THE CALL: tough even though we felt called

(encourage you to read the previous two posts if you want this to make any sense, otherwise come along and be prepared to be confused).

Also, who knew when we started all of this that Lad would present with some mental health issues.  Things were improving but he has decided he doesn't need the therapist and therefore the progress we were seeing is at a standstill.

The day Teesha showed up 30 minutes early for the first visit, Lad hollered at me while I was cleaning the clutter off the counter-tops:  This is all fake.  I'm going tell them what you're really like.  (not exactly sure what that means, that we are really messy?  I mean, we are - but was that what he was threatening to share?)

I ignored it, but I pulled Coach aside and whispered to him:  

So, this could be a real shit-show.

Sharing is caring:  I spoke to 3 different adults related to the case and shared some of our concerns (next paragraph).  #1.  Teesha,  #2. A woman (Ford) who I found to be more communicative and more seasoned than Teesha.  Ford works to list kids on websites and communicates with prospective parents to lighten the load of DCFS - at least that is the way I understood it, and #3. (Crazy-pants) who is a volunteer called a CASA (court appointed special advisory or something).   Crazy-pants called my cell while the kids were visiting and they moaned when I said Crazy-pants wants me to tell you to let her know if you need anything.  "We hate her!"

I did not beat around the bush.  I was transparent.  Maybe my mind was working on overdrive because I wanted to KNOW, just like Betty knew.  

I asked Teesha to tell us what the kids feedback was after the last visit.  Sister had already shared with us that she was not sure she would want to be seen in public and stared at if she was part of a white family.  I also asked Teesha about Sister possibly repeating 8th grade.  SHE NEVER GOT BACK TO ME.  Coach reached out and asked the same questions.  SHE NEVER RESPONDED.

My concerns included:  could I introduce structure to these two, yes.  Would I exhaust myself in the process and end up losing my marbles in the process?  Possibly.  

Sister is older and she didn't attach to the current foster mom, would she attach to me or just live in my house?  She attached to a foster grandmotherly type early on in their placement history, so through therapy and time she COULD attach.  No guarantee.

Sister would be in Reggie's grade in high school.  Would this present problems?  Her September birthday lands her in 8th grade but close to the cutoff.  Somewhere along the line she was pushed forward, not due to academic advancement.  We asked Teesha and Ford if maybe sister could repeat 8th grade.  This could give her a chance to adjust before being tossed into high school with lots of moving parts, peer pressure, etc.  Build a foundation.  Meet kids in a smaller setting, etc.

Our kids who have attended and currently attend our high school had reservations.  The school is diverse, so I thought OK, Sister and eventually Brother would not feel out of place.  According to my kids, African American girls at their high school are known to physically fight, on the regular.  It can be a rough place.  My kids pointed out that there are some kids at their high school who might present behavior challenges and if Sister fell in with the wrong crowd, then what?  I worried if her new classmates weren't dealing with structure, then wouldn't that create more push/pull in my home as we tried to introduce rules?  Our kids sometimes eye-roll at our rules, just because other kids do such and such . . . so they wondered how this would play out with a kid who hadn't dealt with the 'Shenanigan way' for years.  This would potentially be uncharted territory.  Adopting kids is gonna be hard.  No question.  

I asked Coach if going in KNOWING it was going to be even harder because of their ages was something we could handle.    

Space:  Mini plays basketball.  It's her favorite season.  She loves her teammates.  Sister plays b-ball.  The program is so small that they would be on the same team, practicing together.  I think Mini started to worry that what happened at b-ball wouldn't stay at b-ball.  Inside jokes might not stay 'inside'.

'What ifs?':  I will always wonder if I tossed out too many 'What ifs?'  Ultimately I returned to the place where I felt like if I didn't KNOW for certain, then we probably should not take them.  I didn't want to bail after 6 months and cause them more trauma.  

I also feared interfering with my kids' lives in a negative way.  Would Tank shut down and only hang with his friends in order to escape the new 'family life' we were creating - and then race off to college the following year, happy for the distance?  I could not lose him in this process.  

June 30th, The call:  Teesha set up what is called a staffing.  We were going to do a video call to discuss the next step or no step at all.  

Hindsight:  We wish we had asked who would be on the call.  We figured it would be all of the adults involved in the case.  When there was a staffing for the other boys when we made the final 3, they held a staffing.  That was our only experience.  We were not included on that staffing, because they were talking about kids and the 3 different potential families.  It was all very secretive, for the powers that be. 

