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Sept.
2004 |
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Between
goodbye and hello,
a foster mom reflects |
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Our foster daughter has been gone six months now. While
I’ve referred to her by name in print in the past,
now that she’s no longer a member of our household,
I’ll just call her T. T came to us in February
of 2003, age 14 months, and was given back to her birth
father — who fulfilled his court-ordered conditions — this
past March, 2004.
Throughout T’s year with us, one of the comments Bill and I heard a lot
was, “I could never be a foster parent. I couldn’t give them back.”
But when you’re a foster parent, giving them back is part of the deal.
In some ways, being a foster parent is like being a tornado shelter. When the
storm is over, you come out of your shelter, spend a great deal of time cleaning
and rebuilding, and then resume your life. To wish a child could stay is tantamount
to wishing his or her family’s storm — be it alcohol abuse, drug
addiction or one of the many other effects of poverty — will level the
original family, destroy it, make it unlivable. It happens, yes, but you don’t
wish for it. In Milwaukee County, three of four foster children are returned
to either a rehabilitated birth parent or a willing relative. The others, whose
parents’ rights are terminated, are adopted by their foster family or another
family.
Giving them back is part of the deal.
T’s birth father chose to sever contact with us after she was returned
to him and we haven’t seen her since. The most difficult part, for me,
seems to be over now. I think about her in little ways; when I find a marble
on the floor and remember how I was always sweeping her mouth to check for small
toys. Sometimes one of her socks shows up in the wash. I never know how it gets
there, but then, the where and when of socks and laundry are a great mystery
to me. We have photos of her mixed in with pictures of the boys, on the wall
and in albums.
Bill and I both dream about her. Scary, searching dreams where we’re frantically
looking for T, who is inexplicably lost. Somehow, in the dreams, we never remember
she was returned to her father.
I often think of her when I go for my daily run through Lincoln Park. Our Glendale
neighborhood, just east of the park, is mostly white; the neighborhood just west
of the park, in Milwaukee, is mostly black.
Running in Lincoln Park reminds me that too often, in Milwaukee, skin color is
an “either” rather than a “both.” Either you’re
white and you live and play here, or you’re black and you live and play
there. Lincoln Park is a reminder that T, who is black, might not have had it
easy in our white family, much as we loved her and she loved us. I know the family
life she has been returned to won’t be easy either, but the large family
picnics I run past are a hope for me — a hope that T’s family will
heal to the extent that someday, she’ll have a family celebration of her
own.
The time I remember T most, though, is during Eucharist at Mass. I never plan
to see her then, but a memory nevertheless dashes in, a fast toddler with someplace
to be. I see her scribbling with a fat orange crayon during the Consecration
and feel her squirming weight in my arms as I walk up to Communion. Once, during
the fraction rite, as the priest was pouring wine into four glasses, it reminded
me of how many times the past year I poured juice for three kids, and now I pour
for two. Our family fraction rite has changed. My boys are so used to seeing
me cry during the Eucharist that I sometimes notice them peering over as we kneel,
to see if I’ve started yet. We smile at each other in recognition of the
strange, new ritual.
But from my vantage point of six months after T, I can honestly say that the
joy of having had her far outweighs the hurt of having lost her. Six months after
her leaving, we have been assured by her social worker that her family situation
is stable enough that she is unlikely to bounce back into the foster care system.
Knowing we aren’t needed for T anymore, we are once again ready to put
our name on the list to accept another foster child. We don’t know who
that child is, but many nights at dinner, our boys pray for that child after
they pray for T.
“Bless T and bless whoever we’re going to get next,” one of
them will
say.
It’s not a prayer for tornadoes, but a prayer of recognition that tornadoes
exist.
We are readying our shelter. Wondering if our shelter will be a temporary haven
or a permanent home. And as we get ready, we are remembering T, knowing somehow,
a part of her will join us in welcoming this new child.
(Scobey-Polackeck and her husband, Bill, have two sons, Jacob and Liam. The
family belongs to SS. Peter and Paul Parish, Milwaukee, and St. Monica Parish,
Whitefish
Bay. Scobey-Polacheck welcomes dialog regarding her column. E-mail her at <ascobey@hotmail.com>.) |
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