster parent doesn’t really count. That my experience is somehow lacking. I don’t get full membership into the exclusive club of parenting – though, if I donate, I can still attend the gala.

You are right in some ways, I won’t deny that. Fostering IS different than having your own child. My bond with my child wasn’t automatic upon seeing their face for the first time. Sometimes, it took effort. I didn’t get to feel them growing inside of me. I wasn’t there for every milestone. And I won’t necessarily be there for their next one.  I have to get special permission from my supervisors and superiors if I want to take my child out in public – we don’t want an accidental run in with someone the child might know. My kids don’t get to make and play in forts on rainy days, because sometimes sexually abused children will use that cover in order to sexually abuse others. We don't play hide and seek for the same reason. Tag is also off limits because the feeling of being chased can be a trigger. We don’t watch Lilo & Stitch, The Lion King, Oliver and Company, or Cinderella because the main theme of a parent who is no longer there, or homelessness, hits too close to home for some of my kids. You get to update the world on how cute your kid is, and all the fun things that you do together. Confidentiality clauses prevent me from ever mentioning my child by name, or using pictures in which they can be recognized, on anything “trackable”. You know your child’s history – emotional, medical, social - because it is also yours. I am now accustomed to operating with only partially finished puzzles of my child’s history. You listen to your little girl talk about her day. My little girl, in the middle of playing, looks up and asks if I want to lick her nipples. You say goodbye to your child when you drop them off at school, confident in the knowledge that you will see them again. There comes a time when I have to say goodbye to my baby forever, devastatingly confident that I will NEVER see them again. So yeah, they are different. In some ways.

But when you cried when your baby rolled over for the first time, or took their first steps, or said their first words, I too shared that overwhelming joy. When you stayed up all night with your sick child, or sat in a steaming bathroom to ease their cough, I was similarly sleep deprived. When you could tell on the playground, without looking, if the child who was crying was yours – I shared that mommy knowledge. My walls are also covered in crafts, and handprint animals, and pictures of happy days. My stress is also stripped away by a simple hug from my little one. I would also give up anything and everything for my child. And when exhausted after a particularly difficult day, I too felt it was all worth it. Are we actually so different? Is one of us really better than the other? Are you more qualified to call yourself “mom”, and to tell stories about your child – unhindered by skepticism or condescension – because your relationship with your child is more longitudinal? Why do you get to give parenting advice, and little tips and tricks, to new moms while I get, at best, ignored, and at worst laughed at? Why does your idea of a mom revolve around the idea of biological. Around the idea of permanence.

Maybe I’ll form my own club. Where we exchange tips and tricks, heartaches and joys. Where we accept everyone’s story as worthy. And maybe at this new club, the “real moms” won’t be invited. Except for the yearly galas, and only then if they donate. 

Wrecking Ball

I'm not a good writer, I am the first to admit that. So go easy on me. But here goes.

Imagine with me for a moment. A month out of college, and you are two weeks into this new thing called motherhood. Unfortunately, you are already starting at a deficit, because you haven’t known your children from the time they were growing in your belly. Life has happened to them before they came to you. A lot of the time, you weren’t there to hear their first words, or see their first steps. You weren’t there to protect them from violence, or hunger, or being cold, or drugs. No one was there. When mommy’s boyfriend hurt them, or daddy couldn’t feed them because he was passed out on the couch. When daddy hit mommy while they watched from under the bed. It didn’t happen to you. You weren’t there. No one was there. Not for them. You get them after this has all happened. After their eyes have been opened and their hearts have been closed. Are you with me up to this point? Can you begin to understand how hard it is? To form a loving connection of parent and child after the child has seen so much? When you actually, in reality, know nothing about parenting – except for what you were exposed to as a child yourself? Were you ever exposed to anything like that? No? Then how could you possibly understand what it must be like? How do you tell a five year old that you know about their fears, and what it is to be afraid, when they won’t believe you. When you don’t believe yourself.

Same Act, different Scene. A little two year old girl and her sister come into your care. You pick them up at the office, unwashed, reeking of cigarette smoke, solemn little eyes that have already seen too much bad in the world to be able to trust it anymore. Worn thin by the weight of it all. The two year old doesn’t talk. Not even to say no. You try to get her to eat, but she cries and throws it on the floor. You find toys from the toy chest that you think she’ll like, but she doesn’t know what to do with it: cue another breakdown. She’s frustrated – she has never tried to communicate with anyone. Let me rephrase that. No one has probably ever tried to communicate with her. When you put her to bed, she stares at you from between the bars in the crib – eyes never leaving you, fingers fidgeting with the blanket, until eventually exhaustion overcomes her. For the first week, she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and crying. Every night. She’ll start screaming again if you try to leave the room before she’s back to sleep. So you sit up with her for close to three hours. Every night.  And then time passes. The frequency of her nightmares decreases. We develop a language of our own, and begin to communicate. Slowly, but surely, we begin to grow. Together.

