a visit
in just a few minutes, i’m going to call the social worker to confirm today’s visit. it’ll be the first time they have seen you in a year (because we took you to the court hearing in june 2018) and the first visit since march of 2018.
i spent a lot of time last year thinking about how to think about you. whether to call you my son or my foster son to strangers. whether to hope for you to be able to return safely to your family or stay with us forever. what those decisions mean for who i am as a person and for our relationship. one day you might feel like we stole you from your family. you might be angry that we changed your name. you might wish that you had stayed with your first family, with your brothers and a little sister.
last night i was over at the johnson’s house (you were at home, sleeping) and ava asked me when you were going to have a little sister. it took me a second to understand the question, because she was whispering in my ear. she knew it was something she shouldn’t ask (because she told me not to say anything). and i was surprised, at first. for a couple reasons. first, because we’re trying to get pregnant— i just had a minor surgery, and we’ll start iui next month. second— and this is what i whispered into ava’s ear— you already have a little sister! you’ve only met her a few times, and apparently weren’t a big fan the first time, but she is your sister. that’s important.
i hope that one day we’re able to find a way to navigate building these relationships for you. with your brothers, and your sister, and maybe even your first parents. it’d be easier, to be sure, to ignore all of that and pretend that we are a family of 3. but we have tried, from the start, to respect and honor the connections that you brought with you. we’ve visited every few months with ms. reed, who took care of you for the first year of your life. she’s got the story of your first year in a way that no one else ever will, and she loves you.
it’s easier for us though, and maybe for you too, if there aren’t visits and we can keep pretending. it’s easier for us to believe that you belong to us and always will, no matter how long the legal process and paperwork takes. it’s easier for us to see only our own happiness as a family, and not think about the repercussions of that joy for other people. i think it might be easier for you, at 2, to only know one “mama” and “daddy” and for your relationships to feel secure and dependable. goodness, they’re going to call you by a different name!
sadly, easier isn’t usually right. i hope that, no matter how this all works out in the long run, that we tried our best to do what was right for you, even when it wasn’t easy. that means always agreeing to visits, because if you end up leaving us it will be easier if you already know your first parents. right means visits with ms. reed, even when we’d rather not make the drive. and today right will be both mama and daddy staying with you at mcdonald’s while you visit with people you’ve met before but won’t remember, and trying to support you in getting to know them. i don’t know how we’ll do it, but we’ll try.