Someone Else’s Child Made Me a Mother
I was standing in line at TJ Maxx feeling like the definition of someone in their thirties when I overheard the pregnant woman in line with me excitedly telling her friend about how she’s preparing for motherhood.
“My husband is scared of the baby’s soft spot,” she said. “I told him you just have to check it from time to time. He was like, ‘Nope.”
I’ve never checked the soft spot, I thought to myself.
They then went on to discuss solid food and helicopter parenting fears. I glanced at my 5-month-old foster daughter, the baby who will likely be my last for awhile. She stared up at me from her cozy spot in her stroller. I’ve had six children, but no one would ever know it.
The six children were never really mine at all.
When you’re caring for them, though, they feel like yours. How can they not? Strangers and your own family refer to you as “mom” even if you’ve only known the child for a few days. People stop you in stores to ask you questions about the baby. You spend hours in the offices of pediatricians and therapists. You tend to fevers and tears. You sing songs, read books, keep memory journals, and buy overpriced baby clothes. I’ve thrown three first birthday parties in three years.
We never had time to prepare, not really. One day, we just walked into a hospital NICU and were handed an infant. I had to call a social worker to come down to the hospital to sign paperwork, because it really seemed to us like someone from DCBS should have to sign-off on us taking this child home. It didn’t seem like we should have been able to just sign her out.
We didn’t have a baby shower. Our parents didn’t stay over with us to offer advice. I don’t even remember any of my old friends checking in. No, I brought home my first infant when I was 29-years-old and parented with the use of Google. She’s 3 now, and I sometimes can’t believe that I held her in my arms and now she’s gone.
Once, while doing respite for another family, one of the children spiked a 105°F fever. I found myself at the emergency room with this child I barely knew, being asked to help hold her down while a nurse inserted a catheter. I’ve been exposed to radiation so that a baby could receive a chest x-ray, my hands strategically holding her in place without getting in the way of the film. I’ve changed diapers for six children. I’ve sacrificed myself, so much of myself, and my marriage, for children who would end up going to a place without me. Some will remember; some are still in our lives. Some won’t and aren’t. I’m not complaining, of course — this is what I signed up for and I’ve loved those children with everything I have in my heart. I’m just so often stunned by it all.
I relate to mothers, but mothers never seem to be able to relate to me. They don’t know what to do with me, with someone who raises kids for days, months, or years at a time and then says goodbye. I can’t blame them.
I always feel awkward when I’m asked if I have kids. I respond by saying that I’m a foster mother. It feels wrong to ignore my years caring for children. No one ever responds positively. They always look at me like it doesn’t count, or they say something to me that lets me know they don’t understand.
I feel like I‘m supposed to say something inspirational when I write about foster care. I see so many foster parents posting beautiful, inspirational thoughts about fostering. It isn’t that I don’t have any positive feelings, it’s just that my feelings are complicated. Life is about nuance and fostering, for me, has been deeply painful. All of those foster parenting posts always say that my adult heart should be able to take it. I can only take so much.
I’ve said goodbye so many times. It doesn’t matter that it’s what I signed up for — it still hurts. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, it hurts forever. People always tell me that they could never be a foster parent; they’d get too attached. I did and I do. I can’t stop thinking about the kids who left our home. We still regularly get to see Jessy* and we’ve been having video calls with Leia*. I’m incredibly grateful, but I’m still in so much pain. I miss them. I love them. I wear their names on a ring every day. I don’t know how to let them go.
For a period of time, I was their mother. How do I walk away from that? How do I stop caring and worrying about them?
I think, for us, fostering was a season in our lives — and that season is rapidly coming to a close. I sometimes imagine my old life, my life before I knew this level of pain, and I wonder if I made the right decision in becoming a foster parent at all. How’s that for inspirational? The truth is, though, whenever I think about the children we’ve lost, I can’t imagine not knowing them. I can’t imagine them having gone to a home that wasn’t ours. Hopefully, in the time that they lived with us, they knew love and happiness.
It isn’t a poem, a video, or a touching meme. It’s just real life, which is messy and complex.
It will have to be enough.
