Thoughts from a Foster Family

I don't need your permission...

2011-09-15T19:11:00.000-06:00

.. I just need you to rescue me from my mistakes.

I'm too tired to be writing. The new sleep specialist was very apologetic when, after I told her that I was feeling GREAT, that she had to say she had to change some thing and I might feel pretty bad for a while. Actually I think part of the reason I'm feeling bad is that I started feeling depressed as soon as she told me that I was going to feel worse. But see, that is totally irrelevant to the story, although it might be relevant to why I am telling the story.

There has been a certain theme lately.

Gary talks to us about some outrageous, unrealistic plan to see what we think.
We say, "If you do that, X will probably happen and that would be bad."
He says, "X is NOT going to happen, and even if it does, I have two great back-up plans. So what do you think?"
We say, "We don't think it is a good idea."
He does it.
X happens.
Our suggestion that he use his back up plan is met with incredulity. THAT won't work.
He indicates what he needs from us to fix the problem.
We indicate that he is not going to get it.
He tells us how truly horrible his life will be if we don't fix his problem.
We agree that it sucks to be him, but whatever happens he knows he has a place to live and food to eat.

And I am beginning to feel worn out. I know it is the sleep thing. I've been not-tired for a couple of months and it has been WONDERFUL, now I'm tired again and feeling pissy.

And I swear, if he comes up and says, "Question. I thinking it would be a good idea if I..."

I am going to scream
or hit him over the head with a hammer
many times.

I think 18 might be my least favorite age.

Thank you for listening to me whine. Sorry I haven't been writing. I kinda feel guilty not writing at all and then coming here just to whine, but well, I figure you will take it from me.

I'm going to bed now.

Strange Conversations Today

2011-08-18T16:33:00.000-06:00

Conversation 1
Sis, "Are you sure you are okay with everyone going to your house for Thanksgiving? Because if you are not, I'll tell Dad we can't make it."

Me, "Everyone's coming to my house for Thanksgiving?"

Conversation 2
Setting: 3pm, Gary emerging from room for the first time (still in pj's)
Me, "Honey, this is is me asking for the 3rd day in a row that you bring up all the dirty dishes from the basement and get them in the dishwasher."

Gary, "I know. I know. I have more important things to do."

Me, "Like what?"

Gary, "Um... like fill out these job applications?" (said in the "parents are so stupid voice")

Me, deciding not to comment on the fact that he has apparently been sleeping all day, "Okaaay, do you think you could fit dishes in sometime in the next hour or two?" (I admit, there was a tone.)

*****
In case you are interested:
It is okay with me if my sister, her husband, 3 young adult children, my father and his wife all show up here for Thanksgiving, particularly since they will be staying at a hotel and I long since figured out how to cook two turkeys in one oven.

Also, Gary did get all those dirty dishes up into the dishwasher. It wasn't a full load, but...

Still growing up

2011-07-30T12:08:00.000-06:00

Gary is still working at the frozen yogurt place. He has been there several weeks and yesterday he was called in to talk to the manager about his performance. This is a new shop and Gary was one of the younger people hired. Because of the way he presents himself, he was hired as a team-leader or assistant-manager.

There have been two sorts of problems. One has to do with irregularities with respect to money. It could be that someone on his shift has been lifting money. It is more likely that they have been making some small mistakes in the cash register. Gary himself has been making a fairly big mistake regularly. He has been adding change or singles without taking out larger bills to replace it. So when he adds $10 in quarters the register looks as though they made $10 in sales. It also looks like someone stole $10 in quarters from the safe.

There were other things, like not leaving the store properly stocked and prepped for the morning. The store has been very clean. It is obvious that Gary has not been rushing what he believed he needed to do, but that for some reason he did not recall that he was supposed to the other work.

So Gary has been warned. He is one part defensive and one part committed to making sure he proves himself and gets a good recommendation from this place. am very glad that the manager gave Gary the talking-to and the second chance. He has left or lost other jobs and based upon what he told me I have concluded he was let go because of job performance, but nobody seemed to tell him precisely what he was doing wrong. This is of course speculation on my part, but it is based upon him telling me about his work.

The point is, that it occurred to me this morning how really terrible it would have been for Gary if he had been encouraged to move out last fall when he turned 18. So many foster kids do, even when they legally are not required to. (In my experience it is difficult to convince them to stay, they do not like being in care.) Gary is still not ready to take care of himself.

Oh, he sounds like he is. He talks about savings goals, criticizes friends for not having a budget and saving money, talks almost reasonably about how much he expects to need when he lives on his own. Much of the information is there, but the habits of life are not. Not all of the knowledge, of course, he has been appalled at how little money is left after taxes and gasoline. When he calculates the added cost of car insurance he wonders if he can afford to work.

He is making progress, at least a little. I do have hopes that he will be able to move out within the next six months.

He still thinks he is going to be going to community college in a month ... even though he has not actually applied or done any of that other stuff. He simply doesn't believe me when I tell him that the classes there fill up quickly. He seems to think it will work like high school. You show up the first day, register, and get your scheduled.

Anyway, I am glad he is still here. I am the adoption made him comfortable with the idea of staying longer. He needs what I am beginning to think of of stage-two adolescence. He thinks he is an adult. He is doing what he thinks he needs to do to actually become one, but he still needs the safety net of parents.

Wait, he doesn't just need to safety net, he needs us to hold up all the ropes.

Like mother...

2011-07-01T11:17:00.000-06:00

A few days after returning from visiting my mother Andrew and I were driving in the car and he asked me how it went.

I told him that mostly I got along really well with my mother. The only thing that bugged me was the sense that I was always being evaluated. Like at lunch one day she said, "I can't decide whether I like your glasses" which seemed to me to be a very silly thing to say. I mean, if I was decided whether I wanted them then her opinion would be relevant, but now they just were my glasses. I didn't CARE if she liked them or not. And she is almost never critical, but you can tell she is working at it. Like, her friend made me this new nightgown that I cut out from Mom's fabric stash. It makes me look as round as a pumpkin. Mom looked at it, didn't say anything, and then half an hour later said, "I guess that is a cool, comfortable night gown for you to wear in the summer, isn't it?" So sometimes it gets to me, this feeling like I am being constantly evaluated ... even when the evaluations are good.

And the silence in the car was very, very loud.

I said, "I do see my faults in my mother."

And Andrew said, "I was pretty sure you would get there by yourself."

Which is precisely the sort of thing either my mother or I would say.

Update on me & the rest of the fam

2011-06-24T12:43:00.000-06:00

Did I tell you I had a sleep study done a few months ago? Yeah, I found out why I was so freaking exhausted all the time. I got a CPAP machine a couple of months ago and it has been wonderful. This has resulted in my spending less time on-line because I have energy to do things that don't involve sitting in a chair. It is all pretty cool.

I went to spend my now-annual visit with my mother. She is looking much better this year than last. Her tremors appears to have be no worse, and possible even a bit less. She reports though that they are more extensive. She feels this higher in her arm and in her face. I think they appear to be less because she was so exhausted last summer. In any case, she is serious about moving out of her house. I told her that Roland and I had already talked about her moving in with us. She was glad to hear it because she thinks she can't afford assisted living, hates the idea of living in a retirement community (though she would probably adjust), and is afraid that if she moved into an apartment she would just have to move again as the Parkinson's progresses.

So we talked about the details. She would take our room on the ground floor and we would move down to the basement where we were when Carl first moved in. I warned her that she could keep her room as tidy as she wanted, but the rest of the house would be a change for her. She has clearly been thinking about that and seems prepared. She wanted to talk about the details of moving. The most important part was, I think, that I assured her that I would fly back with her. Right now I would think there is a better than 50% chance that she would move in.

Most of the time I think that is a good idea and I am very comfortable with it. Every now and then I have a moment of panic. "OH MY GOD, MY MOTHER IS GOING TO LIVE WITH ME!"

So, just to give you a complete picture: Gary should almost certainly be moved out by next summer. Brian will have just graduated from high school and preparing to move a full half mile away into the college dormitories. Andrew on the other hand will have just graduated from college and is hoping to move back home for a year (at least) while he take courses for a teaching certificate. You know, so he can put that philosophy degree to use.

Roland and I are coming to accept that we will never have to deal with the anxiety of an empty nest.

Update on Gary

2011-06-24T12:20:00.000-06:00

So, Gary got credit for his English class, on the condition that he take economics in summer school. Since he had a day-time job, he got permission to take Econ in the digital learning academy. Of course, the class started this week and by that time he had quit the job, but we won't go there.

So far this summer he has worked for about a week painting houses. He quit that job because, well, because he didn't like it, but officially because he had to drive into The City and couldn't afford the gas. He got a job in a plant and had to quit that because they wanted him to work 60 hours a week. (I was out of town and do not know if I could have persuaded him that that was a stupid reason for an 18 year old trying to move out on his own to quit a job.) He only worked that job one day. He went to his martial arts class and cracked a rib later that day and was told not to work for two days.

We got a letter from the insurance saying that because he got a speeding ticket back in December his car insurance was going up. Again, I was out of town and Roland just isn't as good at being tough with teenagers as I am. When I got back I explained to him that he really could not drive, except to go to work, until he started paying us $25 a month to help pay for it.

I used all my tough-teen skills, which means that instead of telling him that I would not allow him to drive I explained that I would be happy to go with him to the bank to set up an account so he could cash the two checks he had. I would further be happy to let him use those checks to pay us the $25 first even though he has already asked us for a loan based upon both of them. I pointed out to him that this would mean that he would be able to drive again in less than 24 hours!

For whatever reason, he has been unable to present himself during business hours for the past couple of days and so has not yet gone to the bank.

Today he has an interview to as frozen yogurt store. I am sure he expects to drive himself, but I am considering given him a lift as I have an errand to accomplish in the same area. Of course I will once again be all that is generous, completely overlooking the fact that my generosity will prevent him from taking any side trips while he has the car.

It is obvious to anyone who is not Gary that he is anxious about moving out on his own. He may even be depressed. As always, everything that he plans to do will be easy. He is excited and confident. Everything he currently needs to do is either easy or not worth doing for some reason or another. We have been down this path with kids enough that it no longer makes me crazy. I've gotten really good at this supportive attitude during which I am actually making his life as uncomfortable as possible. You know, given that he has a job interview he will be able to buy himself deodorant and a hair cut very soon!

If I had been posting more regularly, you would have been on the roller coaster with us. Starting jobs at which he was going to be making lots of money allowing him to move out in two weeks, only to have those jobs crash and burn. You would have had to listen to me congratulate myself multiple times on how zen-like I have become.

I will try to keep you better informed as we progress through the summer.

Possibly up the proverbial creek

2011-04-11T19:14:00.001-06:00

This afternoon Gary and I had a conference with his (previous) social worker. Here's the situation. None of this is news to me, by the way. I just haven't been posting about it.

1. Since he has not done any of the things he was required to do to get funding for post high-school education/training he almost certainly won't get it. However, if he can show that he has been accepted to a college, applied for two scholarships, filled out the agency paperwork, and get his unofficial transcript to the committee by FRIDAY, the committee will consider him. She assured him that he still qualifies for some transitional support. If he has a job and some savings they will pay the initial deposits on an apartment, for instance. He isn't worried about that because he has decided he likes living here. (Part of the adoption negotiations included that he would continue to qualify for anything he would have had he not been adopted).

He has been planning on going to community college in the fall. I have suggested that with their current enrollment rates he needs can't count on being able to go full-time, but he is confident.

He also is confident that he going to graduate at the end of May. The school says that you are not allowed to have more than 9 absences, but he points out that that really just means that you have to petition if you have more. Now I told him that back when he had 8-11 in his various classes. I told him it wasn't all over. If he turned it around he could still make it work. I called attendance for an update and found out that he as 21 and 16 absences in the classes he needs to graduate (24 and 35 in the other two). He may still be able to petition, but only if gets at least a C. Oh yeah, he is supposed to show very good reason for the absences, like providing documentation that he was too sick to be there. (Yeah, um, he can get a doctor's note for at least one day).

So I've decided just to expect him to go to summer school. If he graduates in 5 weeks that will be extra cool.

Oh, his younger sister is graduating next month. She's going to the state school in the fall and might move into the dorms in the spring when she is 18.

He has constantly changing plans for his future. The fire fighting thing seems to be over. Of course, if he is in summer school he would miss the fire season anyway. (For those in other parts of the world, being a wild land fire-fighter and being a structural fire-fighter are different things. It is relatively easy to get certified to work on a crew during wild-fire season.)

So Roland and I have already warned him that though he won't be homeless, he can expect less support from us. I have framed it as "when you are no longer a full-time student." I need to be more specific though. Given that he has unofficially dropped (i.e. stop attending and agreed to take the F) one class he isn't really a full-time student now. I told him that he would continue to get "full support" for 90 days after graduation. I think I need to change that to "after when you were supposed to graduate with the option to re-new if you are in school full time in the fall.

Today I made it a bit clearer what will be have to pay for or do without:
1. Free gas and car access
2. Car insurance
3. His MMA classes
4. Cell phone
5. Deodorant, hair cuts, and all other misc. expenses
6. Anything else I can think of

Oh, and rent is $50/week, and I somehow expect that I won't be buying any of his favorite foods.

Of course all this is about pushing him to independence. If doing more for him was helping, we would help. It is obvious to everyone but him that he is scared. He fears failure so much that he sabotages himself. Everything in the future is easy. Everything in his present is easy or stupid and not worth doing. He always has plans, but no action.

So well, we will see how it all goes.

You can't make this stuff up (update 3/9/11)

2011-02-22T09:19:00.002-07:00

A few months ago, Sis sent me an email asking what I thought about Dad's new girlfriend. Having not heard that Dad had a new girlfriend, she followed up by forwarding his email to her about the nice family who owned a convenience store and their lovely 32 year old daughter. (For those who don't remember everything I may or may not have mentioned about my father, he has been living in China for a year and a half.)

Shortly after that, I got an email from my father telling me that he was trying to help this 32-year-old woman, the relationship he with whom assured me was NOT romantic, get a visa to come to the US. He needed to know the date he got divorced from my mother for the application and wanted me to ask her.

There were several emails that bounced around the globe, until I finally sent a rather short one to him telling him that I would not give him Mom's phone number. She didn't have the divorce decree at her house and she wasn't going to go to the safe deposit box for him.

He responded a week later with a long email in which he assured me that "never in [his] darkest hour" would he ask me to give him information about my mother, knowing that it possibly endangered all the progress he has made in rebuilding a relationship with me over the past two decades. He had intended to send that email to my sister. (Hey, don't ask me to make sense of that. I'm just reporting).

I haven't responded to that one yet. I thought about just saying, "Don't worry about it. You email didn't change my opinion of you at all." Except that I don't have any reason to torture the man. So I thought I would just let it be for a while and then email him about something else, demonstrating that our relationship is unchanged.

Then this morning I got an email from Andrew. Last night he was bored. He Googled his relatives just to see what would come up.

My father married the lovely 32-year-old woman 6 months ago. You know, the one he doesn't have a romantic relationship with.

Okay, put the age thing aside. My father got married 6 months ago and didn't tell me.

The thing that makes this hilarious is that if I had made a list of things my father might do while in China, "marry a much younger woman and not tell us" could totally have been on that list. This is definitely in character for him.

So, now I am wondering what and whether to email my father. Recall at his last email he was worried that he had damaged his relationship with me by asking me to give him my mother's phone number.

I'm so tempted to send him an email with a link to the marriage announcement that Andrew found and say nothing but "Um, congratulations?"

Meanwhile, I am trying to find out what her name means. See, my first two step-mothers were both named "Bonnie" (I kid you not). If her name means something like "good" or "pretty" then we could just call her Bonnie the third.

Maybe I could ask Dad in that email I don't know how to write.

Oh, if anyone has any idea about the etiquette on whether and how to congratulate your father on his marriage he apparently didn't want you to know about, please share.

____
Update: My father sent me an email asking me a question about his Kindle. That gave me an opportunity to write him and include a brief congratulations in the context of a longer email. That worked and saved me from the danger of sounding sarcastic.

In his follow-up email he only talked about the Kindle issues, not his marriage or bride or anything. That's okay. Odd, but okay.

