Foster Further

This morning I had to go to the middle school to pick up items from Gus's locker. The school had cleaned out every child's locker and parents were asked to do a pickup while they returned other items such as band uniforms. Parents were instructed to stay in their cars, make a sign with their kids' name and tape it to the window, roll down windows to exchange but don't make contact, etc. Very well organized. I fought tears the whole time. Everything outside of the house makes me cry these days. All these safety protocols in the grocery store. They set off this urge to wail like a frightened child. Of course I don't. I don't show a single reaction whatsoever--but deep inside I'm totally panicked. So, seeing the school principal and secretary (6 years of kids in this building and I know them well) in masks and gloves and I just wanted to break down and weep. It's so scary and real in ways that a media website's charts and graphics just can't be. ...

After putting Jane to bed and writing most of the previous post, I got a call from the girl's aunt who has moved out of state. We'll be visiting her family on our way to FL. We're chatting when she suddenly changes the topic (I later realized someone walked out of the room so she could speak freely) and she tells me point blank to never, ever allow Grandma to take the girls out on her own. That Grandma absolutely will put them in contact with their father who is a convicted sexual predator of young children. That Grandma did that with his other kids by another mother over Thanksgiving. There are pictures on FB to prove it. And the girl was instructed, by Grandma, to lie to her parents about who had been at the Thanksgiving party. This is the same family party that Grandma BEGGED us to allow her to take the girls to. She tried every which way to get them there. And I felt super bad about denying her at the time but on an instinctual level it felt wrong for us to let them...

I took Kate to the doctor's office today for our fake, made-up, bureaucracy-sucks appt (see previous post). She adores outings 1:1 with me, even to the dr office. We walk in and she's chatty and smiley with the receptionist. In the waiting room a cute little A-A boy sat beside her and she joyfully crowed to me, "Mama, look, it's my friend!" (she'd never met him before). We get called back and she's so friendly and expressive to the nurse that the nurse keeps cracking up and at one point whispered to me, "She's adorable!" So Kate is having a good old time until a student doctor walks in. She FROZE. Like a baby bunny before the jaws of the fox. Absolutely could not move a muscle, eyes wide and locked on him, totally unresponsive. I think she almost stopped breathing. I looked at him and saw what she saw--he looked a lot like her biological father. Same hair; same long face; maybe even a similar voice though I'd only heard him speak once...

We are finally reading deeply thru the paperwork we were given when we assigned the adoption papers. At first, skimming through, I thought it was all stuff we already knew. Nope. Theo is finding some real gems buried in there. Like, Grandma who knows our last name and address and has been to our house and driven the girls off in our car has a prior conviction for FELONIOUS ASSAULT. What the hell??!! Nobody thought to inform us of this? Back when I was quizzing every social worker and relative all about grandma?? When I was directly seeking info on whether we should trust her and let her have contact?? That little tidbit didn't come up? In case you're wondering, here's what felonious assault is: " Felonious assault, also called assault with a dangerous weapon, occurs when you assault another person with a gun, knife, brass knuckles, or some other weapon that has the potential of causing serious physical injury or death." And while Theo is doing his deep...

Tomorrow we take our whole family to spend an early Thanksgiving dinner with Papa Ken*, who is a sorta grandfather figure because he was maternal grandma's boyfriend during Ava's early years. Ken and Laura (Leah's mother) had already broken up by the time we got the girls but somehow he was still getting the girls at his house, every weekend, for the year before they came to us. In addition to Jane and Kate going every weekend he also got Gabby, the girls' cousin (Leah's sister's daughter). He still sees Gabby fairly regularly. Gabby is about 7, I think. Gabby's mom, Nikki, is Leah's twin sister but luckily they don't look anything alike. Imagine if she did--would we let her see the girls for fear that they'd think it was their mother? Would I fear that it was Leah for real, pretending to be Nikki? Gah, thank god they barely even look like sisters, let alone twins. I truly could hardly believe they were related when looking at them side-by-si...

Two days ago the most potentially dangerous thing that's ever happened at our house occurred. Jane opened the gate to the goat pen and let them out so they had access to where the three little kids were playing unsupervised (I was inside making dinner). Couple facts...the two goats are Nigerian Dwarf and only 18 inches tall at the shoulder. Yet both are so strong and adept at head-butting that they've knocked me to the ground before (with a sneak attack at the back of the knees). A month ago Kate wasn't listening to me while I was walking the goats on leashes and she got too close--one of the goats hit her square in the belly and, literally, sent her flying through the air and knocked the wind out of her. If I hadn't had the goat on the leash her next move would've been to put her head into Kate's body and kneel her front legs while she ground Kate into the dirt with all the force of her rock-hard skull. It's a brutal move that can kill a small animal. Or ...

I found Kate's father. We knew the girls had different fathers even though, according to the courts, there was only one. Grandma knew his name and told me. She spelled the last name wrong and the first name is a common one that can be spelled many different ways so it took me awhile. But then there I am staring at the male version of Kate's face. I have no doubt he's her father. He's a cage fighter. Seriously. Like boxing. But not. There are tickets that have been sold to his events. His FB knickname is "LowLife" and his slogan is, "Once a lowlife, always a lowlife." Covered in tattoos and muscles and a nose that's been broken many times. He may also do tree trimming as a job, according to pictures of him up in a tree in a harness with a chainsaw. We will not need any of our trees trimmed ever again. Nothing screams, CLOSE THAT ADOPTION! like finding out the birth father is a chainsaw-wielding, cage-fighting, lowlife. Feeling pretty ...

Here are all the things I'm worried about tomorrow: Forgetting some food or serving item (100% chance that'll happen despite my lists, oh well). The half-brother, age 13, who was uninvited after the girls cried and told me stories of him hurting them, coming anyway. If his grandpa (all the kids' maternal grandfather) brings him, despite our request not to...what do we do? Tonight I coached the girls that they can say, "NO!" loudly if he tries to pick them up or touch them and then say, "I'm going to get my mom!" (Sadly, Jane said, "sometimes he hurted me...but he still loves me!" Leading to a message from me about not letting people, even those who loves us, hurt us. Oy. Grandma dragging out the good-bye and making an already emotional day even more difficult. Like the fear about forgetting a party item I'm 100% sure this will happen. There's no prevention; just degrees of coping afterwards. It being cold and wet and a m...

My closest childhood friend died last month at age 44. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. I delivered the eulogy at her funeral. A beautiful life only half-lived. The kind of friendship so deep we could imitate each other's mother's voices and had never kept a single secret from each other because there wasn't anything the other one didn't know already. I am feeling everything extra hard right now. I feel tender and raw. I feel like grief grabs me out of the blue and sends me on a roller coaster of emotion at the slightest provocation. And so I recognized the depths of grief that washed over Jane today. There's a certain stretch of road we often drive that has flowers planted by the sidewalk that trigger a memory for Jane. Often, as we pass them, she'll suddenly exclaim, "Mama Leah has flowers like that at her house!" Today, she saw them and then just utterly fell apart. It all came out in an incoherent rush. I miss her. I want her. I want to ...

I keep having these imaginary conversations in my head. Outwardly I'm driving or cleaning or folding laundry but inside I'm screaming, ranting, finger-wagging, castigating. Making that perfect point that puts my imaginary listener in his/her place. Makes them widen their eyes and take a step back before bowing their head and walking away, out of my life, forever. Why do we do this? I get in this state when there are too many things coming at me at once. I suppose I'm fantasizing that if only I'd responded perfectly the first time then those stressors would've gone away forever. Or maybe I'm just wanting them to feel the pain that now I'm suffering due to their stupidity. I never said I was a saint. Or maybe this endless replay of past events is akin to why we worry about future events. If I can just rehearse and rehearse until the grooves are worn smooth in my brain then I'll be prepared for next time... Here are the additional stressors that hav...

It's been awhile since I last posted. After I wrote the previous post where I grouped Jane's behaviors into weeks/months where we saw A and then weeks/months were we observed B, I went downstairs and started talking to Theo about this idea of A/B behaviors. The words, "it's like she's switching personalities..." were coming out of my mouth when I just stopped...horrified, frozen, tearful. Dear God. Her mother is bi-polar. Is it possible for a child to show traits of a mental illness this young? I know the medical community won't diagnose this young. What does this mean if it's already here? That moment pretty much sunk me. I went into a depression stronger than anything I've ever experienced before. So much fear. So much grief. Then...all the irrational responses: anger, distancing myself from her, resenting her for all the dark and nasty impulses this fear awakened in me. There were several days of doing nothing--frozen in the nonstop ...