Another Mother's Day?

It is probably good that Roland got mixed up about Mother's Day. This weekend we are tentatively planning on having G visit, and celebrating Mother's Day would be awkward.

Mother and Father's Day are always difficult. I understand, or at least I think I do, because Father's Day has always been at least a little difficult for me. It is especially difficult if I happen to go to church that day. I have actually called the church in advance to make sure they are not singing "This is My Father's World" because if they are I am NOT coming. I have walked out after seeing that hymn on the bulletin for that day.

Father's Day got easier when we had children and it was about celebrating Roland as a father. That was cool. Before that though I avoided it. The day annoyed me. One is surrounded by images of an ideal of a father, and the language used assumes that everyone has that kind of father. Some of us don't.

Among the things I think I never would have wanted to do would be to attend a celebration for some other person's father.

At some point G might think of me as one of his mothers, but not this year. This year he will be a visitor in my home. This year Mother's Day will likely remind him of the step-mother who refused to let him come home and the mother who was not able to take him in when he needed her. (This for complicated reasons I regard as private. I will tell you that there has not been and no one expects there to be any CPS involvement with his mother.)

So I think I have had my celebration for this year.

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By the way, it gets tiresome to write "if G becomes part of our family" or "if he moves in" in front of every paragraph. It is there though. IF at some point that changes to WHEN he moves in, I will tell you so.

Our tentative schedule is this:
Tomorrow: Roland goes to the agency to read as much of the file as they have
Wednesday: Roland, Andrew, Brian and I meet G and his agency social worker for pizza.
Thursday: we agree (or not) that we are still in the game and we invite G over for the weekend.
Next week: we make a decision (I hope) and set up a loose schedule of visits
Early June: when school is out where he is living now, he moves in.

We are collecting as much information as we can. There are a variety of people who have been involved in his life and we are trying to get a complete picture of who he has been since he left his father and step mother. We also want to understand who he was before he left, but I do care more about how he has behaved after leaving that environment.

Given the respite phenomenon, wherein everyone is on their best behavior when you first meet, I think that our decision is best based upon past behavior. How well everyone gets along when we first visit is important, but I expect that that will go well. It is the other stuff that I really want to see. For his sake, I would like to have gathered it by the end of next week. If we are not a match, he needs to have a chance to find one so that he can leave that group home the day school is out.