Tag: Ashley

“Do you remember the blue butterfly?” he asks, his voice slow and sleepy. My youngest child is draped across the small couch positioned at the foot of my bed, trying his best to delay the inevitable slumber. It’s late enough that I should ignore this question and urge him toward rest, but the butterfly…the butterfly is worth these few extra minutes, so I concede. “In Costa Rica?” I reply. “Yea. I fink it was on the last day when we goed back home,” he says, his five-year-old memory surprisingly precise. “Yes, it was. What about that butterfly?” I ask. “I fought we were gonna runned it over wif the car,” he says, eyebrows at attention. “No, silly boy. We weren’t gonna run it over. That was our guardian angel.” I smile. “It’s just a butterfly, Mama,” he giggles. “Maybe. But Mama’s pretty sure it was meant for us.” We typically spend our August awash in the final weeks of Midwestern heat. But this year, instead of baking in the Michigan sun, we spent part of our August in the hot blaze of Central America as we explored the beaches and mountains of Costa Rica. This dream had lived within me forever, but with my 40th birthday around the corner and the weight of five years of foster parenting on my back, I was eager to escape and experience a different way to live out the evaporating summer. Fully adept at the American road trip, I am rarely phased by travel with children. We have ventured near and far with our gang of ruffians, but we had never attempted to buckle these boys onto a plane and out of the country. With the exception of Canada, international travel was not something we’d done with any of our children, let alone all of them at once. I would not be deterred, though, and in early winter when the sun was nowhere to be found, I cracked my dust-covered guide to Costa Rica and started booking beachside huts and lodges tucked deep in the rainforest. Before I knew it, I’d plotted out a 12-day itinerary and reserved the only 4WD rental car I could find that would accommodate all 6 of us. Then, I filed that dream away until the end of July when I pulled it back out and found that my brazen January confidence had left me. I sat on the floor of my closet, packing and repacking the same four carry-ons, wondering what I had done.

I skipped submitting my monthly newspaper column the last time it came around, something I never do. I stared at the empty computer screen and quickly clicked it off because I am in a season of setting things down – things that I love and things that I don’t, things that lift me up and things that leave me empty. One by one, I’ve set these things down, wished them well, and walked away. Some of these things have been small, others have felt monumental: my deep-seated yearning to be loved, friendships long since dead, the responsibility of foster parenting, one very fulfilling job, clean floors, a vision of what my life was supposed to be, the irrational need to wear mascara in public, my giant expectations, and a July newspaper column. It has been a rough couple of months. It has also been a blast. When everything else was set down, what remained were four sweet boys, one steadfast dog, and a newly moustachioed husband, things that I carry, yes, but things which also carry me. It’s been a summer of late nights and wild children, sprinkler bouncy houses and sunburns. We’ve laughed and we’ve cuddled and I’ve cried and I’ve cried – tears of gratitude and many, many tears of guilt and regret for all the time I wasted juggling things that were never meant for me.

On a chilly evening in the early days of the pandemic, my kids and I walked the back ten acres of a friend’s property. We were longing for a familiar face outside of our family of six, so we’d met and strolled at arm’s length to get some fresh air and welcome the blossoming spring. His land consists of horse pastures, hardwoods, and one large clearing dotted with scrub brush at the very back. Taking our time, reveling in the birth of a new season, we meandered the perimeter of the field. As we rounded the backside, a chickadee caught my attention, seemingly beckoning to us in its repetitive dee-dee-dee. Delighted and curious, my oldest son and I followed the little gray bird toward the center of the clearing. It hopped from sapling to bush to thin tree branch, calling us all the while. Cautiously, we stepped around low points with gathered water, both intrigued by the bird’s playful nature. “Chickadees remind me of my grandma,” I told him as we followed along. “Grandpa’s mom. She had a big birdfeeder in the pine tree outside her kitchen window, and all I can remember are the chickadees who came to feast every morning.”

“Mom, you know how to tune a guitar?” “Nope. Not a clue,” I say, turning the little knobby things at the top. “Twaang, twing, twiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing,” go the strings. My son watches me, uncertain. Might I actually be cooler than he thinks? He deliberates. I tighten the knobs further, then hand the instrument over. He strums a few times, raises an eyebrow. I am not cool. Waves of regret douse the living room. I cannot play an instrument. When I was little, I tried to teach myself piano on weekends at my grandma’s. I played violin for a year in 5th grade, switched to trombone in the fall, and quit all together once I hit Junior High. Now, with a 10-year-old staring at me, waiting, I wish I had something to show him.

A week before Thanksgiving, an email went out to all Ottawa County foster families. It dropped in my inbox with a clap of thunder as I prepared to end the workday and collect my boys from school. “Ottawa DHHS needs your help and an 11-year-old boy named _____ needs a home; placement is needed by Friday.” It was Tuesday. Emails like this one are rarely sent which told me they were running out of options. I finished reading the message and clicked on the video at the bottom, recognizing him right away. He looked just like my middle child, ash blonde hair and toothy smile. His plastic-framed glasses had been broken and taped back together at the corners. He talked to the camera about sports and Pokemon and his dream for a family, those big and little things that hold a boy together.