Fast forward six months. When “Wrecking Ball” comes on the radio, she yells “It’s our song! Sing Bo!” (Bo is her version of Mo – we’re still working on pronouncing M’s). She turns three, and has a birthday party with all of her friends in the neighborhood – it’s The Little Mermaid themed, and there’s even a surprise appearance from Ariel herself. She is over the moon. When I tuck her in at night, and whisper “I love you D”, she whispers “I love you Bo” right back. She knows the routines of our household so well, she sometimes will correct me if I try to go out of order. Her favorite book is Guess How Much I Love You. Her favorite song is rock-a-bye baby, which she has some trouble saying, so it’s been renamed to baby rock. She trusts me. She trusts us. To care for her, to never hurt her, to love her unconditionally. And then one day I get a phone call from the office. They ask me if I’m sitting down. Mom has completed all of her required services, and CPS has given the go ahead for the girls to be returned to her. In a three minute phone call my world, and hers, has been turned upside down and inside out. Only she doesn’t know it yet, and won’t know until it’s actually happening. There have been too many false alarms in the past for me to tell her she’s leaving before the day is actually here. I am alone in the knowledge that our time together now has a finite end. I pack up her clothes, including the brand new outfits that we got her for Christmas and her birthday. Will mom still dress her in them, or does she have her own stuff picked out? I pack up her favorite toys, which I now know by heart. Will she get a chance to still be a kid and play with them? I write out a list of phrases unique to my little girl and interpret them for mom. Because even though I know exactly what she means every time, apparently she’s hard to understand for other people. Will mom understand? I write down her future doctor appointments, which medications she is on, how to get her to take them. Will mom keep those appointments? I put together a scrapbook of her and her sister during their time with us, having to make hard choices about which pictures – out of hundreds – to include. Will mom show it to them?

When the day comes, I sit with her in the rocking chair and sing baby rock one more time. I tell her I love her to the moon and back, and she will always be in my heart. Then I tell her that although she will always have a home with me, it is time for her to leave our house and live with mommy again, just like some of our friends in the house have done before her. I can’t be sure she understands, because all she does is look solemnly at me, touch my cheek, and say “no cry Bo”. For a minute, I am filled with intense anger. How dare they do this to us. To me. She is MINE. I have loved her, I have cared for her, I have kissed her every booboo. Me, I did that. But then it all comes back to me. Yes, during those six months, she was mine. But for the two years before, she wasn’t. And she’s not going to be my child after this day. I know her biological mom. Yes, the biological distinction is important to me. I have met with her several times, given her updates on her kids, listened as she told me about D as a baby. Watched her cry when her younger daughter didn’t recognize her, and cried and screamed for me instead. I watched her work her ass off to get her kids back, and heard lots of positive updates from her caseworkers. I know she loves them. I know they’re going back to a situation that, while not perfect, is so much better than what they were in before. I am happy for her. Objectively, I am happy for her. I am happy that she succeeded and will get her kids back, and her family can be whole again. But this is love, and it’s not objective. Her family will be whole again, but at the expense of the family I have created these last 6 months. So yes, I am so happy for the mom, but when I remember that the kids she’s getting back are the ones that I love, it’s hard to remember that. Even so. Even though it is breaking my heart. Even though I don’t know any more what a world looks like without these two little girls, I will try to at least appear positive. For their sake. I will do this one last thing. I will put them first one last time. I will put all these conflicting emotions in a tiny little box to be opened later, when I am feeling stronger. And I will smile, not sob, as they walk through that door, away from me forever.

I go back to a house that is no longer filled with their laughter and tears. I stand in their bedroom, look at their pictures on the wall, and listen to Wrecking Ball. To our song. Then another phone call comes. Two kids are on their way to fill this now empty room. They will need me, just like the two who left did. So I wipe away my tears. I collect the necessary paperwork, and start turning over the bedroom with clean sheets and new clothes. I salvage what is left of my heart and wonder if it will be enough for the new children. I wonder how much more I can give. I pray that whatever is left of this broken heart will be enough. That I will be enough. At least for now. And then a brother and sister arrive, confused and scared, and the cycle begins again.