Stuff I didn't expect to have to explain

2011-01-31T18:04:00.001-07:00

1. When applying for credit, you cannot list expected revenue from plasma donations as income.

2. Though you can't be arrested for skipping class, the penalties really can add up to failure to graduate.

3. All high schools frown on announcing in English that you plan on stabbing the vice-principal in the eye.

4. Threatening the vice-principal is a unhelpful response to a notice that you have a disciplinary referral for not going to detention for cutting class.

...somehow I expect I will be adding to this post.

Let's play, why don't you add your pearls of wisdom in the comments?

Inquiring minds want to know.

"I'm 18 and you can't tell me what to do"

2011-01-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

Been there yet? Kids turn 18 and suddenly they think they should have all the freedom of adulthood with none of the responsibilities.

We're doing it now with Gary. He is doing appropriate things, like hanging out with a friend whom we like. But he is doing it at inappropriate times, like until 3am on a school night. He did that last night. Today he isn't going to school because "he doesn't feel well." Exhaustion will do that to you.

I told him a while ago that I was only going to excuse him if he was really sick. If just wasn't going because he was exhausted, he would have to deal with it with the school. He asked what the school could do, because he was 18 and all. I thought about it and told him the truth. They can hassle him. Tell him to go to detention and Saturday school. They can give him in school suspension, or out of school suspension. They can expel him, and they can not give him credit for courses.

He wanted to know if they can arrest him.

See, that's the thing about raising kids who have gone through real trauma. There really isn't anything we can do to them that compares with what they have gone through. I said I didn't think so.

I could see him thinking about it. How many days could he cut and how many detentions etc could he refuse to go to before they would do anything he would really mind. All he wants to do is graduate and all he needs to do to do that is PASS English and Economics. He can fail the other two. Of course there is no way he is going to fail one of them, because it is just a TA hour and he can usually just nap then. The fourth class is something that is incredibly easy. He can get the work done in class and still have time to be bored silly. So his grades will be okay.

And now it is a challenge. He's 18 and he shouldn't have to go to school if he doesn't want to. They can't make him. He asked if he couldn't excuse himself and I told him that the school doesn't make that as easy as they used to. I have no idea what they require for him to get permission to do that, but he could find out and let me know.

So this morning, when I learned he wasn't going at all, I went back to the kitchen and made some tea. I remembered when Carl did this and when David did. I wore myself out with being angry and frustrated and trying to make them see reason. I met with the dean of students. I talked with social workers. I am sure I cried.

I realized bow differently I felt about it this time. I am sort of interested to see how this was going to go. Instead of thinking "OH NO! What if he doesn't graduate? What will he do? How can I make him behave differently?" I was thinking "Thank goodness he is doing this whole rebellion thing with the school and not me! I wonder if I should send them a thank-you note?"

And then I giggled.

Baggage is back

2010-11-11T12:30:00.001-07:00

Here's the link http://baggageandbug.wordpress.com/

That's all.

P.S. I know cuz Crayon said so. http://carminecrayon.blogspot.com/2010/11/shes-baaaaack.html

What I wish I knew...

2010-11-10T14:07:00.003-07:00

I got a comment and an email about adopting teenagers and it got me thinking about what the most helpful things I could tell someone, which got me thinking about what I would like to go back and tell myself. I started a list and found myself really wishing it were possible to send a note back to me. I thought I would share it with you, but let's be clear. This is what I would have like to know. You experience may differ.

1. if anyone tells you that if you do X, you will make long-term changes in the child's behavior, stop listening to that person.

2. punishment doesn't work at all and rewards systems only have short-term results. (At least for you, they might work for other people but you suck at behavior mod).

3. human beings do not learn when they are agitated.

4. children/teens change their behavior over time if/when they develop a relationship with you and start trying to be more like you. This means: (a) you will not be successful getting a kid to do something that you or your spouse do not do. As long as you leave your papers and stuff in the living room and Roland leaves dirty dishes everywhere, the kids will do the same; and (b) when you have messed up, lost your temper or whatever, you have provided the perfect situation to model appropriate response to set-backs. You don't expect your kids to be perfect, so model being reasonable with yourself. Calm yourself down, apologize if appropriate, try again.

5. Telling a teen "when you did not come home when I expected last night, I was very worried. I kept imagining bad things happening to you. It's important for you to come home when you say you will and to CALL ME if you can't" actually works BETTER than grounding them for breaking curfew (see #2 above). This does NOT mean this is a technique that will make dramatic changes in their behavior (see #1) just that it is a better strategy.

6. Only try to make and enforce rules that are about keeping everyone safe and sane, not about trying to make them a better person (see #4 above). Keep the list short (e.g "Everyone knows where everyone is'). "Enforce" the rules by following them and reminding teens that behavior is required of everyone in this family. If you do keep the list short and reasonable and follow the rules yourself, you will be surprised at how well the kids accept and try to follow them.

7. Do yourself a favor and let go of academic goals right away. You can be helpful by asking kids what grades they need to meet THEIR goals. If they say, "All I need to do is pass" take a breath and say "Okay, do you need any help from me to do that?"

8. Telling them what the consequences of their actions is most helpful if they don't already know what they are. Reminding them that if they fail they will have to take summer school is not helpful. Making sure they know that they will have to WALK to summer school may actually change their plan for success.

9. The best training you will ever do to learn how to put this in practice you will get in Al-Anon meetings.

May I vent?

2010-11-03T09:35:00.002-06:00

Thanks.

Here's the thing: Gary loves martial arts. He switches gyms/dojos regularly, but he loves doing it. He loves feeling powerful and being able to submit guys. I get that. It makes all kinds of sense.I would prefer he stay with one gym, but I can't even explain to myself why. I mean there are certain advantages, like getting belts, but he doesn't seem to care. I should not that it is not his PLAN to change gyms regularly. It is not part of a plan to master different styles and techniques. He just changes. He has a reason every time, but I don't remember all of them.

Here is the second part: he gets hurt. A lot.

When he first came to me I learned that if Gary said, "that hurts" that translated into "I am in severe pain and I need help right now." Now however he has adapted to having a mommy. Now he says, "I hurt my shoulder. It hurts right here. I think I might have torn or dislocated something. I can't use my arm at all. I literally can't even lift it." Then I take him to the doctor, or more recently tell him to take himself. The doctor gives him some advice that he does not follow and after a couple of days he is using his arm (or other previously injured body part) without significant pain.

I get frustrated on a couple of levels. First, I am a philosopher and I accept pain as a REASON not to do something. If you put you hand in the fire and it hurts that means you should not put your hand in the fire again. I do also understand that there are sometimes reasons why you have to do something you know is painful. Normally if I am beginning to have trouble with my asthma I sit and breathe quietly. I don't keep doing the thing that is bringing on the attack (exercises in the cold, grooming the dog). However, when Gary was panicked while swimming across the lake, I just made myself keep going, knowing I was going to make the asthma worse. Then I made sure he wasn't planning on swimming across the lake again.

So I suppose I take as axiomatic "if something causes you pain, stop doing it unless you really, really have to do it. Then do what you can to avoid being in that situation again." I have assumed that even athlete held it to some degree. Injuries result in poor athletic performance and so an athlete would presumably try to avoid injury while engaging in activities that are still high-risk to injury. It is a perspective that I can imagine some rational person having. I'm have more trouble understanding the motivation for such a perspective when there perfectly wonderful books to read, but not everyone is the same.

But Gary keeps injuring himself. He describes the pain a debilitating. He tells me how serious it is. He goes to the physician of his own free will and then never does what they tell him to. Well, he will go to physical therapy, but he won't rest or continue exercises like he should.Then he does it again.

Okay, so I can accept all that. I don't get it, although if it were your child I would tell you how perfectly normal it was and how you should not get yourself too worked up trying to change it. .I would nod, hold your hand, try to get you to laugh at the insanity of teenagers, and tell you that brain development isn't complete until age 25.

But it is my child and it is making me a little nuts.

He called me early this morning.

"Remember how I said I hurt my knee so bad that I couldn't walk?"
"No."
"Well, I told you."
"I went to bed early. Maybe you just told Roland?"
"No I told you. ANYway my knee hurts really bad. like on a scale of one to ten it is a nine."
"Okay." I just don't have the oh-my-god-how-awful-let-me-take-care-of-you-response anymore.
"So what should I do?"
"What do you think you need to do?"
"Well, do we have a leg brace or crutches or anything?"
"No."
"Well, okay. I don't know how I am going to get around."
"The school nurse might have something. Remember you said you would take the dog to the groomer. If you want to drive by my work I can go with you so I can get the dog, walk it in and stuff like that."
"No, I can do THAT."
"Okay, well, let me know if you need anything."
"Okay, bye."

As you can see, I am a cold-hearted bitch.

He called 10 minutes later. "I think I should go see the doctor."
"Okay."
"How can I get the money for the co-pay?"
"Tell them to bill us, they will."
"Good. My knee cap is like just floating. I think I dislocated my knee and probably tore something and that is like really, really bad."
"Then the doctor may give you a brace to wear for a few weeks."
"I'll take it off! They can't make me wear a brace!"
I'm on the other end, saying nothing, shaking my head, and sort of laughing.
"What?"
"I just don't understand you."
"What do you mean? I HURT MY KNEE."
"I know. and you are going to go to the doctor, not do what he says, and then get injured again."
"So?"
I take a couple of deep breathes. "Honey, if you can't get the dog to the groomers, please call and cancel the appointment."
"Okay. I don't see what's so funny though."
"I love you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help."
"Okay, bye."

True story.

Venting complete (for now).

Thinking about Helen

2010-10-31T09:50:00.000-06:00

I do a lot of Tweeting and less blogging these days. That means that less shows up on the blog (unless you read the tweet box .... lower right hand corner) and the stories can feel, as one person wrote me, like they are missing chapters.

I still feel sad that Helen isn't here, but I do feel really good about what we were able to do for her. On Friday the plan was for her spend the weekend with us and would be taken to her as yet unidentified new home on Monday. I was to intervene and get a commitment that she would stay with us until her plan was worked out. I learned about the B's on Friday and was able to tell her a little bit about them. So she spent the weekend knowing that she could end up living with us or moving to a family that shares her religious tradition and is near her high school.

Tuesday evening she visited with them. They watched the home-town university team win a football game, something that never happens in this house. She met their various animals and painted the toe-nails of the little girls during half-time. Mrs. B had read many of the books she had and they had good conversations. On Wednesday she and her social worker talked and decided she was going to move in with the B's. They moved her immediately.

If she were 10, I would have thought that the transition was far too fast. She is nearly 17 though and she was the one making the decision. I am happy that we were able to give her that ... the security, space and time to have some control over her life. Once she had made up her mind, it was almost certainly easier on everyone for her to go quickly. It was certainly easier for me. Though I see all the advantages for her and support this decision, I still felt (and still do feel) sad about it. I did not want to be a cry baby in front of her, and with the rapid transition I was able to behave the way I wanted.

Yesterday she called to say that she left a large binder here. The binder was still in the back pack I loaned . We had emptied out and packed up the rest of it, so she didn't realize that it was not there until she needed it. I was thrilled to get to see her so soon, so I hopped into the care and drove to her new house. She seemed very happy. I showed her my new Kindle (did I mention that I got the Kindle 3?) and helped her figure out a few things with my Kindle 2 she is currently borrowing. We had a nice, if short, visit.

Next weekend Brian will be playing the bass in "Your a Good Man Charlie Brown." (He was Mitch in "Streetcar Named Desire" last week.) I think I will invite Helen to go to Charlie Brown with us. I still need to talk to her social worker about the possibility of a regular visitation schedule.

I keep thinking that this is as it should be. That I keep thinking that of course means that I am still feeling sad about it, but I really do believe that this is a good placement for her. And it is best for us. I mean, just imagine how impossible next summer would be with two vehicles and six licensed drivers in the house. Not that it is going to be that much easier with five drivers.

Gary want to be a firefighter

2010-10-31T09:29:00.000-06:00

A wilderness firefighter, to be precise. He imagines this as his life-long job. He is very annoyed at people who are willing to be as committed to the idea as he is, because he has finally figured out what he wants to do! Okay, so he has changed his mind several times, but this is it!

To be fair, there are consistent themes in the things that he has been most excited about, and this fits. This one has the advantage of being realistic in terms of preparation. Gary always believes anything he wants to do will be easy. College will be easy. He knows this because Andrew has told him that the most difficult part is just making yourself do the work. Also he has looked at the amount of work I have said I give my students and has been amazed that that is all. Meanwhile, his work in high school is ... uneven. He does very well, demonstrates he is able, and then loses interest. His pattern seems to be that the hard work in the beginning of a term should be rewarded by blowing off at least one assignment later on.

What this has meant to me is his initial career direction needs to be something that does not require extensive education. He needs to be able to start quickly.

Ground crew for summer wild fires seems to fit the bill. There are a couple of short classes he can take which will give him an excellent chance of getting hired this summer. If he finds it is something he wants to keep doing, he can take more classes to get higher levels of certification.

So he came to us with a list of courses he could take this calendar year, and the discount the instructor would give him for paying for all of them at one time. I kept insisting on more information and I finally got it. It turns out that he needs only a couple of the courses to get an entry-level position. Of course, he wants all the certifications to do various tasks. He doesn't want to be a lowly member of the ground crew who can fell trees, or operate special equipment, or whatever. I will have to tell him this morning that Roland and I will only help him pay for the courses he needs for the entry-level.

I am preparing myself to deal with his disappointment and irritation. From his perspective he has finally figured out exactly what he wants to do. If he takes all the courses available he is likely to make much more money. If we only pay for the entry level courses, we are just preventing him from his best chances to get a job and make lots and lots of money this summer. That he keeps changing his mind about what he wants to do is totally irrelevant.

Also irrelevant is the fact that the course we just paid for was for was all day Friday and Saturday. His alarm failed to go off on Saturday and he had to call the instructor to reschedule and now will be forced to miss some high school class time.

Helen's moved to the B's

2010-10-27T18:55:00.005-06:00

Today Helen was picked up from school to go to independent living class. She called from the transporter's cell phone to ask if I had heard from the SW. I said no, but as long as I had her, what would she like for dinner? She said tacos. So I swung by the store to get cilantro and other wonderful taco things, thinking happy thoughts about kids who actually answer that question instead of saying, "I don't know. Whatever you want to cook."

The SW called about 4:00 to say that he would be coming by with her after independent living so he could take her and her things to the B's. He spoke with Roland who was much less emotional than I would have been.

I spent about an hour crying. I was worried that I might not be able to pull it together before she got here. I see all the advantages of her going to the B's. I can and will support that move. That of course doesn't mean that I am not deeply disappointed and capable of being a big ole cry baby about it. (On the whiny, cry-baby note, why is it that I never get to keep the girls? I love my boys, but what the hell universe?)

After crying for a while I remembered that she was halfway through The Hunger Games on my Kindle. I decided that I would loan it to her. Then I decided that if she was taking it to the B's I should remove all the tawdry romance novels. Then I decided that I would go ahead and get the new Kindle I have been coveting for a while and let her keep the Kindle on loan indefinitely. So I sat down at the computer to remove a couple hundred books from the machine (not all of them tawdry). It kept me busy and by the time Helen and the SW showed up I was nearly done. It made saying goodbye easier since I was able to spend those few minutes telling her how to use it rather than how much I was going to miss her.

Now this isn't about me being incredibly generous. In fact, one could argue that it was a totally selfish act, since I am using it as an excuse to buy a new one. It also makes me feel better because I LOANED it to her, and that means she and I are agreeing that I will see her again soon.

And now she is gone, and the house is quiet. I won't have to drive an hour tomorrow to take her to school. She is going where she wants to be, having no doubt that she is loved and welcomed here.

And I am going to cry a little bit more while I eat the tacos she wanted for dinner.

Helen and Gary

2010-10-25T20:02:00.000-06:00

Helen's biggest concern is Gary. She wants to be close to him again, and she is afraid that he doesn't really want her around.

