Waiting to be Adopted

According to the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, on September 30, 2013, more than 400,000 children were in foster care in the United States. Of those children, more than 100,000 were identified by the Bureau as “waiting to be adopted”. A mere 13% of those children were, on that date, living in what the Bureau calls a “Pre-Adoptive Home”. This simply means that, for these kids, an adoption was in the works, but wasn’t finalized as of the September 2013 reporting date.

That leaves 87% of those kids – more than 88,000 living, breathing human children – in a state of limbo. Waiting to be adopted.

Now, when in that very same Fall of 2013 my wife Dawn and I trained to become licensed foster parents here in Texas, we were besieged by a veritable deluge of frightening statistics like these. It got to the point where the statistics ran together so much that I couldn’t even keep them straight. There are x-hundred thousand kids in care across the nation and some-teen thousand kids in the system in our region and blah blah blah. Like I said, I lost track of the actual numbers. But the statistics above are drawn from the most current edition of The AFCARS Report and are as credible and they are devastatingly disturbing.

What I found even more disturbing this week, though, was a link in an email forwarded to me by our foster family home developer. The original email came from Dr. John Degarmo, a speaker, trainer, and author who specializes in the foster care field. In this monthly email update, Dr. Degarmo typically includes links to news stories from around the nation and the world concerning the general state of the foster ca and adoption system. One of the links in yesterday’s email carried the following headline: Adoption agencies could gain right to deny gay parents on religious grounds.

I was aghast. The tone of the headline. The words in the order in which the Tampa Bay Times‘s copy editor placed them. I couldn’t believe that this was being conveyed as a positive thing given the state of children in care, the sheer number of children who need a HOME. Not a bridge. Not a rest stop. A permanent, loving, forever home. So I clicked the link.

Sure enough, the tone conveyed by the expert copy editor at the Times exactly portrayed the push being led Florida Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, which would allow private adoption agencies in the state of Florida to invoke their “deeply held religious convictions” as a legal defense in the event of a discrimination lawsuit brought against them by a same-sex couple who’ve been denied the privilege of adopting a child based on their sexual orientation. In other words, if this bill passes, the state of Florida, would support private adoption agencies when they choose to keep a child in the foster care system rather than placing the child in a loving home if the couple who wishes to adopt the child are homosexuals.

The right to do this, as explained by Michael Auslen, Times Staff Writer, would, under this law, rest in the fact that many of the private adoption agencies that would be protected by this law are affiliated with religious organizations.

I was reminded as I read Auslen's article of the issue raised by the Boy Scouts of America back in 2013. I remarked on that episode here, and I’m not going to rehash the whole argument in this post, but I am so similarly stunned by the actions of so-called Christians that I can’t help but draw the parallel. I wonder sometimes whether we’ve just read out of different versions of the same book.

The thing is, the Jesus that I’ve read about and heard about would never, ever let someone harm a child or get in the way of someone raising a child with love and stability. At least, I don’t think he would. He would never judge someone the way that our organized religions in this country and around the world have decided to judge those who live with same-sex partners. He would certainly never give his blessing to a decision certain to ensure that traumatized kids remain longer than necessary in one of the worst possible situations in which a child can grow up.

Remember...the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children Youth and Families labels these children as “waiting to be adopted”.

Why would any servant of the people work so hard to make the children wait any longer than they have to?

On seeing the child

Okay, so I tagged this a bunch of different ways because when I saw this video of Dr. Karyn Purvis, I thought of SO MANY THINGS.  I thought about one of our current foster children. I thought about the boy I picked up off the floor of the hallway yesterday morning, ripped away from his fellow combatant, and fairly tossed into my classroom.  I thought about every student I've ever known that one or more of my colleagues had given up on.  I thought of children that I had, when I was a less open-minded educator, given up on, myself.

Check out the video, I guess.  Maybe then this will all make more sense.  You see, I'm going to try to draw all of those threads together here, so I'm not sure just what the knot is going to look like. Maybe with five and a half minutes of background, we can stay on the same path without losing anyone.  There's a bit of a religious undertone to her message, but even if that's not your bag, if you stay with her, I think you'll see something that's important and quite universal.  Here's the vid:


Children from Hard Places from Tapestry on Vimeo.

