Commissioned To Love

When I answered the phone, it was one of the social workers I had met at foster parent trainings, a soft-spoken, kind woman who always seemed quiet, patient and pleasant. “I have a little boy,” she said, after greetings were exchanged. “He is six, and he is a voluntary placement by his mom who is asking for help.” “Okay,” I said, waiting for some details. “He is enrolled in special education through the county. He’s been in 8 foster homes in the last six months and ‘flunked’ out of all of them…. Four in one day.” ‘Stunned silence’ might best describe my reaction. Many questions were circling like buzzards…why was she calling “newbie” foster parents if he was such a challenge? (We were truly totally inexperienced). And how could a six-year-old possibly “flunk out” of seasoned foster homes, and at such an impressive rate? (We had no idea how much one child could impact a family life, though, this being true, looking back, we would have said “yes” to Cayden a hundred times in May.) Why was he a ‘voluntary placement’? What exactly did that entail? How would it impact the part of our training pertaining to role modeling, reunification, and being willing to help birth parents learn new ways of succeeding in parenting if they were interested? How would it go with our daughter being seven and our first child to help being so close in age? (We would later institute a “two-year gap” policy, ensuring that each child was at least two years younger than the youngest in our home at the time --unless a group of siblings was coming that didn’t fit the two-year plan within their own family structure. This helped maintain each child’s identity and birth order—which is a crucial part of the way the world is framed for them—as well as helping to ensure safety, since a high percentage of our children would come having been treated badly, to put it in a polite way. And it is often true that “hurt children hurt children”.) “Four in one day,” still echoed in my thoughts. “I’m wondering if we could come out and let you meet him?” she continued. I quickly put her on hold so I could run the details by my husband. “Absolutely,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.” I invited her to come on out and bring Cayden with her. Soon the county car was in the driveway and coming through the front door was a little fellow with a close-cropped haircut, blond and blue-eyed, on the sturdy side, and not at all shy about coming into a new home. This was not a typical situation, but then voluntary placements asking for help were not the regular order of the day at the county either. We sat down in the living room of the small home we were in, and I sat facing Darlene as she began to introduce us and tell me a bit about Cayden, about his “interests” and strengths. I was intent on listening, but something caught my eye out the front window. It was Cayden, standing on top of our car. Yes, it sounds impossible. No, I do not know how he managed to get out there. I did learn immediately that with this little Treasure, you would deal with the situation now and analyze it later…if you could….and best to do so with humor. Settling Cayden down was like trying to baptize a cat. I went to the door and out to the car and held my arms up to him. “Come on down here, buddy,” I said. “We don’t stand on top of cars around here.” Cayden was quick to come to me and we went back inside. Darlene had decided that since I handled that minor incident smoothly, it was her cue to leave, and she did, saying she thought we would “do just fine!” (She seemed awfully glad to be making her exit, but maybe she just didn’t want to be in the way. I do imagine billows of dust from the wheels of her car as she left the driveway, though.) Thinking of Cayden as part of our family that first day makes me smile. He was quick to call us Mom and Dad, (not really a good sign.) He seemed eager to please, though decidedly programmed toward choices that wouldn’t. This was to be a good introduction to welcoming children to our home, to our lifestyle, while making them each feel valued, accepted and comfortable, safe and seen. Cayden was extremely busy, and had no length of attention span that could be detected, no matter what interesting things we brought before him. He had covered the house, the field, and every square inch of property about five times (with one of us following close behind) by dinner time. His stamina and energy level seemed astounding if not unreal. Moving as quickly as the situation demanded, we got creative, speedy, and exhausted. We had no idea we would soon be watching a miracle unfold. Bedtime finally came. We had our fun, normal routine of library-book story time and a slow-moving going-to- bed, not wanting to make him nervous, but we didn’t need to worry. He was fine with whatever bed we were providing and fine with climbing into it. (We’ll discuss a strange regular request he made at bedtime in a bit.) As we later went to our bed, having helped our older three kids get tucked in themselves, Ed and I both lay down at the same time. Silence reigned as we lay on our backs and stared at the ceiling… for about thirty seconds. Then in a quiet, ragged whisper, Ed pondered, “Has it only been one day?” We began to laugh and laughed silently until the bed shook and tears rolled down our cheeks. Our life as foster parents had begun.