I shared with her honestly, telling her that Gary felt obligated to entertain her (but he seems to have gotten over that), and that when I was explaining the positives of living with the B's (other family) he countered with the benefits of our home. She liked hearing that. We also talked about how normal teenage boys feel about little sisters. I told her that in my experience when a teenage boy says something like, "Yeah, I guess it will be okay" that is equivalent to an enthusiastic yes. Teenage boys don't "do" enthusiastic.

My guess is that Gary thinks living here is the best thing for her, and he is anxious that it will be hard for him. He is afraid that she will expect things from him, just when he is all about becoming his own person and not being responsible for anyone but himself. If he could trust, really believe, that Roland and I would be the parents, that would help.

To a certain extent this is perfectly normal sibling dynamics, which is what I have wanted to stress to Helen. Younger siblings want their cool older brothers to spend time with them. Older brothers want their annoying younger siblings to leave them alone. For various reasons it is exaggerated on both sides. So I will try to talk with Gary. I would like to help them talk to each other about what they think would be the good things and what would be the hard things about living together. I don't know though. I think I will just wait and see if any good moments announce themselves.

Tomorrow afternoon I take her to the B's (the other family). She will get to see their house and go with them to a football game. She is very excited about that. She very well may decide that living with them and spending some weekends with us is the best solution.

Helen's options

2010-10-25T17:38:00.000-06:00

Technically, she just has two on the table: our house and the LDS family near her school. She can visit them if she likes before deciding.

However, her social worker wants her to know that a family from her ward (think congregation) called in to ask if they could get licensed and take her. Also a previous teacher called to get more information so he could talk to his wife about getting licensed and take her. And finally both her lawyer and another person who works at the department said that they never considered getting licensed but they would have for her.

Only two of the options are currently licensed and it is important to get her into the program as fast as possible, so she has to choose between those two. The social worker said that he favors placement with her sibling, but she does get the final choice.

Right now she is driving with him to get the rest of her things. He will answer any other questions she has on their trip.

Talking with Helen about anxiety

2010-10-24T13:14:00.000-06:00

As we were eating breakfast this morning somehow or other Helen and I started talking about anxiety issues. She told me that she needed to get a refill on a prescription that is supposed to help with anxiety, although she says that it doesn't really work well. I commiserated saying that my doctor told me my medicine was "working" when my anxiety attacks turned into nausea.

"I asked him if he had a pill that could make me calm and confident, but he said no. The pills were fairly good at taking things away, but there wasn't a pill to add stuff."

That made sense to her and then she started talking about her anxiety had been inexplicably worse recently. I mentioned that it was a stressful time for her and she replied that she deal with her emotions by thinking things through, not feeling. She is doing that with the moving, so she isn't worrying about it.

I didn't point out the obvious connection. I did say, "You know, I was thinking about being a teenager and being told I was going to move in with a nice family I had never met before, and I nearly had an anxiety attack just imagining it."

"Really?"

"God, yes. New house, new rules, new foods, new people to learn how to get along with, not knowing if I had to share a room... Okay, I need stop now or I will lose it."

She laughed and told me that she had moved around enough her whole life that it did not bother her that much.

Then we talked about the pancakes.

Somtimes I am a bit slow

2010-10-24T12:26:00.000-06:00

Ever get carried away? I did with Helen. Now, those of you who are excited about this don't worry. We are still committed to Helen and we still want her.

But I forgot that she has been rebuilding her relationship with her mother, which is a very good thing.

Helen and Gary's mother left (or was kicked out, it has never been clear to me) when they were very young. Helen was maybe a year old. Helen though has spent more time with her. Gary had visited once, but Helen lived with her for a short while. Recently they have been writing letters and the agency social worker is trying to find a time when they can travel together to visit. (You may know that six months ago no one could find her. Obviously she has been found and her story does not enter here.)

Anyway, I don't know what will happen between Helen and her mom, but I do think adoption talk is inappropriate. Even if being adopted into our family is eventually the right thing to do, thinking about being adopted by one family while reconnected with your mother is not helpful.

So I am glad that I have not mentioned adoption to Helen. Everything I have said is still true: she is a part of our extended family and she will always have a place. I have told her that I want to set up a regular visitation schedule, something like one weekend a month. I'm pretty sure she understands that if things don't work out in the family she is moving to, coming here is plan B.

But adoption is for people who don't have parents.

It is possible that we will end in a place in which becoming a legal part of our family is what she wants. If it is we will do it and we will be very happy about it.

However, my job is to support her while she reconnects and NOT to do anything to undermine the relationship she may have with her mom.

I want to keep Helen

2010-10-23T17:04:00.001-06:00

I told Roland that. He agreed.

When I got her on Friday and found out that I was supposed to drop her off at school so that she could be picked up by a social worker and be taken to some as yet unknown place, I started feeling mighty protective, even possessive. When I told Roland what was going on and he responded "she's family" and started trying to figure out how fix the basement so it would be comfortable for three young men, well, the train had left the station. I found myself thinking things like, "Damn it, she's part of our family, she shouldn't have to go live with some foster family she hasn't even met!"

So I am going to tell her agency worker, who is conveniently the same person who was Gary's worker, that we want her back. I will propose that she spend at least one weekend a month with us through the school year and then transition to us with the goal of being adopted.

I told Roland that it is not unreasonable for me to want one girl.

Of course it isn't just our decision. The social workers have some say in this, but it is her life and she gets to decide. Though I have told her things like, "we are your family and you will always have a place" I haven't said, "We are going to talk to your social worker about adopting you." Partly because I want to support her transition to this home, and because I figure her life is too chaotic right now for her to think objectively about what she wants.

I don't know what the social workers will want to do, but I can't imagine that they wouldn't ultimately agree that it is best if Gary and Helen end up in the same family.

Gary seems to have deeply ambivalent feelings. Before she came over, he was not as positive as everyone else about her new home. I told him that it was in her school district and he responded, "you've heard of CARS, right?" I said, "Remember, they are LDS and it would be really good for Helen to be able to actually live in an LDS family." He looked at me like I was exceptionally stupid, pointed out the kitchen window to the building on the other side of the alley, "That is an LDS stake, RIGHT NEXT to us."* I told him that living next to a stake was not the same thing as getting to practice your religion with your family. He started talking about why he dislikes organized religion, which I figured was his way of moving away from the topic.

Today his girlfriend came over and he didn't even let her know that Helen was here. He did not give me a happy look when I told her and then introduced her to Helen. Gary has a lot of complicated feelings surrounding his sister, and sometimes he needs to protect space.

Now just to be clear, I am not averse to Helen moving in here even immediately. I just know that I don't get to make the decisions.

I guess I'm protecting my heart too.

Roland, as I mentioned, has been brainstorming what to do about the rec room. He measured it and told me that he thought he would build a wall to separate it into a small TV room and a bedroom. I countered that we won't actually need that many bedrooms all the time and we should look at various room dividers so that one or more boys can have a degree of privacy when they are all home. At the moment we have agreed that he will design something study, but removable. I have made it clear that I get to give approval (or not) over plans he makes, but right now I am open to him putting hooks or some other anchoring system in the ceiling.

___
*I have avoided making mention of the number of LDS churches in the area because it is a pretty big geographical hint, but I've decided not to worry about that any more. You will probably guess what part of the country I am in, but you will likely get the state wrong. Oh, though I've said I don't mind you guessing, I won't leave up comments that speculate.

Talking to Roland and the social worker

2010-10-22T16:14:00.003-06:00

I have two pieces of news, and I guess I will give them to you in the order I got them.

First Roland came home. I gave him a chance to settle down and then told him what was going on. His response was immediate and matter-of-fact. The school thing needs to be dealt with, but if she needs to come here, she will. "She's family. We just need to figure out how to stack all the bodies." (Remember a while ago when all he would say was, "we don't have room"?) He went downstairs to figure out if there is a way to curtain off a section of the rec room for Andrew when he comes home.

However, the agency social worker says they have identified a home in or near her school district. The family has been with the private agency for years and they, like Helen, are members of the Latter Day Saints. I had thought the current family was LDS, but they aren't. So, the newly identified family is Plan A and all the social workers are glad that I am willing to keep her so that she can make the transition next week more smoothly. They are out of town this week. It is a little unclear to me whether they have been contacted. It is entirely possible that they were given information about Helen a week ago and said they could take her but only after their week-end trip.

We agreed that we are Plan B.

Update: I just told Helen what I know. She's pretty thrilled. LDS family with the agency near her school is more than she thought was possible. I also told her that we are Plan B. I almost didn't because I don't want her to go into a home without being committed. On the other hand, she is going to want this to work, and I decided it important for her to know she is safe.

And it just keeps getting more complicated

2010-10-22T12:43:00.001-06:00

So, Helen, who was supposed to need a weekend away from her family, is currently between foster homes. I did not know that until I was getting things from the transporting social worker. After doing a little bit of checking I learned that the plan was that I take her to school on Monday and during the day her social worker, who can't work today because it is a mandatory furlough day for him (budget cuts), will find her a new place while she is at school. He will then pick her up after school and drive her to her new home.

I said, "Um, no."

Next week is my break. I will be grading and doing other desk work, but I can make the 30-minute drive (one way) to her school. I told them that I was going to keep her until they knew where she was going.

Of course it couldn't be simple. She is in the process of moving into the same private program that I have worked in. She can't be genuinely actually be admitted into it until she is living in a home licensed by the program. And ... wait for it ... there are no program homes available in her school district. The state social worker's idea is to recruit one. This is fairly standard operating procedure. Once they told me that about half the kids come into the program with their family. Finding a home that fits the kid and getting that family into the program is often a better option than making a kid move to a different town and go to a different school. So, let's assume this works. The SW finds a home in the district; she gets placed with them; and they agree to join the program. That process will take at least 2 months.

She has been in an accelerated program and will graduate early in May. She is one of the kids in foster care who really are college material. She wants to go and the private program has excellent resources. They will get her through college without debt.

But she has to be in the program for one year before she qualifies.

Y'all doing the math?

Oh, and she turns 17 in a couple of months, which is also the deadline to get her in the program.

I told the program social worker that I would consider taking her (Roland knows NOTHING about this yet), but it really would be disastrous for her to have to change schools. They've paid people to transport kids to school before . I did it for a while as you may recall. So that is a possible option.

I just had lunch with her and told her that she was family and she wasn't going to be homeless, and we would not let anything bad happen to her. I also told her that right now the plan was to find her a home in her school district, and we were going to go forward on the assumption that that was going to work. I also told her that she would be staying with me for some or all of next week while they try to find the right home.

I think I am not going to ask Roland to consider taking her. I'm just going to let him get the pieces of the puzzle like I did and let him draw the conclusions.

---
And I would just like to note that I am having a very hard time concentrating on my work because I don't know what is going to happen. Helen however doesn't know where she is going to be living next week and she is cheerful and busily doing her on-line driver's education just down the hall from me.

Helen's coming to visit (UPDATE)

2010-10-22T09:05:00.002-06:00

A social worker will be dropping Helen (Gary's sister) off at my workplace sometime today. Helen is taking an on-line driver's education course and she will work on that while I sit in my office trying to make a dent in the 20 hours of midterm grading I have to do.

When we were called I said I had to ask Roland. He was napping but I woke him. His response was, "Huh? oh, yeah. sure."

I told Gary that Helen was coming. His response was, "But I have plans for this weekend!"

"So. You always have plans. Do what you planned. She's not coming to visit you."

"But I TOLD YOU that I feel obligated to be with her if she's here."

"Sweetie, I mean this in the most loving way possible: get over it."

He pouted, but I ignored it.

Helen is coming over because "she and her foster parents need a little break from each other." That could mean exactly that, or it could mean that the placement is in trouble and they are contemplating a move. I woke up wondering what I would say if Helen asked if she could move in with us.So I asked myself, what would in a situation in which a member of my extended family was living with a member of her family and wanted to move.

If she asks, I'll tell her that she never has to worry about a place to go. We are family and she isn't going to be homeless, ever. I'll also tell her that one of the bad things about foster care is that it tends to teach kids that you solve family problems by changing families. She has been with this family for a year. She is able to go to the high school where her friends and the special program she is doing are.Family isn't easy. Sometimes we all want to run away, but that isn't how it works. She can come visit us for a break or just because whenever she wants, but I expect her to work things out with her current family.

I really think this is best, and that is the plan I am supporting. My job is to help her make it work, not offer her an escape route because she is quarreling with her family.

But if she needs a home? She is a part of our family too. We would do what we need to do.

Although I do want to tell you that when I think of that I don't have the excited feeling that I used to have when I contemplated previous kids. It is more, as Thorn said once, "I don't really feel up to it, but if that's what she needs, we will do it."

UPDATE: Helen is here, doing homework at the work study station. She has piles to do and will probably be busy at it all weekend.

And her placement is over, as in disrupted. She has things with her for the weekend, and her worker is trying to find her a new place now. We have not been officially asked. We may not be because it is understood that it would be better for her to stay in her school district, near her church, etc. There is of course the little issue of her not yet being in the program I am licensed in. (My file is closed, but until May I can be re-licensed by having it opened.) I did however tell the worker who brought her that Andrew's room is empty until Thanksgiving.

I have decided that I am not going to ask Roland if we should offer for her. I will just let him know what the situation is and let him do the math.

I expect that if they can't find a home in her school district, they will ask us.

Another reason I like my husband

2010-10-10T09:50:00.002-06:00

The thing about Roland that bothers me the most is his tendency to only remember whatever was immediately necessary for him. This means that I can be talking about something for any length of time, but if the information doesn't change his life or require a decision from him, he just doesn't remember.

Take for instance the issue of my hair. About 15 years ago my sister pointed out to me that my hair was thinning. She is also the person who noticed my first grey hair when I was 18, but that really isn't relevant. In any case, once I noticed, I was bothered. I went to the dermatologist who gave me a couple of options. After eliminating a couple of them it came down to two: hormones or spironolactone, a diuretic that also somehow interferes with testosterone. It is taken by women with female-pattern baldness and male to female transsexuals. I chose it, and the results were not fantastic, but it was good enough.

Now, I am pretty sure that during this time I said things to Roland like, "this diuretic won't work as well, but if I never took hormones for birth control, it seems silly to take them for hair." I am sure that I did, because over the years I have debated whether I should use them. Last year when I went on hormone treatment for 3 months I was very interested in whether it would make difference to my hair. (It didn't, but the dosage was very low).

Anyway, now I am older and my natural estrogen levels are falling. I don't think I have hot flashes. (This is not simple because I have always been the sort of person who tended to sweat a lot when she gets hot. Now it is easy to attribute them to The Change.) I don't mood swings or anything like that. I am however, losing hair again. It's been getting worse for a while, and well, it is just got to be unacceptable. So I have been debating whether to take hormones. I float the idea past people who I know would normally be cautious or even opposed to hormone treatment. They glance at my head, look uncomfortable, and say something that sounds like, "This is your HAIR. Bald women look ridiculous. Of course you should take hormones!" Of course the words they say are more like, "I learned a long time ago to never say never" but that isn't what I hear.

Of course, since I was fishing for an opinion, I can't be upset about it.

I guess I feel like if enough people tell me that taking hormones for what will certainly be for as long as I want to have hair (15 years?) doesn't mean that I am a vain woman willing to take unreasonable risks with my health, then I won't feel bad about doing it. There is however one other option: head coverings. I ran it by Roland 15 years ago and he vetoed it promptly. No, he did not think that it would be a good idea to wear scarves, bandannas, and hats all the time. Modern medicine existed for a reason. Take the pills.

I have been talking about going back to the dermatologist, and about whether I would take the hormones, for some time. Yesterday I went to Roland and said I wanted his opinion: hormones or scarves?

"Scars?"

"No. Scarvvves. For my head. I could cover my hair instead of taking hormones."

"HORMONES? What, you mean like testosterone? What would that do to you?"

"No, I mean like estrogen. It should make my hair grow. Since you have to look at me, I just thought I would ask you. Which do you prefer: hormones or scarves?"

Of course he denied that he had ever heard me even mention that I might take hormones. Of course I did not argue with him about that. After 25 years there are some arguments you can just not bother to have. He said he didn't know, would I have side-effects? I said I didn't know yet. He said that I should probably talk to the dermatologist before deciding. He assured me he would love me either way, which I told him I had already assumed.