As I listened to Dr. Purvis, co-author of The Connected Child, talking about children from hard places, I couldn't help but think of the kids I see in middle school.  I thought of the ones I know who don't respond to what has always worked. I thought of the ones who respond antithetically to nearly everything their teachers do.  They shut down when we try to build them up. They disengage when we reach for them. They feign apathy when we urge them to care for all the reasons we deem to be the right ones.

My campus has seen a change in its demographics over the last few years.  What used to be a neighborhood school for the middle- to upper-class part of town has become a Title I school serving kids from all over the city.  Some schools are homes to special programs in order to provide a magnet for students who would not have enrolled there otherwise.  Our campus is a magnet by its very nature because we operate under an authentic RtI framework and because we have high expectations and because our teachers have always been able to inspire our students to reach them.

But now we have more and more kids who come from hard places.  These are children who have grown up without what most of us would consider a childhood.  We see kids who are raising their little siblings and cousins.  We see kids whose only safety happens at school.  But these kids bring their trauma with them.  Their fear.  Their doubt.  All of the dark feelings that have been bred by a life filled with uncertainty, loss, injustice, insecurity, and pain.  And then we want them to care about the structure of an atom, the Pythagorean theorem, the root causes of the Civil War, and where the comma goes.

And we are baffled when we do not reach them.

I ask you, do you see these children?  Do you really see the child?  Do you see a child for whom you need to unlearn what always worked when the kids came to school with the wide-eyed optimism of youth?  Do you see his pain-riddled heart when he refuses to look you in the eye?  Do you see her fear when she purses her lips and bows up against your authority?

The longer we rail against these children using what always worked as our only toolkit, the more of them we will lose.  And we are losing them.  We are seeing them give up.  We are seeing them fight and refuse and posture in ways that, while everyone knows they are wrong, feel right to these children as they justify a response cobbled together from a near absence of knowledge of the social norms required in order to successfully navigate public education in the era of the standardized test.

So yeah, when I watched the video, I saw the little girl who is ours for the moment.  The child who had been raising herself for most of the first year of her life that she has been able to walk upright and help herself to food, clothing, and whatever other necessities have felt appropriate to a child under the age of two.  I think about how she has railed these past weeks against the structure our home demands, the expectations that guide us, and the lifestyle that is all our family has ever known.  But then I think about a child who grows all the way up to middle school-age this way.  What if our little girl had not met with the interventions she receives in our care?  What kind of tween or teenager would she grow into?  Would she be one of these children her teachers dismiss as unteachable?  Or would she be lucky enough to get a teacher who chose to really see her - a child who comes from a hard place and who needs to be loved back into a society that let her grow up in a little hell on Earth?

I will look closer tomorrow.  And every day hereafter.  As I am teaching this little girl who is now a part of our family what it means to live among people who love you, I will let her teach me to see my students and account for the hard places from whence they come.

This isn't mine, but it bears repeating

     This entry is not mine. My wife found it and posted it on Facebook with the author's permission. I am reblogging it here with the same.  I have left the links intact in case you wish to visit the blog itself or just this post in its original home. Some of the comments below the original publication address many of the objections, addendums, or questions one might naturally think of while digesting the perspectives included throughout the post. I hope that you connect with it to the extent I did.

From the blog titled Casaubon's Book

What Foster Parents Wish Other People Knew

Posted by Sharon Astyk on March 12, 2013

This essay is a little different than most of my stuff. It is the result of a collaborative discussion on a foster parenting list I’m a part of by a group of foster parents.  I’ve paraphrased and borrowed and added some things of my own, but this is truly collaborative piece, and meant to be shared.  I do NOT have to get credit for it.  So if you’d like to circulate it, use it in a training, distribute it at foster-awareness day, hang it on the wall, run it somewhere else, give it out to prospective foster parents, whatever, go right ahead.  This is a freebie to all! I care much more than people know this than that I get credit – and most of the credit goes to a lot of other wonderful people who want to remain anonymous, most of them wiser and more experienced than I.

