More Back Story: First Meeting up to today

I realized when I was done writing that I had written so much and I hadn't actually got to the first day yet. While Brenden and Jacquelin watch a movie I figured I'd at least get us caught up to the present.

We met Jacquelin the following Thursday, after two whole days on the foster parent list. I had many conversations with the barrage of people in her life, from her therapist to her social worker, and one of her primary caregivers. They had all warned me that she was very mouthy and also extremely shy. But all of them agreed that she was a really wonderful girl, and as soon as I cracked that hard exterior shell I was in for something very special. We were supposed to meet her at the group home for an introduction and then, if she felt comfortable, we were going to head back to our house and show her around. She could barely get herself in the door, she was so shy. At the time we thought that she wasn't going to pick us.

We told her that we had already said yes to her, and now it was up to her to decide if she wanted to live with us. She had two questions: 1. Would she be able to hang out with her friends if she finished all of her homework? (at the group home she isn't allowed to hang out with anyone outside of school) 2. Could she get an iphone? We reassured her that she would be able to have sleep overs, and that we would provide the food for her friends while they were here (she thought she'd have to pay). But Brenden and I, both avid android users who joke that the only apple product we had was stock (a joke that was much funnier last year) we appalled. Should a 14 year old really have an iphone? But Brenden and I said we would try to figure it out a way to make it work, and even if it wasn't an iphone, it would be a smart phone.

She said she'd like to see our house. We made awkward small talk in the car on our way to the house and when we got here she told us it was nice and that she was worried she'd get lost trying to find her way around the house. We sat in our living room to talk, and I asked her if she'd like to live with us. She said yes. I told her that she could call us whatever she wanted to, and she said that she wanted to call us mom and dad. That was the point where my very tall and slightly Brawny man looking husband began to cry. Then Jacquelin's primary caregiver, Marie started crying, followed by Jacquelin and lastly by me. There we were, all sobbing away in the living room.

What followed was the back and forth that I'm sure is a completely normal in a world where nothing is really normal. In the next few meetings, sometimes we would meet her and she would be happy and engaged in conversations, other times she would be sullen and removed. Even when she would get upset with us and not speak to me for days, she would always tell her social worker, her case worker and her primary caregiver that she was moving in with us on June 24th. We got together for a couple of dinners, a movie and with every meeting we would get closer and closer and she would slowly begin to open up more. The final crack in the armor of teenage angst came when she called me at 9pm on a Thursday night and asked if I would take her to get her nails done on Friday for a party that she was going to on Saturday. My roommate, Jacquelin and I all went to my great nail place in the Inner Richmond. I couldn't get her to stop talking and sharing. From then on, it's been a constant stream of communication and plans for when she moves in. All we had to do was plan it. We scheduled a time to get her bedsheets, pack her up, and most importantly, get her her phone.

So we went to get the phone, but first I had to discuss it with my girlfriends and parents to see what they thought about it. I was raised in two families, when I was growing up my mother would make me pay the difference between a plain manila folder and the Lisa Frank folder that all of the other girls had. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't justify buying a teenager a $300 piece of electronic  equipment. I spoke with my very level headed and frugal friend, who told me exactly what I wanted to hear, that I shouldn't get her the phone. But when I spoke with Brenden we determined that the problem we had was with apple products and that we would have got her a smart phone anyway so that we could have her run her calender and security app that we run and all be in communication. We ended up saying that we'd buy her the phone, in exchange for extra chores. I reconciled it as being a much needed accessory in our age of technology. After spending hours in an ATT store, she had her phone and we were ready for Monday.

Today, I came over to the group home that she was moving out of, not just once to pick her up, but twice. Her friend was so worried about her moving that Jacquelin didn't want her to see her moving any of her stuff for fear that it would make her more upset. So I came over at noon and helped her pack up the rest of her clothes and nick knacks and then came over again at 5:30 to pick her up.