Later he found me and asked if there weren't serious risks in hormone therapy. He knows he heard about that. I told him that the risk for individual women was really very low, but that it was a big issue a while back because so many women were on them and they weren't getting any benefit. He said okay.

He found me again later and looked agitated. He said, "If there is any risk at all, I mean ANY, if the hormones would make you uncomfortable, or even if they would make your breasts tender, it is not worth it. You can buy wigs, or lots of pretty scarves, whatever you want, just don't risk your health for hair."

And I realized that was the answer I wanted from him.

This is a fine mess

2010-10-09T15:55:00.003-06:00

So, Gary had planned to change both his first and last name. Because of a lack of communication and the last minute scheduling only his first name was changed at the time of the adoption. Because I could show that I had emailed the lawyer about the change, he is trying to fix it without our having to go through the standard name change process. (He didn't get my email because he changed his email address, and did not inform me. He also didn't set up the old to send notification to him or people who emailed him. He didn't even just turn the blasted thing off so I would get a bounce-back message). Anyway, we are in the in between place where Gary has his new first name but his old last name.

We are hoping that in a matter of weeks both of Gary's names will be change.

But here is the complicated bit (yeah, the stuff above was simple). The adoption order does not have Gary's original name on it. It does for the older boys because they were adults. Gary however was 8 days shy of his 18th birthday. This means he was officially adopted as a minor and only his new name is used in the document. After all, the state has a vested interest in keeping adoptees' histories in the dark.

In short we don't have any way to demonstrate that he is the same person.

This would not all that significant if he were, say two. If he were two he wouldn't have got a driver's permit in his previous name. He passed his driver's test this week and he went to the DMV to get his license. They pointed out that the adoption order in no way indicated that he was the person who had been adopted. They have him a driver's license in his previous name.

Which would be a little less complicated if he hadn't got a part time job and started receiving pay checks in his current name. And of course soon we hope he will have a third name.

I'm going to try to talk to the lawyer on Monday, and see what we can do.

Shared with Permission

2010-09-16T12:37:00.005-06:00

Andrew, Gary, Evan, Brian, Carl, David

I may take this down later, but the boys said I could share it with you.

Still too wore out to write an actual post, but I will.

I'm calm, really

2010-09-14T16:17:00.002-06:00

Because the tweets of my day will not last forever, here is the summary.

For a couple hours this morning my life was over-taken with calls from the social worker, and text messages to and from David and Evan. It would have been a little simpler if all this had happened when I was not in class. Fortunately my students were very indulgent. I told them what was going on. It all, amazingly came together.

Carl will be getting in to the airport here this evening. David will pick him up and spend they both will spend the night. Evan is coming in the morning.

I emailed my classes tomorrow to tell them class was cancelled.

Andrew and I went to Costco and bought lots of food.

The dog groomer called to remind me of an appointment tomorrow, I rescheduled.

My new glasses came in, so I ran by the optometrist.

Gary was upset because Brian was supposed to take a form to school so that he (Gary) could go to a dance this weekend. When I told him that Brian wasn't going to school he said, "All day? Isn't the adoption just in the morning?" Roland managed to scan the document and email it to the girlfriend so she can turn it in. Fortunately THAT crisis was averted.

It is so strange. For months we have been just waiting, wondering. We went rather suddenly from "some time in the future" to TOMORROW!

***

The state social worker just called. Helen, Gary's sister, is going to be there too. I'm very pleased. I was planning on inviting her, but wasn't sure it would work out with such little notice.

TOMORROW, maybe, probably, DEFINITELY

2010-09-14T11:14:00.003-06:00

Update:

We are on! Still waiting for find out what plane Carl will be on, but we're doing this.

We can do the adoption tomorrow first thing (I think a judge agreed to start his/her day half an hour early) if I can just get Carl here.

I've leaving him messages like crazy, sent him an email.

If I can't, we might just go ahead and do the three boys who are here and do Carl when we can.

Or not. We are all hoping we don't have to make the decision yet.

Just so you know...

2010-09-14T06:14:00.003-06:00

I got a call last night from the number two person at the agency yesterday. She had been talking with the lawyer about everything. She agreed that it was terrible that the state has had all this time and now the boys are beginning to move away and will have to be flown back. So, this morning the lawyer is going to call the judge's clerk and see if we can maybe, pretty please, have a date THIS WEEK.

That would mean calling Carl and asking him if he can get a ride to the airport FAST. It would mean that Evan, David, Roland and I would not be able to give our workplaces any real notice that we were taking the day off. It might even mean that some of them would only be able to take part of the day off. But it would happen while most of the boys are in town.

Next week is impossible because all the judges are going to judges' retreat or something. The week after that is possible from our end, and at least we would only have to fly in one more boy.

The chances that the lawyer can pull this off is less than 50%, but it might happen.

Oh, and on the other side, the home study and every are all done, but the person who has to sign giving the final approval hasn't done it. So the department hasn't sent the documents over, so the lawyer will basically be asking the judge to approve the adoption of an almost-18-year-old without all the paper work being filed. If they can pull it out of the hat, we will do it. On the other hand, it would in some ways be better if it happened in a few weeks. Everyone could ask for the time off.

In any case, I promised the social worker that I would carry my cell phone with me to class and excuse myself to answer it if she calls.

I just wanted you to know so you could bite your fingernails along with me.

The news will go out as a Tweet first.

Waiting and Waiting...

2010-09-10T09:47:00.003-06:00

I am getting so very, very frustrated as we wait for a court date.

Andrew goes back to college in 9 days, and David moves across the country in 3 weeks. We need to arrange transportation for Carl in any case. Evan, Roland and I all need to make arrangements to miss work.

Today I wrote the the social worker and asked if I would at least have 2 weeks warning before the date. I begin to worry that they will say, "Heh! We can do it tomorrow!" Given that 3 tickets will need to be bought, that won't work. It would be one thing if everyone lived here or if it was possible to adopt adults without them being present. Of course I WANT everyone to be there, but not being there just isn't an option. (Well, except for Andrew, and I am insisting that he be there).

Anyway, this morning the agency worker said she would talk to the agency director and see if he can get shake some trees for us.

The stress around here is getting thicker and thicker...

Turning in the license

2010-09-05T13:47:00.002-06:00

I found out the other day that even if we are not licensed Helen, Gary's sister, could still visit because she would be visiting a relative. Since the main reason we were thinking about keeping it was so that we could develop a relationship with her, I am once again thinking about turning it in.

First though, Helen. Helen is in a good family near the high school that has a special program she is in and, of course, her friends. Moving her here would be disruptive in many ways. I still want her to get to know us because I don't know what our relationship is, but being my son's sister seems pretty important. In some way or another we will be extended family (at least) and I need her to feel comfortable coming here.

So as long as I thought we needed to have a license for that to be possible, I thought we needed to keep it.

But now we don't, so I am thinking about not keeping it.

The possibility of being really done with this part of our lives makes me feel anxious, happy, sad, worried. Of course, everything makes me feel worried. I'm a worrier.

On one hand a part of me really feels finished. Not finished in the sense of finished being a parent, but in knowing the family is finished. Like having the last baby and knowing it is the last. There are years of parenting ahead of you, but there will be no more new ones. That excitement and joy that comes with a new member of the family is over.

It feels like the right decision.

And yet taking the step, making it final, is frightening. What if I change my mind? What if there is a kid out there who really needs us?

Although thinking about finding out that there is another kid out there who really needs us bring with it a sense of exhaustion more than excitement. Still, I know that would change if there were such a kid. I would meet him or her and be so very glad that I still had the license, that I could still make the space.

Of course, we don't really have the space for at least another year, and if there was a kid that they really, really could not find another good home for, they might call us anyway.

At lunch yesterday Gary's social worker (the agency one) said something about feeling so bad for the GLBT kids who have to live with families who don't support them. It made me imagine that there are specific kids she knows about who need homes, kids that are safe, because of course most homes now are tolerant, but not kids who are celebrated and nurtured. And I felt guilty that we were walking away from those kids. I'm not too tired or too old or too busy.

I just feel like my family is complete. Six is enough.

Waiting

2010-09-05T13:38:00.004-06:00

Okay, so when the state worker was here last she said that the there were two likely court dates. Those dates are now two and three weeks away. She said that some time ago, and hasn't been able to get more information since. I am feeling very frustrated.

If it is the first date, then we have to fly Carl out, as we planned to from the beginning, except we can no longer get a really cheap ticket.

If it is the second date, Andrew will miss the first few days fall quarter. (And we all do remember that this is Gary's birthday, right? The day he turns 18 and all the things we did for the juvenile adoption become unnecessary.)

If it is one week later than that, we will have to buy Andrew and Carl plane tickets.

If it is later than THAT there is an excellent chance we will also need to buy a ticket for David who is planning on moving far, far away with his boyfriend.

There are also trivial things like the fact that I am writing my syllabus and I would like to know now what days I will be cancelling class.

In other fun news, Gary, who is learning to drive, backed up into someone's yard when he thought he was in drive and was actually in reverse. He then of course had to drive back off.

We don't know if the right front axle was bent on the way up or the way down.

Ethics of Adult Adoption

2010-08-23T10:20:00.002-06:00

When the adoptions social worker came by for us to sign the paper work, we ended up talking briefly about adult adoptions. I told her that everyone I met either thought it was wonderful or were completely confused as to why anyone would do it. Now she was getting ready to go, so I didn't push it, but she said that some people were really opposed to adult adoptions. She had a look on her face that suggested those people would be opposed to the adoption we are doing.

I didn't ask her to explain why, and I am embarrassed that I cannot come up with the argument. I understand and support arguments that against private adoption and social services (all of them) that don't support families in difficulties. I understand the argument child adoptions should be (mostly) abandoned in favor of guardianship arrangements.

I am having trouble coming up with a specific argument against adult adoption, that isn't based on an argument against child adoption. Well, at least one that applies in this case. Adult adoption has sometimes been used to create a legal relationship between adults who do not have a child/parent relationship. I suppose the most obvious case is when one member of a same-sex couple adopts the other. My state however requires that you demonstrate a previously existing parent/child relationship. The first example of the kind of evidence they are looking for is that the adoptee was your foster child for at least one year.

So, can anyone help me out here?

I would really like a citation to a carefully made argument, although just having someone clarifying the issues would be great.

I'm supposed to be good at understanding ethical issues. There is something I am missing here though, and I hate that.

We almost have a court date

2010-08-21T12:39:00.005-06:00

Yesterday the social worker came out and we signed the last of the pre-adoption paper work. The worker says that she has been talking to the lawyer and they have tentatively agreed a mid-September court date. However, if there is a glitch, it could be one week later, on Gary's 18th birthday. The irony escapes no one. We are finishing up all the work for a juvenile adoption just in time not to need to do any of that work.

Everyone is excited. I texted or emailed all the boys and they all responded promptly with enthusiasm. David is concerned about the two dates. He and his boyfriend are moving and the earlier date works much, much better for him. Carl and Evan just want to know so they can make arrangements with work and such. Since I will have to buy Carl a ticket (plane or bus) to get here, I would like a firm date with some advance notice. Andrew is supposed to start school the day before Gary's birthday, so the second date means being late for fall quarter. I briefly considered doing it without him, which we could legally do, but I've decided that it simply is not an option. If he has to be late for school, then he will be.

Of course we also have to figure out how we are getting Andrew back to school. Since he is moving out of a traditional dorm room and into a studio room (still in a dorm) he needs new stuff, like cooking pans. We either need to buy things here and drive him (10+ hours each way) or buy maybe fly with him taking extra luggage and renting a car there so we can shop.

Let's all take a moment to reflect that the reason the adoption is at least 6 weeks later than it would be is that Andrew forget to get his fingerprints done when he was originally scheduled and had to do it later. Of course, the only reason that he needed to do it was that he was supposed to be LIVING HERE at the time of the adoption and Gary was supposed to be under 18.

Sigh.

Anyway, various boys want me to reassure them that it will be the 16th, but I am powerless.

Happy though.

---

Okay, my being with my mother for 5 weeks made a difference too.

Update from Mom's

2010-08-03T11:26:00.001-06:00

Cross-posted from Yondalla's Ramblings.

Well, I’m still here and doing fine. Information about Mom is below, but since this blog is All About Me, I will start with my time.

Mom’s BFF has taken me out shopping a couple of times. She enjoys shopping and Mom doesn’t, so that is good. We went to a wonderful tea shop in a tiny town about 12 miles from here. I bought some good black teas. One is a simple black tea; another is chocolate and the third is chocolate mint! I bought very small amounts of the chocolate teas. I wasn’t sure they would be good, but they really are. I don’t normally put sugar in my tea, but these taste better with it.

It surprises me that there is a good tea shop in this tiny mountain town and none within 25 miles of my house. I’m jealous. Oh, and the grocery store, the very tiny grocery store where no one has even heard of chutney, has decent bagels! They are bagel-bakery quality, but they are the best grocery store bagels I’ve had. I told the check-out woman that I was pleased they had “real bagels.” I had to explain that I had expected BSB’s (bagel-shaped bread).

Anyway, back to the tea shop. They had quite a bit of tea ware. I got excited and said, “Ooo! Tea toys.” The proprietor said he had never heard them called that. Anyway, Mom’s BFF convinced me that Mom really would want to buy me a thank-you present and so I picked out a new tea pot. I was thinking about leaving it here to use whenever I am here, but I like it too much. Moms said to take it home, “and who knows, maybe there will be another when you come next summer.”

So, I have decent bagels, really good tea, and my Kindle. Too bad the internet is 7 miles away.

I’ve been successfully convincing myself that I don’t need the new Kindle. I really don’t. I got one for Mom, which she really likes. With the Parkinson’s causing her dominate hand to tremor constantly, holding a book is difficult. The Kindle just sits on her lap, sometimes on a pillow. She can make the type big enough so that she can read it even though her eyes don’t work together as well as they should (Parkinson’s again), and she can push the buttons with her non-dominant hand. So she reads.

If the new Kindle had come out just a month earlier, I would have got it for me and given Mom my old one. It is a little bit smaller and lighter. The batter lasts even longer. The page turning is faster and the screen background is lighter. All of that I would appreciate. I pouted until I realized that I really could return Mom’s, give her mine, and be Kindle-less for about a month. That prospect was too awful.

I’ve been doing the dishes by hand even though Mom keeps telling me I can use the dishwasher. I finally figured out why I don’t want to. When we go on vacation we don’t have one. I do dishes by hand, but it is okay because I have lots of time and it can be a peaceful activity. At home there are always a million things I should be doing, but I stop every single time I walk through the kitchen to put in dirty dishes left on the counter, start a full dish washer (because whoever put in the last dish or realized there wasn’t room for another didn’t), or unload the blasted thing before dishes pile up to much. It is never convenient, and it always has to be done. Here Mom and I have lunch and I say, “I think I will walk up to the park and do the dishes when I get back.”

Peaceful.

I think the last time I wrote Mom was still in the hospital. She has been home now since Friday, and is doing well. Her blood pressure is about 105 over 60, which is low but sounds like the blood pressure of a real person. (In ICU it was as slow as 88/29.) Her appetite is back. She gets HUNGRY for meals instead of regarding them as a chore she must face. She is more active, but still tires easily. We have a home health nurse coming twice a week and she will be evaluated by physical therapy to see if she needs any on-going assistance.

The ulcer acting up when it did was probably a good thing. She’s probably had it for a long time and it just didn’t get diagnosed because the symptoms were under the radar. In any case, she is doing well enough that I am feeling comfortable with leaving next week. I will have been away from the family for more than 5 weeks.

And when I get back, there will be kittens!

Brian is volunteering at the humane society. One of the rules they have is that volunteers cannot adopt an animal for 30 days; this rule however does not apply to fostering kittens. Brian called to make sure it was okay with me and when I said yes, he and Roland went right out and brought home a mother and five kittens. They have to be kept in one room for 10 days and then can be allowed to mingle with the other pets until they go back to the shelter on the 26^th. Gary first said he would put them in his room but then he claimed that the smell was too much. So now they are in Brian’s. Roland got Gary a plug-in air freshener and now the whole house, I am told, smells like apple cinnamon. The Basement Kitteh (who really does live on the basement level and is black) is angry because he used to sleep in Brian’s room and now he can’t get in AND he can hear and smell the invaders. I am told the kittens are adorable and the mother is affectionate. Brian isn’t asking about adopting anyone. Even if he wanted to, the animals HAVE to be checked back in. None of them can be adopted unless they have been altered.