1. We’re not Freakin’ Saints.  We are doing this because it needs doing, we love kids, this is our thing.  Some of us hope to expand our families this way, some of us do it for the pleasure of having laughing young voices around, some of us are pushed into it by the children of family or friends needing care, some of us grew up around formal or informal fostering – but all of us are doing it for our own reasons BECAUSE WE LOVE IT and/or LOVE THE KIDS and WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES – we get to have these great kids in our lives.
     We hate being told we must be saints or angels, because we’re doing something really ordinary and normal – that is, taking care of kids in need.  If some children showed up dirty and hungry and needing a safe place on your doorstep, you’d care for them too – we just signed up to be the doorstep they arrive at.   The idea of sainthood makes it impossible for ordinary people to do this – and the truth is the world needs more ordinary, human foster parents.   This also stinks because if we’re saints and angels, we can’t ever be jerks or human or need help, and that’s bad, because sometimes this is hard.

2. WATCH WHAT YOU SAY AROUND THE KIDS!!!!!! I can’t emphasize this enough, and everyone is continually stunned by the things people will ask in the hearing of children, from “Oh, is their Mom an addict?” or “Well, they aren’t your REAL kids are they” or “Are you going to adopt them?” or whatever.  Not only is that stuff private, but it is HORRIBLE for the kids to hear people speculating about their families whom they love, or their future.    Didn’t anyone ever explain to you that you never say anything bad about anyone’s mother (or father) EVER?  Don’t assume you know what’s going on, and don’t ask personal questions – we can’t tell you anyway.

3. Don’t act surprised that they are nice, smart, loving, well-behaved kids. One of the corollaries of #1 is that there tends to be an implied assumption that foster kids are flawed – we must be saints because NO ONE ELSE would take these damaged, horrible kids.  Well, kids in foster care have endured a lot of trauma, and sometimes that does come with behavioral challenges, but many of the brightest, nicest, best behaved, kindest and most loving children I’ve ever met are foster kids.  They aren’t second best kids, they aren’t homicidal maniacs, and because while they are here they are MINE, they are the BEST KIDS IN THE WORLD, and yes, it does tick me off when you act surprised they are smart, sweet and loving.

4. Don’t hate on their parents.  Especially don’t do it in front of the kids, but you aren’t on my side when you are talking trash either.
     Nobody chooses to be born mentally ill.  No one gets addicted to drugs on purpose.  Nobody chooses to be born developmentally delayed, to never have lived in a stable family so you don’t know how to replicate it. Abusive and neglectful parents often love their kids and do the best they can, and a lot of them CAN do better if they get help and support, which is what part of this is about.  Even if they can’t, it doesn’t make things better for you to rush to judgement.
It is much easier to think of birth parents as monsters, because then YOU could never be like THEM, but truly, birth parents are just people with big problems.   Birth and Foster parents often work really hard to have positive relationships with each other, so it doesn’t help me to have you speculating about them.

5. The kids aren’t grateful to us, and it is nuts to expect them to be, or to feel lucky that they are with us.  They were taken from everything they knew and had to give up parents, siblings, pets, extended family, neighborhood, toys, everything that was normal to them.  No one asked them whether they wanted to come into care.
     YOU have complex feelings and ambivalence about a lot of things, even if it seems like those things are good for you or for the best.  Don’t assume our kids don’t have those feelings, or that moving into our home is happily-ever-after for them.  Don’t tell them how lucky they are or how they should feel.
     By the way, there is no point comparing my home to the one they grew up in.  Both homes most likely have things the children like and dislike about them.    The truth is if every kid only got the best home, Angelina and Brad would have all the children, and the rest of us would have none.

6. No, we’re not making any money on it.  We don’t get paid – we get a portion of the child’s expenses reimbursed, and that money is only for the child and does NOT cover everything.   I get about 56 cents an hour reimbursed, and  I get annoyed when you imply I’m too stupid to realized I’d make tons more money flipping burgers.
     Saying this in front of the kids also REALLY hurts them – all of a sudden, kids who are being loved and learning to trust worry that you are only doing this because of their pittance.  So just shut up about the money already, and about the friend of a friend you know who kept the kids in cages and did it just for the money and made millions.

7. When you say “I could never do that” as if we’re heartless or insensitive, because we can/have to give the kids back to their parents or to extended family, it stings.  Letting kids go IS really hard, but someone has to do it.  Not all kids in care come from irredeemable families.  Not everyone in a birth family is bad – in fact, many kin and parents are heroic, making unimaginable sacrifices to get their families back together through impossible odds.  Yes, it is hard to let kids we love go, and yes, we love them, and yes, it hurts like hell, but the reality is that because something is hard doesn’t make it bad, and you aren’t heartless if you can endure pain for the greater good of your children.  You are just a regular old parent when you put your children’s interests ahead of your own.