She was still saying goodbye to all of her friends. It was great to see how many people she affected and how many people are going to miss her there. Her best friend was especially sad and her sister was finding it hard to be there to say goodbye. She was crying and upset, but also really excited to be coming to our house. I had completely forgotten that I had a similar goodbye when I left the shelter after 6 months of living there. I had friends from the shelter that I had convinced my high school dance committee (of which I was chair) to let them come to the dance too. They were so excited to join the dance and had a wonderful time. These friends were also the reason I got my EMT license. I was hanging out with this black guy with an Irish accent, I believe his name was Dylan. He explained to me that his mother was a prostitute in Reno and that sometimes she would drop off money for him at the hotel where she kept him. When he would have the money he would first go and buy food for himself for the week and then, next, he would pick a place he wanted to travel to and go there on the greyhound bus. He was 14, I was 14. Neither of us were interested in the rest of the way that the shelter works, with kids having fits and fighting with each other. We hung out in the nurses office and did our homework and read the EMT book she had in her library. I learned that I can get my EMT license as early as 15, and made that my goal, which basically occupied my time through the rest of the shelter.

Though I've tried, halfheartedly to find the people that made life bearable in the shelter, I've put those people into my past and really have never tried to retrieve them. I'm looking forward to seeing how Jacquelin handles all of this. I'd love for her to continue those relationships. When speaking with one of her favorite caregivers at her group home, Darren told me that he hopes that she doesn't call or stay in contact, that is time for her to move on with her life. I don't know which way is right, or what she'll choose.

But in the mean time I'll just sit here and watch silly movies with her and not know what to do... But maybe this is it, this is what parents do.

First Day, Rainy Day.

I wonder if it's a good omen, like rain on a wedding day, that it's raining in the middle of the summer, on my first day of motherhood. Though I'm not normally a superstitious person, I have to say the raindrops on my window gave me pause. The weather on this soggy, muggy day in the middle of June will hopefully be the only unfortunate thing that happens today. This blog is going to be my truth, but that does not make it truth. All of these events are process through my eyes and my experience. I'm sure the stories that follow will have a different emphasis and interpretation when viewed through the eyes of every member of our household. All names will be changed to protect the privacy of those in my life.

I'm going to try and keep track of my experience of being a foster mother on this blog for several reasons. The first is I want to encourage anyone who is considering opening up their home and their hearts to a foster child to do it. My situation is the epitome of, "if I can do it, so can you." I am too young, too mouthy, and far too short tempered to be a foster parent. And yet, here I am, imperfections and all, picking up our daughter from her high level group home in a few hours. The second reason is for my own sanity and reflection, I find that writing keeps me present to what I'm up to and helps to encapsulate and define times that without reflection wouldn't be processed. The third and final reason to enumerate at this point is for my daughter. I would love for her to have something to look back on and to remember our time together, as well as to encourage her to give back to her community, even before she feels that she's able.

From the time I was first in foster care, when I was 14, I knew that I wanted to be a foster parent. Never had I seen so much need, and what a child's life looks like when they don't have a parent who is willing to care for them and able to take care of them. Without that fundamental security children become lost. There are so few homes for teenagers in foster care and so they end up in group homes or staying long term at the shelter. I was at the Children's Shelter of Santa Clara county for months before my social worker found me a placement. Lynn, an estate attorney, and Dan, a solar specialist and entrepreneur took me into their home. They already had an older teenage daughter who was a junior in high school and their eldest daughter, who had just started at USC. They opened their home thinking that I would only be staying there for a few days or a week, I stayed their (mostly) until I went to college, which they lovingly packed me up and drove me down to. I made the decision that as soon as I was able, I would foster children for myself. I remember so clearly my best friend and I planning to support each other in fostering kids whenever we could. We didn't need a man, but if we did find one, they would have to be okay with foster parenting. 

In college I stumbled onto a job that required EMT qualifications but was a night shift and not in the hospital. When I called and spoke to my employer, she told me that she had two medically fragile foster babies, who were 6 and 10 months old, and that she needed help with the night shift for these babies because she was now a single mother and wasn't getting sleep. I jumped on it immediately. I started spending nights are her house, sleeping next to and comforting the two very disturbed babies. Soon they were sleeping soundly, and too soon I was no longer needed. But I would still come by often and "babysit" those wonderful babies as they grew into toddlers.

