Flawed

I like to look at my family as a little matryoshka each of us represents a different doll, a different layer, and we all fit together as one. There’s our daughter Sophia, age three, my partner Alissa, who works for UPS, and me, a Preschool Director. Of course there’s much more to us than just what we do for a living. One of those layers is Foster and Adoptive Parent. Our journey through hell, err, adoption started for me in 2007, and together in 2008. Now, I don’t mean this as a deterrent to adoption, it has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, hands down. It’s the journey itself that, should you choose to accept, should end with knighthood or sainthood. I’m not joking.  Make a bronze statue of my face and erect it on a monument.

Normally I’m pretty modest, you don’t catch me talking about the sacrifice and heartache we’ve gone through, we just simply foraged ahead, like so many others.  Some might think stupidity or naivety kept us going but I like to think of it was unrelenting optimism and hopeless romanticism.

What I think my sculpture would like & what they'd probably give me.

Our first love Lia came to us when she was one month old. We went to court to establish de facto parent rights nine months later. She was the best baby I have ever met, and working with infants each day, that says a lot. She slept through the night, rarely cried, and was generally a happy baby. Except for the days she came back from visits with her biological parents. On those days she came home fussy & agitated, sort of like Roseanne Barr during her show Roseanne, not Roseanne the Macadamia Nut farmer.  I’m guessing it was from the 8oz bottle they would insist she needed to eat even though she only drank 4oz bottles and had already eaten before every visit.

The overburdened social worker aid that was actually doing the job of the social worker would comment on how fussy she would be during visits and assumed she was generally an unhappy baby. The social workers in Fort Bragg, which I’m guessing are like most departments, only care about one thing, reunification.  A court date was set to determine if Lia should remain in foster care or be reunified with her bio parents. We came with our paperwork, prepared hopeful that things would go our way and Lia would not be placed with her bio parents who, just take my word, were unfit.

While waiting in the same room as her bio parents, the mother’s lawyer said that her “pee test” had come back dirty. Halleluiah! We knew she was back to drinking and doing drugs, and this proved it. The mother made all sorts of excuses, “Oh I did have a glass of wine at Christmas,” and, “Maybe it was the Nyquil I took for that cold.” We walked into the courtroom, our foster daughter’s attorney and the social workers sat on one side and her parents and their lawyers on the other. When it came time for the social workers to give their opinion on whether or not Lia should go back to her bio parents, this is what they said, “We believe they have taken the necessary steps and the child should be placed back into their custody.”

Hearts broken, no, shattered.

I do not know what these “necessary steps” were. I’m guessing they are along the lines of…

1.       Abuse the system.

2.       Continue to live as you have in the past; drugs, alcohol, etc.

3.       Get a job, but no one will check on you a week later to see if you’ve kept it.

4.       Continue to receive welfare even though your child is no longer in your custody.

5.       Learn how to manipulate everyone around you.

I wish I could say this story has a happy ending for our little Lia, but alas, her father was just arrested for raping a young woman who was living with them.

The foster care system is flawed to say the least.