8.  No, they aren’t ours yet.  And they won’t be on Thursday either, or next Friday, or the week after.  Foster care adoption TAKES A LONG TIME.  For the first year MINIMUM the goal is always for kids to return to their parents.  It can take even longer than that. Even if we hope to adopt, things could change, and it is just like any long journey – it isn’t helpful to ask “Are we there yet” every five minutes.

9. Most kids will go home or to family, rather than being adopted.    Most foster cases don’t go to adoption.  Not every foster parent wants to adopt.  And not every foster family that wants to adopt will be adopting/wants to adopt every kid.
     It is NOT appropriate for you to raise the possibility of adoption just because you know they are a foster family.  It is ESPECIALLY not appropriate for you to raise this issue in front of the kids.  The kids may be going to home or to kin.  It may not be an adoptive match.  The family may not be able to adopt now.  They may be foster-only.  Not all older children want or choose to be adopted, and after a certain age, they are allowed to decide.  Family building is private and none of everyone’s business.  They’ll let you know when you  need to know something.

10. If we’re struggling – and all of us struggle sometimes – it isn’t helpful to say we should just “give them back” or remind us we brought it on ourselves.  ALL parents pretty much brought their situation on themselves whether they give birth or foster, but once you are a parent, you deal with what you’ve got no matter what. “I told you so” is never helpful.  This is especially true when the kids have disabilities or when they go home.  Yes, we knew that could happen.  That doesn’t make it any easier.

11.  Foster kids are not “fake kids,” and we’re not babysitters – they are all my “REAL kids.” Some of them may stay forever.  Some of them may go and come back.  Some of them may leave and we’ll never see them again.  But that’s life, isn’t it?  Sometimes people in YOUR life go away, too, and they don’t stop being an important part of your life or being loved and missed.  How they come into my family or for how long is not the point.  While they are here they are my children’s REAL brothers and sisters, my REAL sons and daughters.  We love them entirely, treat them the way we do all our kids, and never, ever forget them when they leave.   Don’t pretend the kids were never here.  Let foster parents talk about the kids they miss.  Don’t assume that kids are interchangeable – one baby is not the same as the next, and just because there will be more kids later doesn’t make it any easier now.

12. Fostering is HARD.  Take how hard you think it will be and multiply it by 10, and you are beginning to get the idea. Exhausting, gutwrenching and stressful as heck.  That said, it is also GREAT, and mostly utterly worth it.  It is like Tom Hanks’ character in A League of Their Own says about baseball: “It is supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it.  The hard is what makes it great.”

13.  You don’t have to be a foster parent to HELP support kids and families in crisis.  If you want to foster, GREAT – the world needs more foster families.  But we also need OTHER kinds of help.

You can:

-  Treat foster parents with a new placement the way you would a family that had a baby – it is JUST as exhausting and stressful.  If you can offer to cook dinner, help out with the other kids, or lend a hand in some way, it would be most welcome.
-  Offer up your children’s outgrown stuff to pass on – foster parents who do short-term fostering send a lot of stuff home with the kids, and often could use more.  Alternatively, many communities have a foster care closet or donation center that would be grateful for your pass-downs in good condition.
-  Be an honorary grandparent, aunt or uncle.  Kids need as many people in their lives as possible, and relationships that say “you are special.”
-  Become a respite provider, taking foster children for a week or a weekend so their parents can go away or take a break.
-  Offer to babysit.  Foster parents have lives, plus they have to go to meetings and trainings, and could definitely use the help.
-  Be a big brother, sister or mentor to older foster kids.  Preteens and Teens need help imagining a future for themselves – be that help.
-  Be an extra pair of hands when foster families go somewhere challenging - offer to come along to the amusement park, to church, to the playground.  A big family or one with special needs may really appreciate just an extra adult or a mother’s helper along.
-  Support local anti-poverty programs with your time and money.  These are the resources that will hopefully keep my kids fed and safe in their communities when they go home.
-  If you’ve got extra, someone else can probably use it.   Lots of foster families don’t have a lot of spare money for activities – offering your old hockey equipment or the use of your swim membership  is a wonderful gift.
-  Make programs for kids friendly to kids with disabilities and challenges.  You may not have thought about how hard it is to bring a disabled or behaviorally challenged kid to Sunday school, the pool, the local kids movie night – but think about it now, and encourage inclusion.
-  Teach your children from the beginning to be welcoming, inclusive, kind and non-judgemental,  Teach them the value of having friends from different neighborhoods, communities, cultures, races and levels of ability.  Make it clear that bullying, unkindness and exclusion are NEVER EVER ok.
-  Welcome foster parents and their family into your community warmly, and ASK them what they need, and what you can do.
-  Reach out to families in your community that are struggling – maybe you can help so that the children don’t ever have to come into foster care, or to make it easier if they do.  Some families really need a ride, a sitter, some emotional support, some connection to local resources.  Lack of community ties is a HUGE risk factor for children coming into care, so make the attempt.

