Unbecoming

There are children who come stay with us for a night or a long weekend every couple of months. They burst in the door and fall back into old rhythms like no time has passed. They drop their bags, kick off their shoes, and sniff out whatever goodness awaits them in the kitchen. The volume cranks up, and I shift slightly inside myself to meet the burst of energy they bring to our home. It is familiar and foreign in one deep bittersweet breath. These are my former foster children, and I am their mother and not their mother at all.

When they came into our lives, we had no idea what we were doing. Much like when our babies were born, my husband and I figured it out as we went. We made big mistakes right alongside big memories, but in the end, we could not be the family they needed us to be. In the days they spend with us now, I can almost see the life we might have built had we found our way through the aftermath of the raging storm that landed them on our front porch.

It is the oddest thing to parent children who are not your own, especially when they become your own—maybe not on paper, maybe not forever, and usually not in anybody’s eyes but ours. But they were, and they are, for just a couple nights every other month, and maybe at some point down the road, only in our memories. Because with foster care, you immediately become and then slowly unravel everything you became.

This un-becoming is the most unnatural thing. Their next chapter brings a new house, a new school, changing likes and dislikes, and photos that do not include us. Each change cements these children into the fresh start that I hoped for…and still. Left in the middle ground while they run ahead, I thank God and grieve their every step away from us.

There are people in our lives who forget these kids were ever here. They forget their names and ages or can’t quite recall when that was again…last year? The year before? “Has it really been that long?” they ask. “Yes and no,” I say. It is so strange that entire parts of us can so easily be erased.

I could tell you the minute the kids arrived, how my heart broke open when they crawled crying from the state-owned minivan idling in our driveway. I could tell you how many nights I slept on the floor of their rooms, holding their hands as their breath finally slowed to the sweet cadence of sleep. I could draw for you the scars on their bodies and the flecks in their eyes. By looking into those eyes at the start of a new day, I could tell you if our morning skies would be clear or cloudy. I could tell you if the words that came next were truth or lie; so many stories are told when entire histories must be rewritten.

And I could recite to you the feel of the air on the afternoon we packed a truck to take them to their next stop, which we would later learn was not the final destination we had hoped it to be. Fast forward and they are inside a new home once again, one that has proven to be the forever family they deserved from their very first breath. This is what we have prayed for. It is everything we could not be.

I am no longer their mother—I never was—but I am their anchor, that heavy thing that ties them to their past. We were their first stop on their road to now. We were there to be love and a promise that should their past fail to correct itself, it did not have to be their future. There are many routes that lead home, and foster care exists to help facilitate whichever way that route may take.

The role of a foster mother is often misunderstood. To some, I am a babysitter. To others, a thief, a saint, or an iron-clad machine, taking in and disposing of children I do not intend to keep. I have been told I long for chaos or compliments or the $17 a day payment. Those a bit closer to the truth wonder if it is the sense of control I crave, but I am in control of nothing in this world we have welcomed. After the kids you have mothered have gone home to their mothers, you are reminded that the strings were never yours to pull. When we hold too tightly to those strings, we stifle the magic that exists just beyond our reach.

So, we greet the magic and await the adoption of our former foster children into their new family. As we wait, we have conversations about what is next for us. Will we open ourselves to new children, new what-ifs, and whirlwinds of trauma? Will we make space in our house and our souls for more? Is there even still space to be made?

With only three placements over the past six years and all of the wounds to show for it, I cannot imagine saying yes to another child. And I cannot imagine saying no. With changing legislation and women’s rights stripped bare, there are simply not enough of us to afford that freedom any longer.
I am lucky enough to know foster mamas who open their doors to dozens upon dozens, even hundreds of children. They cradle our hope for the future in their willingness to become and unbecome, to always make space, to play the role of mother, babysitter, thief, saint, machine—whatever title the world puts upon them in its ignorance. Yet they continue to hold this ugly old world up in the most beautiful way, and I know their arms are tired.

These women say yes to children who have no choice in what has happened to them, children we pray for then leave in NICUs, detention centers, and residential programs, discarded and alone. As Mother’s Day approaches and foster mamas like me wonder how many more times we can unravel ourselves to stitch a child’s life back together, I ask you to imagine what you could do with all of your prayers and $17 a day. What could you do with your beating heart and an open door? Could you turn those things into a family for one discarded, sacred life? Could you do it for a year or a lifetime or a weekend? Because that is what foster mothers do, and we need more of you.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace