Call. Request. Reject. Repeat.
One day while I was at work, I received a call from our licensing worker. She told me about two children who were in need of a new foster home. Because of their needs in a home, they were having difficulty finding a place for them, and they were in danger of being split up. How can we take them I asked her, when we weren’t even licensed yet! She explained that if we would accept the placement, they would expedite our license.
I said, “No.” We weren’t ready yet. We were spending our spare time getting two more bedrooms finished on our second floor. There weren’t walls yet, just studs. The floors needed finished. Painting had to be done yet. Air conditioning and heating had to be installed. We couldn’t be mommy and daddy when we were drywalling. I hung up sad but knowing I made the right choice,
Then our licensing worker called again and pleaded. Several agencies had been called. They didn’t have a home for them. No, we can’t do it. We’re NOT ready.
“I asked about the case and what the goals were…in care since April, four foster homes, court coming in December, goal of reunification in six months at the earliest but not likely any time soon…”
Then she called again. Three weeks? Can the house be ready in three weeks? The current foster mom said they could stay for three more weeks if we’d give them a home where they could stay together rather than them being split up. Okay. We agreed, beginning three weeks of what became a regular barn raising. Friends from church started coming and spending all kinds of hours getting the upstairs ready.
I spent time on the phone with the current foster mom learning about the kids. She told us about their needs, including a medical need one of the children had that we started researching. If you’ve ever researched a disease on the Internet, you know how scary it can be when you see all the worst cases. Yikes! I asked about the case and what the goals were.
The Arrival and Meeting
The day came. November 17, 2008. We waited. The caseworker didn’t show up and didn’t show up. We talked on the phone, and she told us she was at her office with the kids doing the needed paperwork. We waited some more. I was a mess. I’ll admit it…I vomited a couple times from nerves. We tried to be as prepared as we could, but can you ever REALLY be ready to parent, especially kids who you didn’t grow with? Who had been through so much trauma in their short lives? Waiting…Finally, a car pulled up. A woman got out and picked a toddler out of a carseat while a little child climbed out and skipped up our steps. I opened the door to this little blond who looked so freakishly like I did at 5 that I was almost speechless. Up the stairs she came, asking if I was her new mom and this was her new house. I said yes and told her my name. She declared me mom and skipped in to explore her new home.
“I was a mess. I’ll admit it…I vomited a couple times from nerves.”
Up the porch steps came the caseworker with this scared but interested looking toddler in her arms. She let him down, ran back to her car, came back and dumped a few totes in the living room, said she had to go and she’d come back sometime with the rest of their stuff, and away she went in a flash.
What do I do? What do I do?
What do I do? Little guy is scared, but he’s behind developmentally and can’t talk. He explores but yet clings to me. I show them around, showing them their rooms.
After Darren heads off to work for the afternoon, I look at the kids.
What do I do?
- I need to get them enrolled in daycare so I can go back to work.
- What are their full names? Yep, I have no idea, and they can’t tell me.
- Social security numbers? No clue.
So no go on the paperwork.
We need some things from the store, but I have no carseats. Where are the carseats? The last foster mom said she was sending them. At a loss, I call a mom friend who lives a block away who has kids their ages and extra carseats. We pile in her vehicle to go to Walmart with her three and my new two to search for what we need.
The first few days were crazy, but we fell in love with these two beautiful children. We figured out how to get them into daycare so we could go back to work. Then Darren’s grandfather died, and we packed up our three-day-old family to go to a funeral and then stay for Thanksgiving.
“The first few days were crazy, but we fell in love with these two beautiful children …”
Our first weeks and months of foster care were a quick initiation. We learned rules we never knew, like that we had to get the bio parent’s permission to cut a child’s hair (oops!); I had my first crazy experiences at court in mid-December; we were asked if we would adopt if the case ended that way; we took a child for a paternity test; we waded through systems like Medicaid, early intervention services, and WIC…our lives looked nothing like they had weeks before.
We spent that Christmas in Chicago with my family after a not-so-fun, LONG, first, six-hour train trip with the kids. I knew my heart would break if it didn’t end up that way and we had to say goodbye, a fear that almost kept us from fostering in the first place before we’d even met these two precious souls.
Goodbye never came… but that’s another story for another time.
Part Three Cometh – Our Second Placements
In part three of Our Journey, I will share the amazingly crazy story of how our second placement for adoption made us a family of six.