I started writing this last Friday...

...but then Friday turned crazy then turned into Saturday.  And by then, we knew that the CPS office in the region from whence our two little ones originally came had decided to come out and get the kids and bring them back.  So I let Saturday turn into Monday because it was gorgeous outside, and it seemed ludicrous in the last days we would get to spend with Little Bit and Baby Bit to sit on a computer and carry on.

     Tonight, though, our home will be a quieter place.

Our 6-year-old's Goodbye Card for the girls

     We will not hear Little Bit begin to screech as a dog comes around the corner, stop screeching as she remembers suddenly what we've worked so hard to teach her, then put her finger to her pursed lips and tell the dog, "Shhh. Go 'ay 'own."  We will not get to see the dog acquiesce in resignation and walk away.  We will not hear Little Bit's tiny hands clapping as she yells, "Yay!" just before throwing her arms up in victory over a creature that only bewildered and frightened her just a week ago.  She's learned so much.  But now she has to start over.  There will undoubtedly be new fears tonight.  New places, things, and strange people, and she will need to figure out with her young, young mind just how to trust in someone that seems trustworthy when the last family really, really felt trustworthy but then was gone.

     We will not hear Baby Bit blowing raspberries - a new trick learned earlier this week, one that has kept us all in stitches since.  We will not hear her vocalizations as she works so hard to mimic these sounds that everyone else, even big sister now, seems to be able to make and understand.  We will not hear the ridiculous noises and music from the toys planted atop the exersaucer as it is shaken and stirred by an infant who is kicking and bouncing in her quest to become a toddler.  The exersaucer will be empty and sit idle tonight.

     Our home will be quieter, but a lot of that quiet will be the result of a profound sadness and sense of loss.

     Our new mission, now, will be to overcome those feelings and see the hope that still exists in these little ones' future.  Part of that mission will be to remind ourselves and one another that life happens in moments and that we never know which moments are turning points among the morass of moments that are forgotten.  We'll need to hope that what we gave these little girls in their short time with us will amount, one day, to a turning point that will face them toward a more positive future than the past that brought them to our door late on a Tuesday evening.  We will need to pray for the family that takes them in tonight, and ask that they gain the wisdom and patience and love that will give these little girls in some permanent way the foundation that we worked so hard to begin laying for them within themselves.

     Known safety.  That's really all one can give to Baby Bit.  And it's really all that Little Bit needs.  When we know deep within us that we are safe, only then can we move forward.  For all that my wife is an amazing teacher and brought all of her expertise to bear in working with Little Bit, what our family provided was the known safety that would let her lessons take root in fertile soil rather than fall among the stones of fear and uncertainty.

     So that is my ultimate prayer and hope for these little ones.  That they know safety wherever they land.  That they can curl up in their beds at night and sleep the sleep of contented dreamers and wake refreshed with the hope that only a new day brings.  Like they did in our home.

     Good bye, Little Bit.  So long, Baby Bit.  Remember that this bridge is here.  You are part of us now.  Part of our family.  And you ever will be.  There will be pictures of you on our walls right beside your sisters and brothers.  Be careful with our hearts.  You carry them with you.  Always.

     I love you, both.