So that’s the news from central Penn.

Later y’all.

Delays

2010-07-27T08:48:00.003-06:00

Well, my mom gave us all a scare this weekend. She fainted. I took her to the ER where they said she was severely anemic. Her blood pressure was also about 90 over 45. So she was admitted, scoped, and diagnosed with two ulcers.

I had Roland call United Airlines and ask how much it would cost to reschedule my trip. He gave them the full story and they did not charge anything. I am now coming back on the 11th.

That means 5 1/2 weeks away from the family. Roland misses me. I asked if the kids do, and he said, "Well... they keep really busy." That is fine. I am glad that are self-reliant. I am sure they would miss me more if Andrew weren't there cooking for everyone.

I don't know whether this will delay the adoption. The home study is finally complete. It took a while for Health and Welfare to get Andrew's back ground check to the social worker who was writing the thing. Now though it is done and all the other paper work is being done. The lawyer originally told us that we should be able to get a court about 6 weeks after everything was done.

Gary's birthday is less than 9 weeks away. At that point, we won't need a home study anymore.

Insurance?

2010-07-22T09:46:00.002-06:00

Those of you who have adopted, do you know if I put Gary on my insurance, does that mean he loses eligibility for the state insurance?

If anyone has any ideas here, it would be welcome. Thanks.

Gary's last name -- call for help

2010-07-02T08:22:00.003-06:00

Gary is still debating what he wants to do about his last name. He is thinking about taking our last name, but still isn't quite ready for that. We had previously explored the idea of finding a name that honored his American Indian heritage. He doesn't know anything about it. All his mother told him is that his genetic father was Blackfoot. Of course that is a nation with more than one tribe and more than one language.

Last night I shared an idea with him. Our family name is means "night watchman." It is a occupation name. In the distant past, my husband's ancestors spent their nights walking the town ready to wake everyone up if there was a fire, or whatever. Anyway, I ask Gary what he thought about trying to find a Blackfoot word that meant something like "night watchman." It doesn't have to be that exactly. A word meaning "sentry" or "guard" would be fine. He liked it.

The problem though is obvious. Though we have found internet sites with lists of words, none of them are what we are looking for. And we would very much prefer to talk to someone who has some expert knowledge of the language.

So, anyone out there have any resources? How do we find someone who actually knows something about one or more Blackfoot languages who can help us?

My birthday party!

2010-07-02T08:00:00.002-06:00

Last night Evan and David came over for the official dinner celebrating my birthday. It was, as always, a delightful time. Of course it would be lovely if Carl could have been there too. One of the best things about the adoption is that we will be bringing him in and I will get to hang with all of them at one time.

Last night there were several moments when the conversation was typical wacky for us and I thought, "Oh, I should remember that exchange and blog it." This morning of course it is all gone. I remember no specifics. Oh, well, I do remember the conversation about people getting old which included debate about whether my memory was being affected. I admitted to loss of hearing and grey hairs, but insisted my memory was this bad when I was 20.

Evan gave me a flowering plant that is grows in arid places. It isn't quite a cactus, but it doesn't need much water. The woman at the florist assured him that, other than cacti, it was the least killable plant she sells.

Of course that lead to debate over whether I killed three or four batches of sea monkeys. (Three. Word to the wise, they don't leave them in the window in the sun, next to the stove, or aerate them with an old medicine dropper. Especially the last one. It's really bad when you have to tell your kid that though you kept your promise and didn't move his sea monkeys, you did accidentally poison them.)

I guess I do remember a chunk of it. I love having them all together.

Saying "No" to Helen

2010-07-01T16:28:00.004-06:00

We were officially asked if we want to be considered as a placement for Gary's sister, Helen. I talked with everyone in the family. They boys are willing to share a room if Helen really needs us. Roland however is emphatic that the house is full. When I tell him that Brian and Gary say they will share he responds by saying, "We are out of room."

He says that very slowly and emphatically. You know, like he thinks I didn't pay attention the last dozen times he said it. I've tried reasoning with him, explaining that we can make more room. He detailed argument in response is:

"We. Are. Out. Of. Room."

Those of you who have been around a while know that Roland is rather single-minded but not inflexible. He is an emotional/relationship based thinker, and while I will spend all my time in the grey area contemplating options, Roland is where he is until he is somewhere else. So though right now he won't even discuss the possibility of Helen coming here, when he perceives her as having lots of options, he would flip to the other side if he ever thought she really needed us.

What we are telling everyone is that we want to make Helen part of our extended family. We would like for her to be here for extended visits. One reason is of course so that she and Gary have some normal sibling time (you know, living in the same house and not necessarily doing the same thing). The more important reason, for me, is that she get comfortable with us as a family.

We are adopting her brother. I don't know how to categorize or label that relationship, but I do feel like she will be part of the family too. Permanently. I want her to know that.

And I know that some of you are wondering if we might adopt her too. The answer is that I am very open to that possibility, if it turns out to be what is best for her. I can easily imagine a future in which we do an adult adoption. Whether that is the future remains to be seen.

Oh, and though I don't know how I would react to needs from the other boys' siblings, I don't intend to try to foster the same sort of relationship with them. Most of them have permanent families of their own, in many cases that family is their first (biological) one.

The End (of the Blog) in Sight

2010-07-01T15:37:00.002-06:00

Yep, this blog is going to end.

Sort of.

I am planning a concluding post that I will put up after the adoption, which I am hoping happens in August. If I find I still have things to say after foster care or adoption, I will post them here.

For those of you who for whatever mysterious reasons are interested in the rest of my life, I'm blogging here: Yondalla's Ramblings.

Attachment and Time

2010-06-27T09:16:00.006-06:00

I went to a workshop on parenting adopted kids on Friday. It was very good. Of course I think that largely because the psychologist was teaching what I had already come to believe. You know: behavior mod sucks; kids learn and grow through attachment; any parenting that attempts to coerce attachment will, at best, produce a submissive child; genuine attachment depends upon empathy.

It made me think about how much I have changed as a parent, and it made me think a lot about David. Have you read his Story? It starts here. Those of you who have read it knows that his time living with us ends with us moving him out. It was after his 18th birthday and we finally packed up his belongings and took them to the social worker's office so he could take them to wherever he was living. It seemed to us at the time, and still does, that David was planning on pushing us until we kicked him out. My own reflections on how his placement ended are here.

Of all my kids (excepting Ann who was never a permanent placement), David had the most attachment issues. He wasn't RAD, but he also didn't attach. He was forever the four-year-old boy who divided the world into "good people who give me what I need want" and "bad people who don't" and finally, "people who might give me what I need/want when the people I'm with throw me away." His attention was forever on the third category. Even while he lived with us I knew he needed a light hand. He had been in a pre-adoption placement and it had failed. He didn't want to be adopted. He didn't want to trust.

Though I think, or like to think, that I would have handled things differently if I were parenting him now, I don't think the end would have been significantly different. He had expected to leave us at 18. He wanted to leave. He wanted to be "independent" even though that meant, for a couple of years, that he was just finding new people take care of him.

The best thing we did was not to give up on having a relationship with him. We did very little in the way of commenting on how he was living his life. We certainly had no expectations that we would influence any of his choices. I just didn't want to lose him completely. He had a piece of my heart and I knew that I would miss him forever if I didn't stay in touch. So we reached out every now and then. We dropped by once we knew where he lived. We invited him home for the holidays. We hugged him and let him see how happy we were to see him when we did run into him. I don't want to make us sound heroic here. We went months without contacting him. I licked my wounds and cried and wondered why he rejected me. Every now and then though, I would force myself to reach out again. The first two years were the hardest.

And now?

Well, now he has been in the same loving relationship for almost two years. Now he wants to be adopted and he wants our last name. Now he doesn't just accept what he needs/wants from people. Now he enters into relationships. He lets himself be cared about and he cares for others.

I suspect he will always be a person who protects his heart. He may still sabotage relationships. But also know he is getting stronger and we are part of that journey.

And it isn't over. Parenting never stops.

Proceding slowly

2010-06-24T06:56:00.003-06:00

Andrew got back from college a bit over a week ago. He had his finger printing done last Friday. Soon H&W should have the report. They will then send it to the private adoption agency to whom they farmed out the home study. THEN we should be ready to ask for a court date.

In the meantime, my mother who is 72, is having surgery. I've decided not to talk about her specific health issues on the Internet. Her surgery is scheduled for July 2. I am flying back to her house on July 4 (which turns out to be a relatively inexpensive day to fly in the US, unlike the days just before and after). I will return July 28. I'll be able to visit her while she is still in the hospital and talk to the medical people about what sort of home care she will need. I do appreciate that she decided to have this health crisis in the summer when I could give her three weeks or so.

Did I ever mention that my mother does not have Internet? She doesn't own a computer or a cell phone. She does live a few blocks from the library. It is a very small town, but presumably I can check in there every few days. I rather doubt there is anything like a coffee shop with internet access in town.

It is a very small town.

In other news, we are all well. The boys are not looking as hard as I think they should for jobs, but they are staying reasonably busy. Gary is taking two on-line courses and reports that he is getting the work done. He is taking Government 1 & 2. It sounds to me like so far "getting the work done" means BS'ing on the discussion board without actually reading the material assigned. Still, I've gotten good at the whole boundaries thing. I certainly can't make him work any harder or better. He has the skills. He gets to make the decisions. At least this on-line school has an actual teacher and weekly due dates.

We are not going to my father's cottages this year, to everyone's relief. I had decided that before I knew about Mom. With Gary's class we wouldn't be able to go for very long anyway. Dad could only get there during August, which is a miserable time to go. My biggest hesitancy about it was that I was concerned for my sister. Would she be able to handle things if I wasn't there? Finally it occurred to me that I could have boundaries with my sister too. She's in her mid-forties. If she has never rented a car before she is capable of figuring it out now. She decided not to go either. Dad seems relieved too. He likes people to be there for a couple of weeks. Flying back from China for a long weekend wasn't that appealing for him either.

So now I am mother-henning my husband and kids. I may take a page from my mother-in-law's "How to be a Obsessive Compulsive Mother" book. I am getting each of the three boys to give me a list of 3 or 4 things they are willing and able to cook. If I was actually my mother-in-law I would put together a binder with complete list, along with recipes and shopping lists. The boys each cook once a week anyway. I just want to make sure they are organized. Of course after making sure they have all the information to make themselves a variety of healthy meals, they will probably live off frozen burritos, pasta, pizza, and burgers for 3 weeks. I know that.

So life is quiet. I'll try to blog a few times before I leave, but I doubt that I will be on-line while I am gone.

Be well.

So close....

2010-06-08T14:48:00.002-06:00

The social worker who is writing the adoption home study emailed me the first copy this morning. I emailed it back with a few corrections (like the spelling of Gary's last name and where Roland and I met) and filled in some of the blanks she had left (like when Gary moved in).

She still hadn't got the medical reports so I called the physician's office. My doctor is out of town this week, so they weren't sure they would find them, but they did and they said they would fax them right away.

That means we are really and truly almost done.

I think.

Unless there is some process that health and welfare has to go through to accept the home study.

We may actually be asking for a court date soon!

Woo Hoo!

Serendipity? Not quite

2010-06-07T11:06:00.002-06:00

Serendipity, you may know, is that phenomenon where you find one thing while looking for something else. It is supposed to be a good thing.

You know, sort of like looking for medical receipts and

finding on June 7

a packet that was mailed March 17

saying that our foster care license will expire June 14

unless we complete and return enclosed materials by May 1.

Yeah, sort of like that, but not QUITE like that.

Roland, who admits he was the one who opened the packet, called the licensing worker who will visit us on Friday, June 11. She will do an extension or something. I really think all we want to do is get the license extended until the adoption.

Though on one hand I want to say this is Roland's fault, the truth is that if I had really wanted to renew our license, I would have called a couple of months ago to find out what was going on. I had been thinking that the new licensing worker was really falling down on the job. I mean, I KNEW we should have received something by April at least. I kept thinking I might call and find out what what going on.

Oh, I also found receipts for clothes and such that I could have sent in for reimbursement but now they are more than 3 months old and not eligible.

I think I'm done.

Adoption Update

2010-05-22T08:43:00.002-06:00

The adoption worker called on Monday to tell me that it had been decided that they could use our foster care home study for the adoption. I was of course very excited...right up until she said, "They decided that if you've been licensed with us once, that is enough."

Then I had to explain to her that we had never been licensed with the state, but only by the private agency. So yesterday the social worker who works with a local adoption agency called and she is coming out Wednesday for the first appointment for the home study.

I did check out the agency page though. It looks like facilitate a lot of foster-care adoptions. They have a program for international adoption that actually requires people to take classes on childhood trauma, unlike the OTHER local agency that doesn't. Of course, it is the one everyone uses. They have a page about domestic infant adoption, but it is almost blank and they are not accepting applications from prospective adoptive parents. I am choosing to believe that it is because they apparently have ethical standards that make it difficult for them to compete with the other agency.

I have no idea how long it will take her to write the home study. Given that we are not needing it to be matched with kids already in the system, I am hoping she will be willing to do it quickly. She doesn't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what sort of kid we can parent. Gary is doing well here and we just need the study done so we can adopt him.

Roland feels it too

2010-05-18T15:10:00.002-06:00

I'm not the only one who is feeling like a parent.

Last night Roland came into the bedroom and said to me, "Have you heard our son's new career plan?"

"You mean how he isn't going to be an emergency room nurse but instead is going to study music and be famous at something?"

"Yeah."

And we grinned at each other.

Being his mom ...

2010-05-18T12:42:00.005-06:00

Kids can have more than one mom and one dad, more than one family. And one of Gary's moms is me.

****

About a week ago Gary was talking to me his MMA classes and how much one instructor means to him. He, the instructor, also worked at the group home. He has been part of Gary's life for longer than I have. Gary said that he almost seemed like his father. Then he was a bit uncomfortable and said, "You know that I really like you guys, and I am glad about the adoption and all. I just don't feel that way about you."

I nodded and said I understood, but part of me wanted to say, "This is what my being your mother feels like." I didn't though. Gary needs to classify us as "the people who are adopting him but aren't really his parents," and that is okay with me. I think about David's journey, about how he only seemed to able to let himself get emotionally close after he moved out. I think about how the adoption is resulting in both David and Evan calling and dropping by more often. I think about the various ways that I have felt about my mother over the years and well...

...I feel like he has accepted me as his real mother.

I feel affirmed as his mother every time he interrupts my reading to talk about school, or what career path he is considering this week, or what he wants to do this summer. He no longer asks me if I have time to talk to him, he just says something like, "Yondalla, I think this summer I want to..." He knows I will put down my book and give him my attention. He re-tells me the same thing, goes over the same ground, and I remember doing the same thing to my mother and how she always just sat down and listened. She often didn't say much, but she would listen until I ran out of air, no matter how many times I wanted to talk about the same thing. So I sit there, and listen, and smile at how confident he has become. He knows I'm interested. I'm his mom.

I feel affirmed as his mother every time he asks me, without advance planning, if I will take him to or from his girlfriend's house. As it is almost 25 minutes each way, this is no small task. If I complain about the distance he says, "Well, if I had a driver's license you wouldn't have to be driving me around all the time."

I feel affirmed as his mother when he almost rolls his eyes and says, "I KNOW I told you about the choir concert tonight. Like a week ago! I have to be there at 6, but you don't have to until 6:30." Of course we want to hear him sing. We are his parents.

I feel affirmed when instead of doing whatever I ask him to do he sometimes says, "I did it last time! It's BRIAN's turn."

I know this might all seem strange because it may seem like I am happy when I am being taken advantage of. It's not like that. He is not an insensitive or selfish person. He is responsible, considerate, and kind. When he moved in he was always responsible, considerate and kind. When he moved in he acted like a guest who might out stay his welcome.

