“My name is Angie, and foster care is my jam.” I didn’t hear the next few minutes of our training course because I was so shocked that our trainer just introduced herself in this way. Foster care was her jam? I couldn’t imagine describing myself like that. Would it become my jam? Did I want that?
Angie conducted most of her training sessions through storytelling. A social worker and mother to four adopted boys, she’d lived in the trenches of the child welfare system for nearly twenty years and had a story for every bullet point in the training manual. She talked about laminated signs, safety mantras, and floor plans with exit routes. She talked about a basket of snacks on the counter and never forcing foster children to eat “healthy, organic” food. She talked about birth fathers showing up at football games and the time she cried on the floor of her closet when it was all too much. And then she talked about not allowing anyone in someone else's bed.
Immediately the image of my children curled up in our big bed reading books together flashed into my mind. “Like we can’t read books together in our bed?” I whispered to Stephen.
He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes, glossing over her statement as more of a suggestion than a rule.
Before I regained my footing from that “suggestion,” she went on to tell us it was a rule in her house that no one shared a blanket. If they watched a movie together, each person had their own blanket and all hands were kept on top of the blankets. I puffed out an audible breath and zoned out for the rest of the class, trying to ignore the pit in my stomach and Angie’s insinuation.
“I don’t know if we should do this anymore,” I said to Stephen after we got home that night.
“Why? Because of the blanket thing?”
“Kind of,” was all I could say. The blanket thing might be trite, but it had really knocked me off course.
I walked down the hallway to the threshold of Charlotte’s room. Her sleeping five-year-old body takes up a fraction of the giant bed in her room that doubles as a guest bed when family and friends come to visit. It is also the perfect bed for our family, just the right size for all of us to read books and cuddle. And goodness knows we’ve done a fair share of tickling in that bed. Angie never mentioned tickling, but I had a hunch tickling foster children was frowned upon.
I peeked into Andrew’s room; his toddler bed crammed with cars and stuffed animals. Stepping over a fire truck, I walked to the edge of his bed. His Paw Patrol blanket was carefully spread out across his 3-year-old body, covering the entire bed and sweeping down onto the floor. It was the largest blanket in the house, the one we all fit under. I was annoyed and sad at the same time as I imagined myself telling my preschool son, “Make sure your hands are out where I can see them.” I leaned down to kiss his cheek and wondered how I’d answer him when he asked why.
The vague mental image of foster care was taking shape, and I felt my strength give way. I suddenly felt ill-equipped and unqualified for such an intense role. Will my children be ok? Will our marriage be ok? Will our home still feel like a place of rest? What did we get ourselves into?
This might be a really big mistake.
*****
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