I suppose an introduction is probably in order

     I didn't really even have time to think yesterday.  I just kind of mentally and emotionally regurgitated into the screen and let slip all that was on my mind.  I never really spelled out what was going on, though.
     We just became foster parents.  Like, for real this time, not just a respite placement because we'd been cleared through FBI background checks and were certified as not-horrible people.  For anyone who's unfamiliar with foster parenting, let it suffice to say that the process from a no-obligation orientation session to licensure and the placement of children in one's home is one of the longest and most grueling processes in which I have ever been involved.
     Time is a part of it. There continuously seem to be more steps, more sets of steps, more "last" steps, and even a few different "just one final" steps.  What looks like about a month (if you are wildly diligent and never miss a training session) on paper will easily turn into six months or more. Since my wife and I are beyond wildly diligent when we want something, we and one other couple in our training group managed to shave that span down to five months.
     Another part of the process involves turning the structure that is your home into an institutional facility compliant with the vast number of regulations set in place to ensure safety within government buildings.  I know that sounds a little over the top, and perhaps you have images of sterile, grey-white walls, tiled floors with drains set in the center of the room, and an automatice sprinkler system.  It isn't quite that bad.  But there are things in our house that, if you really paid attention, you'd think, "Hmm.  Never seen that before."  For example, since we bought our home thirteen years ago, I've always heard that a smoke alarm on each floor is sufficient to warn the occupants of impending danger.  Maybe you want to put one in the kitchen, as well, in case fried chicken night turns into fried kitchen night.  So what, three alarms in a two-story home, tops, right? Wrong.  We have six. One in every area a person sleeps and one in each passage common to those areas.

Fire Extinguisher in a "normal" home
(photo courtesy of WalMart)

     Most fire departments recommend that you keep a small fire extinguisher or two in the house, too, right? Maybe one in the kitchen and one in the garage.  We have three.  And there ain't no small about it, either.  Our extinguishers are five pounders with all-purpose chemical retardant so that we can turn it on an electrical fire, grease fire, person (God forbid!), or whatever needs puttin' out. The images I've included here don't really do the size difference enough justice, either.  The little white one to the right, like the one we had in the utility room closet when I was kid, is a one-handed little thing.  You can hold like a pistol in the handof one outstretched arm, stand back, aim, and shoot.  The big red suckers (below) that we've got are definitely two-handed jobs between the sheer weight of the thing and the fact that you've got to activate it with one hand on the ginormous trigger and aim the attached hose with the other.  We mean business.  No fire's going to rage unmolested in our home.

Fire Extinguishers in our Foster Home
(photo courtesy of WalMart to whom
we paid a large enough sum to actually
own these things that I hope they won't
mind me using their images)

     Most fire departments also recommend, in PSA's and in schools when they go out to visit kids and teach about the dangers of fires in the home, that families sit down and make an evacuation plan so that everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency.  When our bio kids have come home from school with this topic foremost on the list of responses to "What's the most interesting thing you learned in school today, dear?", we've sat at the dinner table and discussed ideal routes and meeting places with the children.  The "what ifs" usually drag well into clearing the table off and doing the dishes.  We have a lot of pets, so the kids obviously ask about the plan for the animals.  We have two stories in our house, so the stairs have always come up.  But we have never, ever sat down to the computer, made a near-scale map of our home, and filled in arrows to demonstrate all of those possible contigencies.  We now have two of these emergency evacuation plans mounted in our home.  One upstairs and one downstairs.  So if you ever visit us, you'll know the quickest path to safety in case of emergency.