Imagine:  Not everyone entered the call with video, some were just on audio.  Coach rushed in from work, moments before the call.  Zoom wouldn't load at first and we frantically switched out laptops.  Crazy-pants was the only other one doing video.  We heard other voices (Teesha, Ford) and we were waiting, apparently for the current foster people, 'the Fosters'.  

All of a sudden we heard Teesha welcome Sister and Brother.  Like what in the name of sam hill?  Why were children on this call where we were deciding their fate?  

FYI, Coach does not like me to embarrass him and so me poking him in the arm and giving him sideways glances while our faces were on the video was irritating the shit out of him.   I got a jab to the ribs for whispering through my teeth:  why are the kids on the call?

Hindsight:  We are adults.  We wish we had said, Sorry, this is not what we were expecting and at this time we are not willing to participate.  

BUT we didn't.  We were blindsided.  We didn't want to waste people's time.  We felt like we were the only ones surprised by this.  I go back to a conversation I had with Teesha when she told me that the kids' former worker shared way too much with Sister from the court proceedings, and Teesha would never make that mistake.  How. Is. This. Different?

Teesha:  So Shenanigans, has anything changed since we last spoke?  (I wanted to say, Oh, sure.  Sister is 5 years younger, she doesn't own an iphone, I am going to home school, and George Floyd wasn't just killed raising racial tensions).  

Coach:  *frozen, speechless*

Me:  Um, no.  Nothing has changed.  At this time we are not sure we can proceed.

Sister:  (shouting) What?  We did nothing wrong!  We got along with everyone!  We were good!  

Dagger:  (inserted directly to my heart.)

Me:  (gulp, elbowing Coach to say something, but realizing it was gonna have to be me)  You're right Sister, you were good and we really enjoyed you both.  This is not about that.  We just aren't sure that it would be a good fit because of the ages of our kids and school.  

Sister:  I asked you why you wanted to adopt and you told me, now I think you need to go back and change your goal.  This was a waste of our time.  

Mr. Foster:  No, it wasn't a waste of time.  That's how we do things.  We try it out and then see if it is a good fit. 

Crazy-pants:  Shenanigans are you saying no because the kids told you that they DO NOT wish to be adopted?

Me:  No.  They never said they didn't want to be adopted.  

Teesha:  They have never said they didn't want to be adopted.  

Crazy-pants:  yes, they just told me that.

Sister and Brother:  yeah, we told you that too, Teesha.  We didn't want to live with the Shenanigans anyway.  (we assume this was a defense mechanism, because if they didn't want to live with us and they told Teesha this in advance WHY EVEN HAVE A CALL?)

Mr. Foster:  That's not what I heard you say, and I was there when you met with Teesha.

Me:  (leaning off camera, wiping my tears, motioning to Coach and whispering:  should we just take them, should we say yes?  I can't stand this!)

Ford:  Kids they are saying this is not a good fit.  They did not want to take you and then find out later that it wouldn't work.  This is not to say that they didn't enjoy you.  They have other reasons for it to not work.

Teesha:  OK, well I think we can just end this call.

I cried for an hour.  Poor Coach had to go back to work for an hour, so he hugged me and darted off.  When he came home, he looked as drained as I felt.  

Amy was out sick with a terrible sinus infection.  I texted her and she had her supervisor call me back.  

Me:  Is it normal to have kids on the call?  (She listened to our frustrations.  why have kids on a call when the workers knew we were uncertain?  Why not ever answer our questions, what did the kids say about the last visit?  could Sister repeat a grade - and I get that this might not have been the right step.  Supervisor of Amy talked me off the ledge, said she didn't think it sounded like a good match, and I calmed down.  Sort of).

When I walked into the kitchen, Mini was sitting there crying.  She had overhead most of what went down.  It was heartbreaking and also hurtful.  We never intended to hurt these two kids.  We felt like we had been hit by a bus. How could Teesha be so unprofessional?  We decided after a few hours that Teesha didn't like our hesitations, so she thought she would make us try to explain ourselves to the kids.  Maybe she preferred that we tell the kids so she didn't have to.  

Coach texted her and told her we felt like we were hit by a bus and that we would appreciate a call.  She texted back:  SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY.  WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF A CALL?

Then she texted to say that she would call us at 6.  At 6:15 she called and said that the kids wanted to tell us in their own words what they thought about the last visit.  That's why she didn't share that info with us?  Not that this would have totally changed our position, but we were interested.  I asked if kids are usually included on these calls, and she said if they want to.  BUT THEY ARE CHILDREN! 

