Foster Further

Easter was hard this year. I didn't know how much I needed those hymns and readings to feel the renewal of spring until we were without them. It is hard to arise from the hibernation of winter when we are now hibernating from the world. But in the midst of all this three things happened. a) I already had sweet dresses for the girls from photos we took to celebrate their adoption. b) a neighbor dropped off beautifully decorated cupcakes as thanks after I made cloth face masks for her family. c) a friend cleared out her crafty closet and donated a random collection of paper, ribbon and beads to my kids. I'd told Jane weeks ago about the idea of an Easter Bonnet and she was all starry-eyed in love with the idea of a big decorated hat. Easter morning she asked for it. Honestly, my first thought was, damn that girl and her memory and her incessant need for more-more-more. But I buttoned my lip and instead dumped out the bag of ribbons and told the girls to find some they liked w...

So this just happened... I'm published under my professional writing pseudonym: Sara Mesa Wright https://mothersalwayswrite.com/a-cry-so-big-it-must-part-the-clouds/

After my saddest day with her...this moment of unbearable joy. Jane drew a picture with our whole family (that's seven people, each represented by just their eyes, waist, and legs), a sun, and a rainbow. She draws almost every day and usually many pictures in each sitting. She's lived here 16 months. This is the very first picture with a sun and a rainbow. Drawn on a cloudy, cold, muddy spring day. I realized almost a year ago that she never drew any suns or other happy scenes. I'm a special education teacher for behavior disordered children; I don't have a degree in child psychology but I know some signs to look for. I took notice and started waiting. 16 months. Two Christmases, a birthday, and an adoption later...she finally found her sun. And this is the very first time she has drawn our whole family together. She named each one for me while I blinked furiously so she wouldn't see my teary eyes. 16 months. 16 months. Such a long time for her to finally deeply...

A few days ago I put all three littles in the minivan, even though the seats were all laid down since Theo had been hauling lumber in the van. I let them sit or lay down or roll around while I drove the back roads--maybe taking some curves a tiny bit fast to give them a thrill. I felt like a kid back on the farm when a whole slew of cousins would pile into the back of a pickup truck and dad would drive home from the field and we'd all be sliding around on the curves laughing and clutching at each other. My kids have never before ridden in a car without being belted into a carseat. From a five point harness to total unseated freedom was intoxicating, exhilarating. They exited the car, 20 minutes later, wide-eyed as if stumbling off a roller coaster. This is so out of character for me. Something about living in dangerous times and the need to suddenly embrace it, even for a few minutes, instead of constantly fighting it. Something about the desperate need to give small children s...

It's Easter morning but it sure doesn't feel like it. Hard to feel the wonder or mystery without the hymns and words and signs of celebration that being in a full church brings. Hard to make homegrown celebrations when my husband is of another religious practice that is still deep in the darkest days of fasting and waiting and he won't celebrate the great resurrection for another week. I've decided to hold off on baskets and eggs until Pascha so we just do one celebration all together since family unity is more important than a date on a calendar...but still. It's hard. And a reminder that he left my religious practice knowing I could not follow and that decision he made is still the most difficult thing in our marriage and home. I make the choice not to fight it because I understood that I lost that battle the moment he made a decision that was about his needs, not ours, and that decision was made years before I even knew it and it was not going to ever be undone...

Strange how isolating ourselves from all social contact has somehow filled our days. Maybe it's spring coming and lots to do outside; maybe it's Theo's scheduled 4-week break from work and the big list of household projects he's working on. Maybe it's both the effort and importance of maintaining social contact now--even a ten minute chat across the fence with a neighbor feels important now, like it's the highlight of the whole day so it fills the day more than it once would have. For whatever reason, I feel busier now than I did last January when I had nothing to do but stew about how incompetent our social workers were. The only part of the foster/adoption issue that is coming to mind these days is how desperately grateful I am that my girls are not in their birth mother's home during a pandemic. I think there's every chance she would've killed them. I'm not kidding. She was already falling apart, neglect to the point of losing custody is no ...