I even feel like his mom when he tells people that I am not like a real mom because I let him "do whatever I wants." I interject that it only seems that way because everything he wants to do is within the rules, but he insists, it's different. I'm not always on his case about everything. I'm not authoritarian like that. "You're just ... you know ... you. If I did something that you didn't like would you ground me for a week?"

"No. I would probably just talk to you about what happened. I expect that you would have had a good reason for whatever happened."

"SEE? You don't treat me like a little kid. It's almost like we're roommates. Well, not really, but you know."

"We let you make a lot of your own decisions."

"Exactly." He smiles, having proved his point. I don't act the way he pictures real mother acting, but he likes me.

On the other hand, I am acting the way I act as a mother, and he accepts it with a confidence that he didn't used to have. He knows he belongs. He knows he can count on us.

And all of this coalesced for me last week when he said, "Okay, you're going to be happy about this. I've decided that in this economy I'm not going to be able to move out when I wanted. So I'm going to go to the charter school all year next year and graduate in the spring. You get to keep me a whole year."

And when I jumped up to hug him and tell him how thrilled I was, he smiled, rolled his eyes and said, "I knew you would act like that."

Maybe we're both crazy

2010-05-07T07:11:00.004-06:00

Okay, so Gary has been complaining about his tonsils. This annoys me, not because I doubt him, but because I have twice taken him to see the physician about tonsillitis. He has been given antibiotics, insisted he could and would self-administer, and then didn't. He got better both times.

It's like he thinks seeing a physician is a necessary step in the healing process.

This morning though he woke me up to see if I could take him to the hospital right away. Why? Was it because he was raging with fever? So dehydrated he couldn't stand?

No. He didn't want to make an appointment or go to the walk-in in the afternoon (after my classes are done) because it would interfere with his preparation for the prom tonight.

***Here we stop for a minute for you to all imagine my apoplectic moment while I tried to find polite words to respond to him.***

I did tell him, gently, that his going to prom was a lower priority for me than my teaching my classes and I would take him in the afternoon. He told me that he couldn't breathe. I pointed out that if he was talking, he was breathing. He said he couldn't swallow water. I told him he would not die of dehydration before I got him in.

Then he asked, seriously, if I thought he should go to school. He could, and then I could pick him up when he had the appointment.

This is why teenagers can't be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. The symptoms thereof are "situation normal."

Okay, let me back up. He has been doing yard work weekends for a month to earn the money for prom. It is important to him. I get that.

I'm still proud I didn't say anything sarcastic this morning.

I also told him that I would dispense any medications he was prescribed, and that if he were younger I would forbid him going to the prom.

***

And last night we had a wonderful conversation. It started with him asking if he could spend the night at his date's house after the prom. Her mother had already offered. He said, "And yes, I PROMISE." The last time the mom invited him to stay I made him process in front of her that he would stay in the guest room all night and not permit the girlfriend to enter his room even if she wanted to. The mother asked if I thought that was necessary.

Anyway, so last evening he was assuring me that nothing would happen. Then he told me that girlfriend's mother had told girlfriend that if she ever decides to become "active" they should talk and the mom would get the girl on you-know-what. He didn't think that the girlfriend would though. Probably her mother would go nuts and forbid them to see each other.

I took deep breaths and told him that the girlfriend should talk to her, and that the conversation would be easier when she wasn't planning on being active any time soon. Maybe she could even tell her mom she needed to be on it because of irregular cycles or something. Gary debated this with me for a while, assuring me that they weren't doing anything and that telling her mother was a bad idea.

I said, "I said that it was important for her to be prepared, even if she wasn't planning on doing anything."

He responded, "What's with you guys and PLANNING. You don't PLAN these things. Teenagers go with the flow."

I put my head in my hands then looked at him. He looked back. Then he laughed, "Oh MY G-D! I just realized what I said. That's SO FUNNY!" He couldn't stop laughing and finally had to tell Brian and Roland what hilarious thing had just happened.

I told him that the girlfriend had one week to talk to her mom before I did.

***

He also said that he was realizing that he probably wasn't going to be able to move out when he originally planned and would likely live at home for another year. I said good and he told me not to get my hopes up. If he could afford to move out earlier, he would.

This made me happy.

I was happy that he might stay, happy that he was not worried about being a burden, that he was confident that we WANTED him to stay.

Really happy.

Which amazes me because at the same time I wanted to shake some sense into him ... about the girl thing, not the living-at-home thing.

Really, there is something fundamentally irrational about parenting.

Adoption & Gary's name

2010-04-21T13:34:00.002-06:00

We finally finished last of the home study stuff ... at least the stuff that has to be done before there is a home study. We got the biographies and preferences document turned in quickly. I had to get a new birth certificate since mine disappeared, and it took a while to get the physician to fax in the medical form.

Now it is all complete... well, except that they won't have actually got the results from Roland's background check, but they know he has been finger-printed.

Now we wait for the private agency that will send a social worker to visit and interview us and then she will write the actually home study document.

And yes, that is the document that the attorney has asked to be waived. No results on that front yet. Nothing expected for a while either.

The private agency (the one I do foster care with, not the one that will do the home study) is paying the attorney directly. I don't even know how much it will cost. I just finally got an email from the appropriate person saying they had worked out something satisfactory to all parties. His fees won't cover the new birth certificates, so the agency will reimburse me for that. The agency is pleased with the attorney and "his dedication to helping young people be adopted."

People either find the adoption of 20-somethings to be wonderful, or inexplicable. We have been asked "why would you do that?" many times. It is not asked in a way I find at all offensive, they are just really curious about WHY. We explain that people need parents even when they are adults and everyone needs legal next of kin. That makes sense to them. It especially makes sense to people when they think about the gay boys who may very well not have legally recognized spouses.

My inner adult and my inner four-year-old have come to a compromise about Gary's name. The four-year-old is pout-y and thinks that Gary should want to have our last name instead of the last name of the person who abandoned him.

My inner adult understands that Gary needs to be in control of this process. He really wants a new first name (he has picked it out), and changing both names at once feels like too much. The adoption for him is, at least right now, more about separating from his family of birth than it is about being a part of our family. It's his choice.

The inner four-year-old though has come up with a plan to which the inner adult is reluctantly agreeing to. I'm trying to get everyone to use Gary's new first name now. I address him by it and I refer to him by it. I told his girlfriend and Brian that if Gary doesn't mind they should use it at school too. The idea is that by the time the adoption is being finalized he will already have adjusted to the new name and will be ready to change his last name too.

My inner adult reminds me that this is manipulative, even if I am doing what Gary wants done. I have been to Alanon enough that I should be fully away that I cannot control people. I shouldn't even try. Trying to manipulate people into doing what I want just sets me up for unrealistic expectations of others and can leave me feeling resentful. It is particularly unfortunate that I am doing this with respect to an occasion that should be joyous. My energy would be better spent coming to accept his decision rather than trying to make him change it.

My inner adult can be a moralizing pain in the butt.

But she's right.

And I am still trying to get everyone to use Gary's new name starting last week.

So there.

Guest Blogger Returns

2010-04-17T08:55:00.001-06:00

A previous guest blogger is back with an update and more questions.

*****

I wrote you a few months ago about my foster daughter who was in residential experiencing some confusion about her sexual orientation. Thought I'd write and give you an update.

K came home about a month ago. We had shared with her caseworker and GAL about our concerns that there was some inappropriate sexual behavior going on at the facility where she was staying. These concerns were expressed in court and the judge immediately ordered her to be returned to our care.

Since she has been home, K has stated that she is no longer confused and has decided she is heterosexual after all. I think K has been so starved for acceptance and friendship, she was just going along with the pressures some of the other girls at the facility were putting on her. Her GAL had told us they have had similar complaints about this facility before. But then again, we also recently found that she has once been looking at sexually explicit photos of young woman online. So maybe she is still curious.

Then last night, she asked if one of her friends could spend the night this weekend. She has told us before that this friend is lesbian. Considering what she has told us before and the knowledge that she has been looking at the photos online, we decided against overnights. We did offer that her friend was welcome to come hang out at our house, that they could plan an outing together or whatever, just no overnights for now. K took this very personally, said she is sorry now that she told us about her confusion, sorry she told us her friend was gay. She says we are holding it against her, judging her and her friend. We have tried to assure her of our love and acceptance but she isn't seeing that and just feels embarrassed and hurt.

I feel so unprepared to handle these issues. I'm so afraid I'm going to mess this up for her, make her feel ashamed of who she is and I really don't want to do that.

Any suggestions?

Adopt Talk

2010-04-08T07:44:00.004-06:00

Okay, so here is the cool thing we learned from the adoption attorney. When we adopt Evan his mom will still be his mom, legally. The law doesn't say much about the relationships between adult children and their parents. What it does say however won't change. Laws regarding visitation in hospitals and inheritance, for instance, won't be changed.

At least that is here in this state.

Anyway, I was very happy to hear that, and I think the attorney was surprised (pleasantly so) that I was happy about it. It will only affect Evan, but it is a good thing. I don't want to minimize, of course, what this adoption could still mean to her. It still bothers me. I am though still committed to doing what Evan wants rather than what his mother wants.

The attorney was initially distressed to learn that three of the boys were not born in here. That just means that it will take longer to get some of the paper work processed. He did sigh with relief when he learned that none of them were born in California, where the whole process could easily take a year.

Evan is the only one who was born in my state, and his new birth certificate will be issued in 4 to 6 weeks.

I showed up with a list of the boys names, birth dates, and some other basic information. He was very pleased. I also had copies of their birth certificates ... except for David's, but he has it and lives in the area so we should be able to get it to the attorney today or tomorrow.

My birth certificate (which I don't need for the adult adoptions) wasn't where it should have been. We will need to dig deeply for that. I'll go through the same safe that Roland went through twice yesterday. Maybe he just over-looked it. If not, there a lock-box it might be in. I hope. Getting a new copy of mine will slow the home study process down horrible.

Although... the lawyer is going to petition to have the home study waived. He can't guarantee that the waiver will be granted, but he thinks there is an excellent chance. We have been foster parents in good standing for 10 years, Gary has been living with us for almost 2 years and will be 18 in a six months. Part of the rational will be that if we have to get it we might not be able to adopt him before his 18th birthday, at which point we wouldn't need it. It would be lovely if the judge grants it.

If everything goes as the attorney thinks, we could get all this done this summer.

If we have to have the home study, then it will be in the fall.

Gary Home Today

2010-04-07T13:33:00.002-06:00

Our visit last evening with Gary was mostly very good. He was cheerful, joking about the staff and the building. At least until the psychiatrist came in at the end to talk about meds. Gary got irritable. He said that he was willing to try a medication AFTER he got out. The psychiatrist and we made a case for starting them right away so they could see if he was going to have any bad effects. Gary refused saying that if they did he would be made to stay for several more days to make sure he was stabilized. He clearly thought that by refusing to take the medication in the hospital he would get out more quickly.

He may have been right. He is, in any case, getting out today. He won't have any medications, but he will have a prescription to start.

We have an appointment with the adoption attorney late afternoon and then we will go pick up Gary. We will probably get dinner in The City and head home.

So I guess we will see what we will see.

Update on Gary's hospitalization

2010-04-06T09:29:00.004-06:00

I spoke yesterday with the social worker (agency). She said that Gary was pretty irritated at being there, but did finally acknowledge that if he wasn't actually suicidal then he should have said things like, "I am very sad, and I would like to talk" and not things like, "I am thinking about killing myself and it is so easy I don't need a plan."

Gary apparently told her that maybe what he did was just a little bit attention-seeking. She told me she didn't respond with "Ya think?"

Don't get me wrong, we both agree that Gary is depressed and has excellent reason for being depressed. He needs more help than he is getting, and he could really, really benefit from some anti-depressants, which he is unwilling to take. We also think that this weekend was more about him yelling, "I really need some help here!" more than it was about being in danger of hurting himself.

The psychiatrist at the facility thinks that Gary is not a danger to self or others, but will keep him just a few more days to be sure. After that he will discharge Gary with recommendations for outpatient treatment. He (the psychiatrist) recommends that I encourage Gary to take anti-depressants at least as a trial. He said this as though this novel idea had not yet occurred to me. Since we were speaking over the phone he did not seem my eyes rolling.

So that is where it stands. There were no visiting hours yesterday, but there are today. I should get to see him and then probably bring him home in a day or two.

And then life will continue with this distressed young man who wants and doesn't want help.

Though this is on the extreme side, "distressed young person who wants and doesn't want help" is a fairly accurate description of what it means to be an adolescent.

They have a lot in common with two-year-olds.

Gary's Depression Deepens

2010-04-04T16:59:00.006-06:00

Gary has been depressed. He has excellent reasons for being depressed. His parents aren't his parents any more. He is angry and hurt. There is a plan to adopt him, which is good, but is horribly stressful all by itself. He is turning 18 in six months, and this almost always a crisis for kids in foster care. Even when they KNOW they are welcome, nay WANTED, they so often feel like they are supposed to move out and turn into completely independent adults at that moment.

Then of course there is the romantic problems. He broke up with one girl because it was getting too serious and he couldn't take that. She loved him and he isn't worthy of being loved and so he had to break up with her. He was honest about it. He told her how much she meant to him and that that was why he couldn't date her any more. He really did want to be friends though.

Then he started dated her previous best friend.

According to Gary she has behaved in inexplicable ways. She apparently doesn't like him very much anymore.

She has a new boyfriend and he keeps throwing it in Gary's face that she is his and not Gary's anymore. The new boyfriend is also a douche-bag who tries to control her all the time and Gary wants better for her, but they both get upset with him when he tries to protect her. So the text messages, the MySp*ce bullying has been flying.

He doesn't sleep, because he is up all night texting people.

So he is depressed. And it has nothing to do with his parents or with this horrible boyfriend, or the girl, except it has everything to do with them.

So he texted his social worker at 4am saying he was miserable and felt like dying. He had previously promised her that he would tell her if his depression got so bad that he felt like hurting himself.

She got the text around noon and called me. He didn't want to say much, but he couldn't promise me that he would be safe, so we went to the emergency room. I expected/hoped they would talk him into taking antidepressants, at least as a trial, and I would take him home. In the first five hours in the emergency room we established:

1. It is wrong for him to take anti-depressants and he won't take then even as a trial run.

2. Yes, he does think about committing suicide. He doesn't have a plan because he doesn't need one. It isn't HARD. If he decided to do it, he will, no plan required.

3. Yes, he feels like injuring others. In fact there are two particular boys at school that he would like to beat the crap out of.

4. No, he doesn't have a PLAN for what to do if he feels like beating them up. He doesn't think he will. He has good self-control. Of course, all the martial arts training has made his reflexes almost sub-conscious and he did black out that one time when someone threatened him, so he might beat the crap out of them anyway.

5. Being admitted into the psychiatric ward is a stupid idea because it will only make him feel worse.

He had the sort of warped thinking that comes with deep depression. He would tell me that he wanted to go home and then just as I was thinking about asserting that I thought it was a good idea he would tell me something else that indicated he needed to be admitted. The third time he told someone that he wasn't sure that he could refrain from beating up these two boys at school tomorrow I knew it was over.

Since the local hospital does not have an adolescent unit he had to be transported to another facility in The City. They were inclined to transport him by ambulance. The doctor told him that there had been a situation not long ago when someone was being transported by a relative and he jumped out of the car and over a bridge on the way. The physician asked Gary if he would do anything like that.

Gary stopped to think about it, and then said, "Probably not."

At this point my dark humor side nearly lost it. I wanted to say, "Darlin' if you want to convince the nice doctor that you don't need to go to the adolescent psych unit don't tell him that you probably won't jump off a bridge on the way there."

So Gary went to the psych unit in an ambulance and we followed a bit later in the car. I had a possibly hysterical laughing fit in the car imaging what Gary might have thought was going to happen after telling people that he would only give the first names of the boys he really wanted to beat up. I imagined the doctor calling the school telling them that he had a legal obligation to warn them that Gary was a danger to two boys in the high school, but he only had their first names. But Gary didn't want to go to the hospital because he would miss school and fall behind.

