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.