It was bound to happen. The moment one travels from being a gentle, relatively ego-free, live-and-let-live, wanna-be foster-to-adopt mother to someone contemplating calling DCFS on an at-risk pregnant woman because you want her child. This woman has given birth to two children; both have been taken from her by the DCFS, for understandable but tragic reasons. And yet, she is due to deliver another baby next month. Her second child was taken from her in January, 2010 and despite having to go to court to prove she is capable and worthy of having custody of her second baby- despite all that- incredibly, she got pregnant again, by the man who was responsible in no small part for her losing custody of her second baby.
And now she's a month away from delivering another beautiful, bright girl. This will be her third child in 3 years, her second baby born in a year. This woman is bright, beautiful, goal-oriented, determined to right her life and complete her education to climb out of her own foster-home-pocked childhood. Under normal circumstances, I'd be rooting for her. But now, I just want her baby, because I know she has good, attractive, sturdy genes. I am rooting for her to fail. I have become a foster monster.
Parenting is a slippery slope- all parents know this. If I were to skid a personal degree or two and make a phone call, I (or someone else like me) could be fast tracked to adopting her gorgeous girl by the end of January, 2011. And who would blame me? I rationalize my devilish theory that a newborn might only serve to drag the mother down; it will ankle her education, and sideline her goals for a long, long time. She is only twenty. She'll have plenty of other chances once she's stable to make more babies, right? I'm 48. I'm running out of time. Give me that baby. But her truth is deeply complex and not so easily dismissed- as is anything involving the rights of parents and children who genetically belong to each other but due to legal reasons cannot be left intact.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the beginning of our Foster to Adopt journey- but like all over-written stories, I will start with yesterday then go back to the beginning from there. Bear with me.
Why, just yesterday morning I was hungrily eye-balling one of those gamine yet largely pregnant women who pepper Silver Lake with their long hair, longer legs and immense bellies- making pregnancy both sexy and fertile yet cellulite-free. These be-legginged hotties only leave me feeling like someone genetically more welcome at Claude Akins' regular poker night than the fecund warm waters these babymamas tiptoe photogenically through.
After that, I went to the home of the lovely gay man and his partner, the ones who inspired us to go to the Foster to Adopt Agency in the first place. They had done all the legwork of finding the best agency around, went through the Foster System three years ahead of us, and basically became our sponsors. They told us what to expect, as they had experienced the worst trauma imaginable of what can happen in Foster Care then were ultimately rewarded for their pain by the Best Case Scenario in Foster Care (more on that later).
It took a few days to screw up the courage to call the Foster to Adopt Agency. I feared being deemed unworthy to parent someone else's child. I mentally pre-rejected us. Our combined ages make us persona non grata in all girl booming adoption sources like China. Our combined freelance incomes make an all girl booming China adoptee impossible even if our combined ages were under 100. The fact that we rent and are far from owning, and that we aren't yet married are marks against us.
Our sponsors reassured us by telling us that there are so many thousands of children in Los Angeles County in desperate need of foster parents, which was a double-edged reassurance, indeed. They also allayed our fears by explaining that we held the foster parent Yahtzee card- we were white, educated, a couple, stable (by who's standards?) and most important of all, we clean up good and present well. Our sponsor let us know that single women who work at McDonald's are also striving to become Foster to Adopt parents, so we were going to do just fine. Yes, that is the ugly underbelly of foster parenting: you get paid, per child. So, there are people who go into this business of professional parenting as if it were a work from home business- as opposed to those who just want to create a family by any means necessary.
We called, stammered our way through the initial phone interview, signed up and drove to Culver City for months of classes on how to become professional parents. We met Social Workers- impossibly blonde, lovely, 22 year old, UCLA graduate white middle to upper class girls (with no student loans to fret over) who get to enter people's homes and decide whether or not their infants and children are at risk. These are the people who my partner and I have to win over. But there is no need to win. Our sponsors were right. We pretty much won by showing up. We were the only white couple there.
Nothing the Foster Agency did supported my feelings, but it was evident from class one. We were golden.
In our very first class in Foster to Adopt, I learned nothing more than the gaping maw of disparity between the educations of those who are white and everyone else. The irony was that I never truly knew just how shockingly imbalanced a decent education (based on race) is in America. No where was this educational disparity more evident than an adult education program aimed at stopping the ignorance that feeds child neglect and abuse by providing a safe haven for at-risk children. I didn't realize how lucky I was to be branded by those fierce nuns until I was forced to become a student of parenting...
The hardest lesson to learn in Foster to Adopt is that the kid is not yours- I was constantly corrected by the golden social worker, the lovely and inspirational Instructor, that I was not there to learn how to adopt, but how to foster to adopt. I was signing up to co-parent someone else's baby or child- and adoption was no guarantee, privilege or eventuality. I might be handed a baby to raise and love and adore until the birth parent righted themselves and sailed off with their child, forever. It took a good four weeks for me to accept that. I resisted- oh did I resist. But that won't get you a baby. Or a needful baby a decent home. For however long that decent home happens to be yours.
It is like accepting death. You refuse, you bargain, you fight, you do all the other steps I can't recall at this moment, and finally you accept. I know I may fall in love like I have never loved before and I may have to hand that child off to someone else. I know it in the part of my brain that knows and accepts things like tragedies in Indonesia... but I don't know it in the part of my brain that is forever changed by personal tragedies, like by my divorce... you don't know that loss till it happens smack dab to you.
So we take the foster classes- we travel from Los Feliz to basically LAX for our classes- we shyly get to know the other couples and the nice single women who finally skipped over on the man of their dreams part of the equation and were racing ahead to the happy family algorithym. We do the homework, we write the essays, we answer the questions, we volunteer for the classroom exercises, we share each others' losses and triumphs and grand-baby pictures - and all along we are told that not all of us, despite showing up weekly, will be picked. This agency is watching us learn and struggle to comprehend just what the difference is between a crack baby and a fetal alcohol syndrome baby. Guess which one is a better bet in the long run, brain development-wise? Guess again. Crack babies rule.
Some are there just to learn and get certified to become foster parents- they've raised kids, they're retired and they have empty days and extra bedrooms. Not to mention, they have experience with children. They are in class to learn how to care for children while their little futures are decided in courtrooms, and provide the stability that they have tested on their own children. And grandchildren. But this time they hope to get paid for it.
I'm not going to lie. The money is a plus. We will take those checks. Until we are able to make that baby our baby. Once we are lucky enough go on the next journey, to adoption of our future offspring, the checks will stop coming. And the automatic health insurance (for every foster child in Los Angeles, until age 21) will stop. So, as in everything else- foster to adopt is a two-sided coin.
Be careful what you wish for and be even more careful of what you don't wish for.
Because both will come true.