Because, in Gary's current world, it makes perfect sense that he would be allowed to go to school after telling three psych professionals that he couldn't be sure he wasn't going to beat the crap out of two students.

We finally said goodbye to him seven hours after we first left for the ER. On one hand, I think he doesn't need to be there. I think he is at low risk for hurting himself or anyone else. I don't think there is anything wrong with him that could not be addressed with outpatient treatment. If he will agree to that, he could easily be out in 24-48 hours

On the other hand, he thinks he deserves to feel the way he does and so it would be contrary to his personal moral beliefs to take anti-depressants. If that continues to be his attitude, he could be there quite a bit longer.

When he was being admitted to the psych unit he did make much more reasonable statements. At that point he admitted that there were a couple of kids that he was really angry at, but he doesn't solve problems with violence. If he feels threatened he will defend himself, but that's all.

Adoption to-do lists

2010-04-01T10:43:00.004-06:00

Gary's Adoption To-Do List:

1. get copy of driver's license

2. fill out short application, financial report, and information release form

3. make and keep appointment for criminal background check

4. ensure that Roland and Andrew make and keep appointments for criminal background check

5. have physician fill out extensive health report (ensure Roland does same)

6. write detailed auto-biography (ensure Roland does same)

7. contact four people and ask them to be references

8. contact private adoption agency that does home studies

9. meet with social worker from agency several times. Make sure she gets a chance to interview Andrew when he is home.

10. make appointment with attorney

Adult Adoptions T0-Do List:

1. make appointment with attorney

Hearing over

2010-03-31T14:43:00.004-06:00

The T.P.R. hearing for Gary's mother's parental rights is over. It was short and sad. The judge found that the state had done everything they could to contact her and her rights were terminated on grounds of abandonment.

I really, really hate these things.

Gary decided not to go to this one, and I think that is wise.

I got lots of information regarding adopting him. If we are going to do this before he turns 18 then we need to get moving. Thank goodness it isn't as complicated as getting licensed, but Roland and I have to get new criminal background checks, a more complete medical report, have a home study.

With all this the adoption just might be finalized before his birthday in September. Maybe.

I met Helen and her foster father. Apparently they had some sort of hearing today too. The state worker confirmed that the foster father has expressed interest in adopting her, but they don't know if that will happen, at least in part because they don't know what Will is going to do. He will have a case plan to work, and reunification is still the case goal. I told the state worker that Roland and I did not have any need to try to get custody of her, but we would hold onto our license for another year if she might need us. He said he would let me know when Gary's adoption is finalized if there is any significant chance they will want to place her with us.

getting re-licensed

2010-03-30T11:05:00.002-06:00

Oooo.... I just realized. If we get Gary adopted before the end of May, we can decline re-licensing. I would never have to go to another training again.

Gary wants to be adopted

2010-03-30T07:56:00.005-06:00

sooner, rather than later.

Okay, let me back up.

Yesterday he had a 10:00am meeting with his sister, "Helen," the state worker (who will be hers if/when reunification is no longer the official case goal), and his agency worker. Gary said the meeting went okay, but it was awkward because they didn't have a lot to say to each other and Gary wanted to talk to both of them about HIS case. He did report that the plan with his sister is what is called "concurrent planning." In other words, Will be given a list of things he has to do, which the social worker predicts he will not do.

Will, by the way, wants Helen out of foster care and then into Job Corps. He is pretty clear that he does not want her to live with him, his wife, and the younger children. Basically, he wants what he wanted with Gary: not to have to live with the teen and have everyone agree that the necessity for that is based upon the teen's behavior, not his. He isn't going to get away with it this time.

Anyway, Gary told the workers that he has been thinking about the adoption and he has decided that it would be better to do it before he graduates, instead of after. He told them that the main reason he wanted to wait was so that he would not be a financial burden to us. We have assured him multiple times that that is not the case. I have believed that the not wanting to be a burden is in part cover for not being done mourning his first family and not being ready for adoption. Anyway, he asked the workers if there was anyway that we might be able to continue to receive support for him until he graduates. The agency worker said they are working on the details of their post-adoption support plan and will get back to me.

So, it looks very likely that Gary will get adopted the spring with the older boys.

When I was talking with Gary later he said that one of the reasons he wanted to be adopted earlier was so that he could get his name changed before he graduated, got a driver's license, a credit history, etc. This is just a good time to do that.

As for his name, he hates his first name, and likes his his current middle name. He has picked out a new name he likes, he just doesn't know if he wants to be NewName CurrentMiddleName, or the other way around. He does want to keep the same last name. "Changing both would just be too much of an identity crisis."

I think I did a decent job at hiding my disappointment. I didn't realize how much it meant to me until both Carl and David told me they were going to change their last names. Evan would change his, but he has complex feelings about his mother and wants to show his respect for his father who died when he was small. When David and Carl said that they wanted to change their names, I got choked up. They understand the adoption and becoming part of our family. They want that. They want for me to be their legal mom.

For Gary, I think, right now it isn't about becoming part of our family. I think it is about another step in separating himself from Will. It is about him claiming a new identity and a new name. It isn't really about claiming a relationship with us. We are just part of the deal.

And I get that. It seems developmentally appropriate. It is exactly where Gary should be right now. Expecting him to be forming deep attachments to us just when most of his energy is going to how he will life when he moves out in January 2011 (his time table), is unrealistic. He is seventeen, finishing with high school, and his life is all about becoming his own person. Right now, it is safer to keep his current last name.

I confess that I hope he changes his mind somewhere during the process.

I started to edit that sentence to say "I confess I will be happy if he changes his mind" but the first version is true. I believe that it should be his decision and that he should do what he wants and what is best for him. I think this should NOT be about my needs and desires. However, I find that though I can acknowledge that my desires are not supposed to determine the outcome, they still exist. I want Gary to want us as much as we want him.

I remind myself that David definitely did not want us when he lived with us. Keeping emotional distance was very important for him. NOW, at 23 he wants to be part of the family. I hope, even expect, that over time Gary will attach more deeply to us. I also know that will happen best, perhaps only if, we let it happen at his pace.

But it still made me feel like pouting.

Of course I am cutting myself some emotional slack because Roland just left to spend 6 days with his parents meaning I am doing the single parent thing. Also the world of Brian has got more stressful recently. I will write about that eventually, but it is not part of this post. Suffice it to say that I was already fighting melancholia when Gary said he wanted to keep his current last name and I had to take a deep breath before I gave the appropriate response, "That makes sense, and of course what name you pick is entirely your decision."

Anyway, that he wants to be adopted now instead of in a year is wonderful and it made me very happy to hear it. Please understand that the post is mostly about the name thing because this is the only place where I can vent that. I have lots and lots of places where I can express my joy about the adoption itself.

In related news, Gary reported that Helen's foster family is interested in adopting her. At first I accepted that at face value, but I have since reconsidered. It certainly could be true. I hope it is true. On the other hand, this is the girl who told her foster father that she was going to be moving in with us. That she reported that HER foster parents wanted to adopt her during a lunch when her older brother was talking about being adopted, may reflect wishful thinking.

We will see.

Adult Adoption -- Difficult or Not?

2010-03-16T14:11:00.002-06:00

Well, getting starting seems to be quite difficult.

The agency took a couple of weeks to tell us that they would cover the legal expenses. It turned out that it wasn't a matter of deliberating, just getting the same people into the same room so they could say "sure!" Then the first people they recommended are backed up and won't be able to do anything for at least 3 months.

Then they recommended someone (A2) else who gives them a discount rate and sometimes works as a GAL. They said that if there was a different lawyer that I wanted to work with I could. I wrote to my friend who is also a family lawyer. Working with friends in various capacities is dangerous and she responded that this one might be one of those situations. She sees complications that could end up taking a lot of time which would translate to expense. She can't match the discount rate A2 offers. In fact she is so nervous about A2 that she thinks maybe he isn't very good. She will ask around and get me a referral.

[I should mention here that I have had a cold that has turned into bronchitis. Everyone at home is sick, I hope with the same basic virus even though not all of us have been having the same level of stomach issues. FIL is back in the hospital and we are all trying not to be worried about him. Everyone, including me is tired and cranky and impatient.]

Anyway, I'm not sure that my friend is right to be concerned about this lawyer. My gut response is that someone who works as a GAL might very well have a discount rate for a private, non-profit foster care agency. The rate might reflect his commitment to this population, and the fact that he gets repeat work from them (a possibility my friend conceded).

I'm torn between trusting the agency that has been doing this for a while and has always been trustworthy, and my friend who is a family lawyer. I'm actually leaning more towards trusting the agency and their recommendation. Though my friend has represented some people adopting from foster care and knows about adult adoption, I don't think she knows much about precedent in adult foster-care-alumni adoptions.

The issue that is complicated, from her perspective, is that we are going to at least try to adopt Evan. In her county she thinks it wouldn't fly. Judges there, in The City, don't approve adult adoptions without parental consent. That makes sense to me, in most contexts. If someone were going to adopt Andrew I certainly think I should be consulted. If nothing else I should KNOW as it would mean that he was dis-inheriting himself. I just might want to re-write my will. I might agree ultimately that he shouldn't have to have my consent, but I would appreciate the judge saying, "This affects your parents and they need to be part of the processes."

Everyone I know from foster care around here thinks the judges will do no such thing. This is partly because the judges in my county seem not to care what everyone else does. They are ... um ... informal. Mostly though they think the difference is that it is post-foster-care adoption. Judges even ones in The City, most of my local foster-care-acquaintances believe, will not be inclined to seek consent from parents whose kids were in foster care for several years of their lives. The attitude among the social workers is that one of the reasons to wait until the kids are 18 is so that you can not worry about difficult parents.

(There is a whole post about the ethics of that. I've written before about my ethical problems with adopting Evan. This is not that post.)

My friend is a very careful and diligent lawyer. I respect her concerns and value her advice. Child custody/adoption cases from my county have apparently been over-turned at a higher rate than in other places. She doesn't want me to do something shady.

I don't either.

I'm just tired and cranky.

I want it to be simple. I want someone to say yes or no and move on.

Did I mention the tired and cranky part?

Gary's Sister, SNAFU (edited down)

2010-03-11T08:33:00.005-07:00

For some reason last night as I was thinking about writing this post, I thought of Gary's sister as "Helen." I don't know why, but I did. I really wanted to meet her before I gave her a blog name, but as that may not happen at all, it is a good thing that one name just feels right now.

But I am getting ahead of the story.

As you know, Gary had been told that his first visit with his sister had to be supervised. This was not because anyone seriously believed that Gary would hurt her in any way, but just that it seemed sensible for the social worker to put a letter in the file saying that their interactions were appropriate, etc. Gary wasn't thrilled about that because he was afraid the visit would be horribly awkward. He spoke to his agency worker who suggested that she take the two of them out to lunch. Since Gary is so very comfortable with that worker, he agreed. She would save them from any awkwardness.

Last week the agreed on yesterday. Gary had another appointment in the morning that the worker was supposed to take him to, so it made sense to follow that up with a lunch with the sister. She (the worker) was planning on picking up Helen from her high school after the appointment on the way to lunch.

Gary and the worker waited for a full hour before Helen's state worker showed up to say that Helen wouldn't be coming. I don't know all the details, but I do know that Helen MIGHT be going back home and Will opposes them seeing each other.

And that is all, upon further consideration, I am going to say.

And there isn't a damn thing I can do.

We're doing okay

2010-03-03T09:17:00.002-07:00

Just thought I would update you all.

Life has fallen back into it's usual pattern. Gary is better. He is still sad and stressed, but the first wave of over-whelming grief he experienced after last Wednesday is over.

Roland has figured out what he would need to do to the rec room and has put that aside.

Gary still hasn't seen his sister, though they speak on the phone. Gary is concerned that if they don't have an activity it will be awkward. I think he may be wrong about that. Based upon their phone conversations, I think she will have plenty to ask and say. But Gary is worried about that. The state worker thinks they should have a supervised visit first, which seems to mean sitting in an office or coffee shop with nothing to DO. We've turned it over to the agency worker to try to come up with a plan.

Gary still is leaning against having his sister placed with us. He may or may not change his mind after they are together. Of course the social workers will be the ones who make that decision. No one is officially talking about that right now. One thing at a time, and the next thing is getting the kids together for a visit.

So we continue with our daily lives. I'm at the beginning of a new term and have difficulties with the software that is supposed to make my life easier. (Yeah, I know). Brian is staying late after school for rehearsals for the latest production. Brian and Gary will both be having their wisdom teeth extracted in a couple of weeks. Yep, same day. Andrew will be home for his break and, though he doesn't know it yet, he will be driving one of them home while the second is in surgery. Sadly, I will be at work and unable to attend to them until the afternoon. It is the beginning of their spring break, so they won't have to miss school for recovery. I'm thoughtful that way.

Thank you for all your suggestions for blog names for Gary's sister. I won't be picking one until after I meet her.

Opposite of Freaked

2010-02-27T11:23:00.004-07:00

After school yesterday Roland went down to the rec room with a measuring tape. After dinner he went out to an office supply store. Later I took a deep breath and asked what he was working on.

He explained that he figured out how to rearrange the rec room so that Andrew could have a partitioned-off section for his bedroom when he was here. He wanted some sort of movable partition so that we could store it when he was gone. Of course the large sofa the boys had got at a yard sale would have to go, but the love seat he had put in our bedroom could take its place. He had also been pricing desks since I would have to have one if Gary's sister took the room I now sort of share with Andrew.

"You know that it is unlikely that she will move in, right?"

"Why?"

"Because Gary doesn't think he wants her to move in. The agency is really good about making sure siblings have regular contact even if they don't live together. If Gary thinks it would be too much stress, they find a different home for her."

"Oh, right now he's just feeling overwhelmed!"

Um ... I don't know what to say.

Gary's Sister (update x 2)

2010-02-25T15:10:00.005-07:00

So, anyone want to blog-name Gary's sister? She is fifteen or sixteen, interested in a medical career, reportedly does well in school, and reportedly has been "difficult to control." If I stick with my naming patterns she would either get a G-name or an H-name.

I just got a call from the state worker. For those who don't remember, this worker specifically works with teenagers who are expected to age out of the system. That doesn't mean that none of the kids he works with are ever reunited, just that they are not expected to. Will had a lie-detector interview yesterday and a lot apparently rides on the results of that. State worker doesn't know the results, but pending the outcome, Gary's sister will be assigned to him next week.

So here's the deal. I had one conversation with the state worker who asked if it was the case that Gary was interested in meeting with his sister. I said yes. The worker felt that since there had at one time been an order that Gary not have contact with his family that it would be wise for the first visit to be supervised so that he could write something in the file saying it seems safe to him. He can't supervise a visit until early next week. He said though that if the sister should be suddenly going home, he will cancel other appointments to make sure they get one face-to-face before then. Gary will be disappointed.

Half an hour later he called back. He had been talking to the sister's foster dad. "So, Gary and his sister talked last night?"

"Yeah, for a while."

"The foster dad said something about her coming to your house."

"Well, that is what Gary wanted. We were going to pick her up. Gary thought they would play Halo or something, and then she might go to his Judo class because she says she is interested in martial arts."

"I see. The foster dad wasn't talking about a visit. He was talking about placement. Is that something you are thinking about?"

Oh golly.

"Well, I haven't even talked to Roland about that. I can tell you just for me that though I've been saying that I want to be done doing care, I also know that there are some kids I can't say no to, and that probably includes Gary's sister. But there is a lot to work out. All my bedrooms are claimed ... one is claimed by a boy in college, but he still expects to have a place to sleep when he comes home, and well ... I think everyone would have to talk about this and Roland and I haven't talked about it at all."

He understood. I told him that when Gary was talking to me I felt like the question was "hanging in the air" but I didn't vocalize it because, again, I hadn't talked to Roland yet. I also didn't think that any decisions should be made until they spent some time together and everyone had a chance to figure out whether they would be best living together or just seeing each other regularly. I also reminded him that I don't have a state license and that I know she would be fast tracked into the agency, but there was no way she could come live here until she was in.

Apparently foster dad thought she might be moving in today.

Anyway, the state worker understands. He will talk to the foster dad and let him know that living with us is a possibility, but not something that she should plan on. He said that he wouldn't even count this conversation as an official discussion about the possibility of placement.