I left a message for Ford, asked her to call me.  She called me the next morning - after I got back from my walk where Mini tripped through the neighborhood.  It was best that I walked in front of her.  I felt hollowed out and Mini had requested that we just not talk about it anymore.  

Ford:  My supervisor wanted to be on the call, so she is on the line.  

I proceeded to explain that we felt the kids should not have been on the call and how our hesitations were tough to explain to kids.  I tried to describe what my high school kids saw as potential issues (the issues I described above), ie:  rough crowd, girls fighting, etc.  Her supervisor cut me off.  

Supervisor felt that I was assuming that students at our high school who come from different backgrounds than us come from homes with no structure and these people are not trying.  I told her, she was right.  I shouldn't have said it that way.  Just that morning I had reminded Tank that his friends think our rules are strict.  His friends come from a similar economic background as ours.  

Supervisor:  It's not mis-speaking, it's an attitude.  

Ouch.

Well, I stepped in it with this woman, and while Ford had told me earlier in the week that she appreciated that I was thinking about it from all angles - I realized now that she thought I was a closed minded white woman and she knew her boss would put me in my place.  

Her supervisor continued to school me on all things foster/adoption even if they were topics unrelated to our situation.  It was awful.  

In the middle of our adoption consideration George Floyd was killed.  We talked about how horrible and unjust his death was with Sister and Brother.  

The world was turning upside down -rightfully so, and Coach and I were digesting all of the hurt.  We recognized that there was a lot that we needed to tune in to.  Things we took for granted.  The existence of systemic racism was disturbing and had never been on our radar as it was at this point. 

When I explained the conversation to Amy she felt that perhaps Ford's boss was taking an opportunity to lash out at me given the current climate.  It certainly felt that way.  

While both Ford and her boss felt the kids should not have been on the call, boss lady also accused me of not getting enough training because I took my Pride classes online (online classes are perfectly legit, but sounded like she thought I got my certificate in a cracker jack box).  When I said I worried that Sister might not like it if her friends made fun of her for having a white mom, boss-lady scolded me:  "It is 2020.  Three are families with 2 moms and there are families with 2 dads."  

I was like, yeah, I get that.  Thanks for cluing me in.  I am only bringing this up because Sister told me that SHE was unsure that SHE would like to stand out and be stared at if she was part of a white family.  

She said other things like I assumed Sister would fall in with the wrong crowd.   To me I was not assuming she WOULD, I was worried if she did, how difficult that might be.   

Ford's boss launched into a speech about how it was not possible to fix kids' issues in two visits.  "You cannot fix kids' issues in 2 visits, or in 2 y
ears, it takes more like 14 years."  

I still struggle with the relevance of this statement.  NEVER, and I mean never did I expect to be able to do that or did I suggest to her that this was my hope.  I simply said we noted what issues the kids had while they were visiting and I recognized that they were all things that we could work on over time.  

I said I was worried about my kids and their need for space, having a kid in the same grade might prove difficult.  Again, she came at me with "Well, you would probably parent a situation that came up just the same as you would parent a situation that might arise from your own kids being in the same school"

(um, but none are in the same grade and while my kids are not perfect, none of them has ever done anything to cause embarrassment or upset to a sibling.  Uncharted territory).  

She told me that IF my family chose to pursue adoption, and she wasn't sure if that was right for us - then maybe we should only adopt a child that looked like us.  I countered with the fact that the ages might not be a good fit, but we felt comfortable adopting outside of our race.  

I told her that we did enjoy the kids, we found them insightful and appreciated that they were good at sharing their thoughts and feelings.  We wanted to reach out to the kids with a note to reiterate these things.

Supervisor:  Oh, the kids will be fine.  These are great kids.  You can reach out to them if you want to, but they will do great.  We will let them know that being black is a good thing.

Overall, she acted as if I told the kids they were not OK being black.  That we didn't really care about their best interest.  She also behaved as if us choosing not to adopt them was NEVER an option and when we chose that, we had fouled the system, which is just not the case.  I explained how I worried that Tank would shut down until he could leave for college.  Then Boss lady said that the goal of fostering is never to cause harm to children already in the family.  

She ended with 'Thanks for your hospitality.' As if this process was just us hosting a sleepover, trying to be do-gooders but not able to stick it out.  As if we hadn't taken so much into consideration. lost sleep, discussed things at GREAT length.  As if Teesha's need to race things along with back to back visits didn't possibly cause the whole process to run off the rails while we struggled to process.  