Farley Family evacuation plan

     And all of that was just to meet one inspection by one entity through which we needed to be cleared for licensure.  I'll spare you the health inspection, the home study, the installation of handrails in our teeny 1930's stairwell at recommended OSHA distance from the stairs, the fingerprinting for the aforementioned FBI criminal records clearance, and all of the rest that we've had to DO to in order to meet the standards set for government facilities.
     Because what I'd rather do, at this point, is tell you that after our first twenty-four hours with our first official placement, it was all worth it.  The work.  The travel for classes.  The time, whether it was hours of paying attention, days of filling out forms, or weeks of waiting for the next last step.  You see, forty-eight hours ago, there were two very young children in trouble somewhere.  They needed a safe place to go.  Thirty-six hours ago, they were both scared witless as a strange man came into their home, packed their things, loaded them into his car, and drove them away from all they'd known to God knew where.  Then he left them in the home of two different strangers and went away leaving them to a totally unknown future.  Twenty-four hours ago, they were waking up from their first night in this new place and embarking on their first day with the strangers.  And twelve hours ago, after they'd spent an evening laughing and playing with newfound friends - their new sisters, for now, at least - eating tasty pasta dropped off by even more strangers who had the same love in their eyes that this new family seems to have all the time, and getting into clean pajamas after a warm bubble bath with toys, they slept the sleep that only known safety can allow.  They slept all night.  They weren't exhausted from the trauma or from a terribly late hour.  They just knew, to the extent that their small ages will allow, that these people were okay, that they loved them, and that they were safe.
     Our home is still as beautiful as my wife has always made it.  The evacuation plans are in coordinating picture frames and a third coordinating frame awaits our official license (as promised early on, we opened our home to children before "the ink was dry on the license").  And like I said before, you have to really look to notice that there are more smoke alarms and other safety items than you see in most homes.  But then, if you're really looking, what you'll see is love.  It's all over the place.  It's on our bio kids' faces.  It's in the joyful mess of toys left behind by an almost-two-year-old too busy at any given moment to bother looking back too much.  It's in the dishes sitting in the sink because those can wait until the kids are asleep and have had all of the care and attention they need so badly.
     My friend Joe says that there are no blessings on this earth.  Only gratitude for what we have.  It's an interesting sentiment and a thoughtful one, but I continuously beg to differ.  These little ones who have come to stay for a while or maybe longer are surely a blessing to me.  They've opened my eyes again to the love that has always filled our home, but that I may have begun to take for granted.  They've made me grateful all over again for all that we have.  And they've reminded me to appreciate everything every day.
     When you arrive at that point, you have to wonder what greater gift one person could give to another.  I can't think of anything.  I already have so much.

First Day

     I don't know whether I'll keep up with this or not.  We'll all just have to wait and see.

     Today, though, it seems like a good idea.

     Now realize this going in: I'm going to have to be pretty light on the details.  The stories I'm living are not going to mine to tell during this experience.  They will be stories that belong to small ones who don't even realize that stories are unfolding right now much less that they are the main characters in them.  As such, I will leave those stories to them that they may tell them when they decide the time is right.

     No, here I will only be able to convey the nebulous.  My feelings.  My reactions.  My struggle.  This morning, for example, I struggle to hold back tears at the injustice that has brought our world to this point.  I struggle to understand how a parent could make decisions so poor that the society around them feels the right and the obligation to enter their home, abscond with their children, and terminate their right to ever see the children again.

     I struggle to comprehend the sheer outpouring of love that I see on my wife's Facebook feed, as she posts that babies have finally arrived after the arduous process of classes and forms and inspections and all the rest that eventually leads to licensure.  She posted last night that they are here - home, for now.  And "friends" from folks we've always known to people who she's only ever known as the sum of zeroes and ones on a monitor send their love.  They ask how they can help and a discussion of sizes and socks and gift cards ensues.  I have to hold back tears, as I grope for an appropriate reaction to this, the other side of society.  The side that sees a need and wants to fill it.  The side that sees a child and wants to give love in whatever available form.

    And I wonder how the equation - no, it's an inequality, I think more and more - ever became.  What? It's human nature? Good and evil?  I don't know.  How can Person A look down, see his own eyes looking back at him from within the cherubic face of a child who is just old enough to walk, and turn his back for either his own gluttony or through his ignorance of the right?  And how can Person B look down at a computer screen, "follow" a person she's never met, then months or years later read that - despite all of the previous outpouring of love and generosity - a need remains, and immediately reach down into her imagination to find a way to send help in whatever way she can?  And how can these two people even exist in the same world?

     I don't know if this is helping or not.  I can't tell, yet.  What I have learned this morning (and what I've always kind of known about myself in a very general way) is that the tears threaten to come harder and more certainly when I describe the love and kindess side of the puzzle.  When I think of the place from whence these little ones have come, there is a small spur of anger, a smattering of pity (NOT my favorite emotion to experience), and a lot of empathetic regret.  The regret I know I would feel if I ever lost my way to such extent that my loved ones had to be forcibly taken from me.

   I'll try to let you know how it goes.