I Don’t Know How Many Kids I Have
When my spouse and I decided to become foster parents, we agonized over the first home visit. There exists a video of me, 28 years old and nervous, jokingly reenacting everything that went wrong during that first visit. The whistle on the kettle (we were trying to serve fancy tea!) scared the social worker in the next room. When I rushed to remove the kettle, I forgot to turn off the stove, which warmed a bottle of olive oil so intensely that it shot the bottle’s cork into the air, sending more shock waves towards the social worker. I’m amazed we were approved at all.
“We’ll have to show this video to our child!” I told the camera, excited by our new adventure into parenthood. “We already loved them so much, we went through all of this!”
Fast forward three years later and I am without that same excitement. I understand now that becoming a foster parent never should have been something that I found exciting. Fostering is necessary, but it is also tragic. Adoption is as beautiful as it is devastating. I was naive and excited about having a child in my life.
A year and a half ago, the foster daughter who we raised from birth to 20 months old, Jessy (not her real name), was reunified with her mother. Four days ago, we said goodbye to another foster daughter, Leia (also not her real name). We had cared for her from the time she was eight months old until she was nearly 20 months old. The same age. All in less than two years. To make matters more overwhelming, she left during the week of Jessy’s birthday. It’s more than my heart can carry sometimes.
Leia left our care to be with grandparents in a state 1,000 miles away from us. It’s actually one of the states that I most enjoyed when we traveled there on our honeymoon years ago.
As Joni Mitchell put it, I really don’t know life at all.
Leia’s grandparents came down to collect her things and help her transition over a period of a few days. We had lunches with them. They generously let us take her around to our families for one last goodbye. They watched me sob in the lobby of their hotel as I hugged her one last time, telling her that I loved her. Every time she saw me, she’d say “mama” and reach for me. She had no idea.
On one of these transition days, while Leia was spending some time with her grandparents, my spouse and I went out to eat with our other foster child — likely our last foster child, at least for awhile. I was holding her in my lap when the server approached, excited to see a baby. “Is she your first?” she asked.
Instinctively, I laughed and shook my head. At this point, I’ve fostered six children.
“How many do you have?” she pressed.
I realized, then, that I didn’t know how to answer her question without being honest. “I’m actually a foster mom,” I admitted. “We’re foster parents.”
For some reason, I looked away. I don’t know why I felt like a fraud. Not a real mom. There was an awkward silence. I looked back up at her.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked.
I fumbled for the menu and then gestured for Ash to go first.
I thought the server’s reaction meant that she was not going to ask anymore questions, but at the end of the meal, she returned. “Do you know how long you’ll have her?” she asked, again pointing at the baby.
I’m always taken off guard by how easily people ask these kinds of questions. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I guess we’ll have her for as long as she needs to be here.”
“How does it not kill you when they leave?” she questioned.
I thought about the little girl who I loved with all of my heart who was, at that exact moment, preparing to leave us. I thought of the way her excited voice sounded when she saw Minnie Mouse, Abby from Sesame Street, or literally any playground slide. “Minnie! Abby! Slide!”
“It does,” I told her, but I knew the words wouldn’t be enough to help her understand.
There is a weight on my chest. I sometimes start to panic when I realize that Leia won’t be coming home. This feeling comes the most often at night, when the day is finished and I have nothing left to distract me. I stare at my phone, waiting for any text at all from her grandmother. I crave photographs. I crave videos of her laughing. Like always, I worry about her feeling abandoned. I worry about her thinking that we sent her away. I wonder if she looks around and asks for “mama.” I sob into my pillow, remembering the way her baby hair felt in my hands as I brushed it each morning. I see her laughing at the Elmo and Tango segment on Sesame Street, the only show we allowed her to watch. She used to point out Tango’s ramp to me and happily declare it a slide. She loved dogs, in animated and real life forms.
At only 19 months old, she liked to count to ten with me as we climbed the stairs. We read books together. She could identify letters. Her grandmother told us that we had clearly worked with her. We had clearly done our job right.
Her room is exactly as she left it. There are overturned Care Bears and the few scattered toys that didn’t get sent with her. I hate going into that room. At night, I keep expecting to hear her stir or call out for us. The only Minnie Mouse doll of hers that she didn’t take with her sits on our couch, a reminder that she really did live here. It wasn’t just a dream I had.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten is to just keep breathing. No matter how difficult an experience, just keep breathing. A victim of panic disorder, I’m the master at forgetting to breathe. I once hyperventilated so spectacularly that I spent hours in the emergency room. I hadn’t known that I was having a panic attack; I thought I was having a heart attack.
I’m trying to breathe through this, but sometimes my body feels so heavy that I only know how to cry. The day that Leia left, I stood in that hotel lobby with her grandparents and told her that she had been the best daughter. She was. For a moment in time, she was my daughter.
Three months ago, I had two girls and one boy. Two years ago, I had one girl. Now, I’m back to one baby girl.
The number of kids I have in my home doesn’t match the number of kids I have in my heart.