It took over a week before Amy came back to work.  We spoke to her and I shared how upsetting all of it was and how the call with Ford and her boss had left me with a deep sense of guilt and had me wonder whether or not we really made the right decision.  I spent all of 4th of July wondering if we should call them back and say, let's give this another try.  Amy has a call set up to reach out to Ford and speak to her about how she felt things were left.  

*edited to add:  (cause why not more writing at this point?) this call with Amy and Ford (whose real name, by the way, is the name of an upscale foreign car manufacturer, but I opted to downgrade her to a Ford for this writing.  Just thought, why should I be the only one who gets that?) happened yesterday and Amy emailed me to say that Ford and her supervisor found my comments offensive.   Amy will now come to the house next week to debrief the entire family on trans-racial adoption.  

So, more tears.  

I have felt like shit all afternoon.  Not my intention to offend them, but they are also putting words in my mouth that I did not say.  They implied it.  Either way, it was a tough conversation and I may not have approached it in the most delicate way as I tried to explain the possible issue of Sister falling in with the wrong crowd.  Our kids go to school there and they deal with the reality of that atmosphere.  

Coach  (who I occasionally want to throttle, but who does come through when I am a tearful mess when I pick him up from work because HELLO CAR SHORTAGE over here):  You can't take back words, but you know in your heart what you are trying to do and what you meant and sometimes people's perception is not always accurate.  You have to remember that in the big picture we are doing the best we can and that we have to make the best decision for our family and our family's needs.  

Before anyone asks or thinks 'WHY DID YOU LOOK AT TEENAGE KID IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO ADOPT TEENAGE KID?', let me just say:  

while we were aiming for slightly younger kids, we looked into these two because it becomes frustrating to never have anyone seriously consider us as potential parents.  These were not even the first teens we considered.  Might have been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  Also, I don't think the high school diversity and the potential for problems with kids falling in with the wrong crowd occurred to our high school kids until it was up close and personal.  We didn't 'surprise them' with these kids - they were aware all along, but we never knew if we would even move to the next level until it actually happened.  Then once it did everything was in lightning speed.  My kids are busy working and making up for lost time by seeing friends - we should probably install a revolving door.  So, it was hard to grab them and get them to expand on their thoughts for more than a few minutes.     

Aftermath:
I am a planner.  I think of things in advance and map out how they are going to happen.  So, now I am grieving those things.  Attending Sister's basketball games.  Watching Curly and Brother walk to school together.  Yellowstone next summer.  Things I had envisioned, hoped for, as a possibility.  

And now for a bit of comic relief because this really happened yesterday before I became a puddle for the 85th time in 2 weeks: 
I saw that Mary Ann successfully had a package
 delivered to her address, not mine.  I offered
my kids who were eating lunch, "$10 to
whoever swipes her package and sticks
 it on our front porch for fun."  I got no takers.
Come on, where is your sense of adventure? 
(those of you who enjoy your gardening - 
you know who you are, try not to cringe at my 
eye-soar of weeds through the railing there. 
Picking weeds:  not my strong suit).

I get that I played a role in shutting the adoption down, but for a while I had hopes that this would be a good fit.  I am a box checker.  I never dreamt that getting matched and having to decide if this was 'it' was going to be so hard.  I assumed when we got to this point, we would roll with it.  Make it work.  Once the visits happened, I thought we would drive to our respective parents' houses on Father's Day and share the news.  (I have friends who wanted to hide in the bushes during this news sharing).  

I fall hard, when I fall.  As you can tell, I don't just kinda share - I dive in, open up, and I did that with these two kids.  We shared a few visits with them that were full of laughs and fun, interesting talks about religion and sharing of funny family stories, but I also know that we couldn't just go mini-golf and play charades and re-fill the raccoon spa, and roast marshmallows every day of real life.  We did enjoy Sister and Brother, but I also worried about how some aspects of a life together might be more challenging than we could handle.  Should I have ignored my kids' requests that we not go through with the adoption?  Should I have ignored my gut that was working overtime with anxiety?

This would have been hard regardless, but it ended so dramatically.  Will I always wonder if we made a mistake?  Will we ever find a match that works or will we always wonder, what if?  

Like I have said, I have a strong faith and for whatever reason believe that God is walking us down this path.  I am lucky to share this path with Coach (and our kids) - but mostly Coach, but I DO need to remind myself that God is walking along with us because at times I am shrugging going 'What the heck was that?'  Am I the only one that sometimes finds trusting in the Big Guy's overall plan hard as all get-out?

So, that was just a little light summer reading?  How's your summer been?