When my boyfriend and I started talking seriously about spending the rest of our lives together, I told him that being a foster parent was a non-negotiable for me. Brenden said, "I'm worried I won't love them like I would my own biological children, and I would never want any child to grow up in an house where they didn't feel fully loved." This sentiment wasn't a stopping point for me. I told him that he should spend his summer down here (we were both still in college) and visit with the kids I work with and see how he feels after the summer.

He got an internship at a neuroscience research institute in San Diego and spent the summer in my apartment and taking the kids out with me. On the first day I brought him over to Erica's house (the full time foster mother) so that we could put up some shelves for her. Brenden sat down next to John, the now blossoming toddler who before had been the worst case of abuse San Diego County had ever seen, and began to take apart the pieces for the shelf. He taught John which screwdrivers work for which screw and then visibly beamed when John picked up the correct screw driver and handed it to him. Brenden look at me and said, "I can never imagine doing anything else."  That was the moment I knew I would marry him.

Brenden reveled in finding new avenues for John's brilliance.When you would come to the door, the first thing John would do was take your keys from your hand and meticulously go to every door, testing them to see if they would open the lock. Brandon wanted to encourage this curiosity and so made John and his sister a box with 9 compartments and 9 different types of locks, for John to try to open. This gift was such a hit at their second birthday party that we had several orders for more boxes by the end of the day. Brenden would take the kids around to the zoo, explaining all of the different animals, where they lived and what they do, and would patiently answers every single one of the litany of questions that only a toddler can supply. 

Right before the end of the summer, as Brenden was  headed back up the coast to another semester, John was reunified with a distant family member in Texas. The family had requested that we not contact John again, and so when we dropped him off with his social worker at the airport, we knew that it was a permanent good bye. This abrupt placement tore us apart from John's foster mother, Erica. I think we all found it really hard to be around each other without him. Brenden and I decided that we couldn't open our hearts up like that again, and foster parenting was tabled for the time being.

Many years, a home, and a wedding later, Brenden and I had run out of excuses to not have foster children. We had the money, the time and the concern and only had the worry of heartbreak holding us back. I had been mentoring for foster youth in a high level group home in the city, but that didn't seem that I was doing enough to help these unclaimed children in our neighborhood. So we signed up for foster parenting classes through the county of San Francisco and showed up for our first Saturday morning class.

Lorry and Dean (a current foster mother and former foster youth respectively) walked us through the different cultural competencies and concerns of foster parenting. Brenden and I are both, more than anything, excellent students. And so our foster parenting class made us feel even more prepared to settle in to the idea of become parents. Though we knew that we didn't know anything, we saw, frankly, that we knew a lot more than those around us (there seemed to be a lot of financial motivation for the other foster parents and we were the only two college educated people in the room).  As the people who might have the wrong intentions for going into foster parenting (making money from home) were weeded out, we kept raising are hands and voicing our concerns (I'm too young, we work a lot, I 'm still in school...). Though the list kept expanding and kept looking for more reasons to not become foster parents, Lorry and Dean kept approaching us and telling us how excited they were to have us become parents, and how they knew that we'd make it work and would make a great home for foster teens.

After finishing our courses and getting our home checked, a long but very simple interview with a licensing worker and another with a placement worker, we went on THE LIST. Once Elton, the placement worker who tries to find homes for whoever comes into the foster care system in San Francisco County every day, found out that we wanted to take in teens, he kept asking me when I was ready to take a child in. I replied, "How about today?" Later in the interview he asked me again, "So when do you want to start fostering?" I answered, "Is today good for you?" And as he was about to leave he asked, "So, when do you want to start fostering?" "Today, or yesterday Elton, it's up to you." "Okay," he said, "look for my call this afternoon.

He called me at 12:05 and said that he had 15 kids who he thought were really special and had a lot of potential and needed a home. I wanted to say yes to all of them, but one in particular stuck out. She was doing very well in school and wanted to go to college. She knew that her mother, who she had been removed from years before due to incarceration, wouldn't be able to get her there, and she wanted to find a family that would. That was our girl. Elton, who had become strangely protective of us (for which I couldn't be more grateful) said that she would be a tough placement, but that she really needed a home like ours. Her social worker called while I was still on the phone with Elton, to schedule a meeting for us to meet Jacquelin on Thursday. I called Brenden excitedly, and we cried with joy together, as new parents.