We can do that next week.

Roland is going to freak.

****Update****

Gary came home from school. I told him about the supervised visit. He's upset. He doesn't want to have to meet her in a coffee shop or something. They need something to DO. I told him to ask the state worker if they visit could be in our living room so they could play video games here. Whatever they work out will be fine with me.

I also asked him if he wanted us to consider having his sister live here. He said that he thought about it, but he doesn't think so. There was enough hesitancy in his voice that I wasn't sure that was what he wanted or what he thought we would want. So I went on. "If you want to keep thinking about it, that's okay. I figure when Andrew is home we would probably curtain off part of the rec room so it would be his room when he was here. We could do it. I'm not asking if you want to DO it, I just want to know if you want us to keep it open as a possibility."

He pondered for a minute and then said that yes, we should keep it open. He isn't ready though to decide if he wants to live with her until after he at least meets with her.

He's tired. Dark circles, the whole nine yards. He said he was tired of talking about it. Everyone kept wanting him to talk about it. Then he got a text message and muttered "I DON'T want to talk about it" while responding.

***2nd update***

So Roland didn't freak, much. I didn't ask, I told. And I talked fast. I explained that I wanted us to be OPEN to the POSSIBILITY that placement here was the best thing for both of them. He pointed out that whenever we have had new placements we have gone through a process of decision. I assured him that I was committed to the process, and really didn't know if this would be best for everyone. I just wanted to be open to the possibility. He agreed.

Gary walked in while we were talking and said that he thinks that her living her could quite possibly mess up his life in a major way. He had so much to deal with and adding living with her to the mix! Ug. Besides, she should stay in the same school system and have at least that much stability.

So I will tell the state worker that the private agency people are the ones that handle placement decisions, so he doesn't have to worry about it. Then I will tell the agency people that Roland and I are open to the possibility but that right now it doesn't look like it is what Gary wants.

Once again ... this is a problem I am deciding not to worry about for a while.

After the Hearing

2010-02-25T08:55:00.005-07:00

First, thank you all for your kind comments, emails and tweets. I don't have the energy to respond to each of you, but it is so good to know that so many people care. It was particularly nice to hear from some of you who haven't commented in a while.

When the social worker brought Gary back in she signed (not ASL, but I got it) that Gary wanted to talk to me. I nodded and tried to make myself available. Gary was too emotionally exhausted at first. I did tell him that I was planning on cooking chicken thighs for dinner, but that he could have whatever comfort food he preferred. He said he wasn't hungry. I expected that to change suddenly, since he told me on the way to the hearing that he hadn't had much lunch and I know he never gets breakfast. Sure enough, half an hour later he wanted to know if we could order a GOOD pizza. I said yes and he picked out a chicken, bacon, ranch monstrosity.

Evan was going on his first business trip last night and was feeling insecure. He lives less than 10 miles from the airport and easily could have got a taxi, but that was one more new experience than he was up to. He had asked for a ride to the airport so after the pizza I drove 30 minutes to his house, 10 minutes to the airport, and 30 minutes home again. He apologized in the car and said, "I just want to feel like I'm participating in the family, you know?" I said I did, "Sometimes we just need mommy and daddy." I tried to tell him about the hearing. He listened commented on Will's behavior, and then talked about whether he had packed too many clothes.

When I got back I again made sure I was in a place Gary would feel comfortable talking to me if he wanted. It took him about half an hour.

He told me he called his sister who is in care. He was relieved that she wasn't angry at him at all, that none of his siblings were angry with him, which surprised him since he had always been told that they all hated him. The youngest kids, the boy who had been only a couple months old and the twins who were one when he left don't remember him. His sister had found and kept some photos of him. She said that the little ones had seen them and asked who he was. She wanted to tell them, "that's your big brother" but couldn't. That was one of the moments he pulled back tears.

He wants to see her. He talked her up to me, how she is getting straight A's, how carefully she is planning for her own future. If she stays in care she will go to the top of the line for the private agency, since she is a sibling of a current kid. He told her that it was a good thing. They had money for college and really good workers. He also told her how wonderful it was to just go into a shoe store and pick out shoes based upon whether he liked them and how they fit. "I don't even look at the price." That, by the way, isn't true. Gary doesn't pick out expensive shoes. He just gets a kick out buying shoes that are $5 more than the ones that would be perfectly acceptable if they weren't ugly. Gary is easier on the clothes budget than any of the other boys were.

He said that he thinks that the agency would be good for her, that she probably won't be able to go to college if she goes home, but that he wants her to know it is okay if she goes back. She should be able to go back if she wants. He always wanted to and never was able. Gary seems to think that whether she goes home is entirely up to her. I did not dispute that. Again, he choked back tears.

He told me that he tried to call his dad, but his dad wasn't home. "I think he thinks that everything is over, like he gave me away and won't ever see me again. I wanted to tell him that just because there's this piece of paper ... that doesn't mean that ... you know."

"I know."

He struggled with the tears again. He said again that his father cried when he said goodbye. Will had told him that he didn't want this but that it was the best thing for Gary. Will wouldn't have done it if we hadn't wanted to adopt him. He wouldn't have just let him loose in the world, but if he couldn't come home then it was better this way.

Gary bounced back and forth from being sympathetic to his dad to being angry, which is normal. He assured himself that Will really didn't want to do this, that he was genuinely very sad when they said goodbye. Gary doesn't remember his father ever crying before. His dad thinks this means they can't ever talk, but that isn't true.

And then he said, "My dad said, 'I do love you, you know. I just love my wife more.' I thought, yeah, that's it. He loves me. He just never loved me enough." Gary told me that he refused to make it easier for his father. He just didn't say anything and when he father was done saying goodbye he walked away.

At one moment he told me that the TPR was his father's action. "HE did it. It was his decision and he will have to live with that. He gave away his son."

Two minutes later he was re-claiming agency, "I'm just glad that in the end this was my decision. This happened because I wanted it, whatever he thinks."

Mostly I just listened. I wanted to hold him in my lap, but seeing as he is 8 inches taller than I am, and not interested in cuddling, I didn't. He talked about his sister again, about how the worst thing about leaving home was that he couldn't watch out for his siblings anymore but now maybe he has a second chance to be a big brother like he was supposed to be. He is trying to find a time when she can visit. He would like for her to spend this evening with us. I told him that we would agree with whatever she can get permission for, and that we would provide the transportation.

He told me that he needed to see her. "She's all I have left." I didn't remind him that he had us. He knows. He was sitting with me pouring his heart out. He knows. Right now he has to mourn.

And for those of you who are wondering ... I have said that I want to be done doing care, and I do. I have also said that there are some kids I know I can't say no to, and one of those would be my son's sister ... if it is what they really need and want, if the powers-that-be decide it is good and safe for them to live together, if she doesn't go back home. So I know we would take her, but I don't know how it will work. I woke up thinking that I didn't have enough bedrooms and we already have the maximum number of cell phones on the family plan. I'm deciding not to worry about all that today. There is enough to deal with now.

First Hearing Over

2010-02-24T16:11:00.006-07:00

Ug...

So "Will," Gary's father, showed up. Gary, the agency social worker and I were all sitting on the pew (really, it had holders for hymnals in the back) in the hallway when Will appeared. He stood in front of Gary and asked him if he was prepared to deal with his stepmother. "She didn't expect to see you here and she's upset. Is there anything you want to say to her? No? What do you mean no? This is your chance, and you don't want to say anything?"

The agency worker, thank God, said that this was probably a conversation best had in a different setting, perhaps with a mediator. Will agreed, but said that he was disappointed in Gary's attitude. Then he sat down on the other end of the pew and asked a few questions about whether Gary was involved in anything extra-curricular, doing well in school, etc. I fielded those questions, telling Will how wonderful Gary was doing. We finally managed to separate into separate conversational groups.

We sat there for one hour.

Yes, one entire hour, on a wooden pew, in a hallway, 5 feet from the man who blames Gary for everything.

Finally we got to go into the courtroom. We learned that Will had already signed a form giving unconditional consent to the termination. After some discussion, the judge asked the Will if he wanted the courtroom cleared while they talked about it to make sure Will understood everything. Will did, so we all left the judge, Will, state social worker, GAL, and lawyers in the room.

After about 10 minutes Will came out and asked Gary to walk with him to the exit. We told Gary it was up to him. Gary went and came back trying not to cry.

The social worker and Gary both report that Will told them that he (Will) did not want to do this but knew that Gary could never come home and so agreed that this was in Gary's best interests.

Will is most certainly not taking responsibility for anything, but he is not fighting the TPR.

I told Gary he could have anything he wanted tonight. If he were older I would buy him beer. If he liked chocolate I would buy a gallons. If he wants to go to the Y and punch something, that can be arranged.

Right now he is out with the agency social worker, with whom he has a really good relationship, getting something to eat and talking.

My head hurts.

Something died today. An hour ago Gary stopped having a father.

****

The worker just brought him back. Gary's been crying. I'm about ready for a good cry myself.

Hearing Rescheduled

2010-02-17T11:48:00.002-07:00

So this afternoon was to be the TPR hearing. It was going to address both parents. Gary has been anxious about it. I told students that I would be unavailable to help them on their papers even though they are due at the end of the week. Roland arranged to leave work early. Agency worker made plans to pick Gary up at school for lunch and then to the court.

And did I mention that Gary has been stressed?

If I ask him if he is okay, he says he is fine, but he doesn't look fine. He looks like he hasn't had a good night's sleep in a week.

Yesterday I got an email from the state worker telling me that because of Will's (Gary's father) new involvement with DSS, they have a good address for him. So the state worker will be sending Will a letter. Future tense. As in had not yet sent the letter even though it was the day before the hearing. So I emailed back asking how that could be possible. Had the hearing been rescheduled?

This morning I got a call from the agency worker saying she had JUST been told that the hearing today was vacated. A hearing on his father's rights will be next week and a hearing on his mother's will be at the end of March. She wanted to know if anyone had told me. I said no.

Three hours before the hearing I got an email from the state worker telling me that he just called someone or other and confirmed that the hearing for today has been vacated.

Uh huh, that's his way of avoiding confessing that he should have told me about this a week ago.

I am so very glad I don't have to work with the state very often.

I have this whole email that I am writing in my head. I'm not sure if it will be to the social worker and copied to his supervisor or the other way around. I have various versions of it, some nicer than others. An hour ago I decided not to send it until I had an hour to cool down, which hasn't helped. Now I've decided that I am going to wait until I get home and check the unopened mail and the phone answering machine.

I'm pretty sure there won't be anything because the state worker always communicates with me by email, but I will check.

Did I say that I was angry? I'm stressed. We all thought there was a very good chance that it would be finished today. Now it will be another six weeks minimum.

Gary's Sibs

2010-02-11T07:53:00.002-07:00

Some of my posts are carefully written. A few are just fact recording, and others are just jumbles. I think this is in the latter category.

The state social worker called last night. Gary's sister, the one who is a year younger than he born when their parents were still married and looks so much like their father (previously blogged-named "Will"), is now in care.

All I know is that she revealed something to a social worker. Will found out, and beat her "pretty badly." She is sixteen. It is too early for there to be a permanency plan, but if she is likely to stay in care she will be top priority for getting into the private agency Gary is in. They do that with siblings. They often don't place them together, in this case they certainly wouldn't, but communication/visits is facilitated when they have social workers who have offices next to each other. It would be a comfort for Gary too knowing that his sister is in the best possible place.

She will have the same problems with kinship placement that Gary did, namely, there is no one fit and willing. Gary is worried for the younger children. There are two younger step-sisters and three half siblings. He was figuring out what relatives they have and hoping they were with them.

It makes me nauseous. Gary is trying to process it. The social worker called because sister-in-care wants to see him. According to the worker she was very excited about it. Gary is wary. The very limited contact he has had has not gone well. He was worried about her being hurtful to him, angry, blaming him somehow for everything. That of course has been his experience in the family -- the only one who has been held accountable for anything, the one everyone blames. That this sister said she could not confirm any of the reports G made against his abusers doesn't help either.

I suggested that maybe she needs to see him because now she is without family too and could really use a big brother who has been in the system and can help her understand and cope. That was a role he seemed more willing to play, but was not confident that was what she wanted.

So he called the agency worker. All the kids have the workers cell phones. We parents are encouraged to call the office phone off-hours and get the message service to get us the on-call worker. My kids' workers have always been happy to take my kids calls 24/7. Of course, they rarely call. The agency worker said that she would get all the information she could for him, hopefully today. She would even see if she could meet with the sister. She confirmed that siblings in care are usually brought into the agency quickly if that is appropriate.

My first thought, as was probably yours, was whether we should take her too. Given the tensions and the total lack of contact for six years, no one is going to support that right now. They will want to help the two of them have as much contact as they want. She's sixteen. I can see scenarios in which she ends up with us, but I would not expect anyone to ask us to do, or agree if we asked, any time soon.

Of course for Gary this comes at a rough emotional time. We anticipate the TPR being granted next week. The chance that his mother, whom no one has been able to find for the past year, was going to show up seemed far from likely. No one expected his father, though it was possible. Now though, it is hard to imagine the judge not granting it given what has happened. Gary had been thinking about the TPR as cutting off his relationship to the entire family. That his sister is in care and wants to see him, is threatening that understanding of what is happening.

That his father is being charged and held accountable by the state seems right and good to him. That all the children might get out of that house also seems right and good.

He looked pretty exhausted this morning. I expect he was up most of the night, texting his friends.

Updating the Blog Notification Box

2010-02-05T08:51:00.003-07:00

It's been a while, so if you know of foster care blogs whose new posts don't appear in the notification box on the right, please let me know.

If it is your blog, don't be shy about giving me the address.

I can't promise I will start reading new blogs. I've become so busy I am not keeping up with any blogs. I do however want to help people interested in foster care to find each other.

Thinking about the process

2010-02-04T10:39:00.003-07:00

Yesterday's post was written quickly, right after the hearing and before Roland and I left for another appointment. I wanted to get down what happened before it became foggy in my mind. I wanted to remember. I also wanted to express a frustration with a system that kept mis-representing what we said. There wasn't a whole lot of reflection though.

I want to add something to the dry accounting of facts though. The state social worker who was there was not smarter or nicer than the regular one. She is the regular social worker's supervisor. My guess is that she is the one who said something like, "If they aren't planning on adopting before he is 18, is it really a good idea to spend all this money?" (The expensive part is what they have to do in a different state given that all mail to his mother has come back as undeliverable.) She was also the person who was able to listen to our reason and had the authority to reverse the decision. I am so very happy that she was there. So in two weeks there should be a TPR hearing. The consensus is that neither parent will have responded and the TPR will be granted at that time. Other outcomes are possible, of course.

I continue to feel unexpectedly relieved and Gary continues to feel empowered.

I know I said it in yesterday's post, but I really do feel the way I think I would if we just had a family meeting and decided that it was time to turn off the life support of a family member who had been in a terrible accident and been in a coma for months. On one hand this isn't the way the world was supposed to be. My made-up relative wasn't supposed to be in a terrible accident. Gary's parents were supposed to be able to take care of him themselves. In the world I imagine, this would not be happening. But in this world, where what has happened has happened, we are doing the right thing. We are letting go. There will be an end to the limbo, the waiting, this particular betwixt and between state. The next stage is mourning, which is has it should be.

And Gary is feeling empowered. I hate that word. I try never to use it because it is so over-used, but this time it is the right word. He no longer sees himself as the abandoned child. He is the actor, the decider. In his re-telling of the hearing last night he was the central character. If he hadn't been there it all might have happened differently. The judge made the decision because HE said it was what he wanted.

Suddenly he does want to come to the TPR hearing. He wants to be able to speak. Right now at least, he almost wants his father to show up so he can tell him to his face that it is too late. Gary has the power, not his dad.

As the once-adolescent child of an alcoholic I understand this so well. I imagined the same thing in my teens and twenties. I often wanted to tell people that my father wasn't really my FATHER. I wanted to cut him out of my life. I was jealous of my mother and the lack of guilt she had about divorcing him. He just wasn't part of her life anymore. She just didn't have to think about him and she didn't have to feel guilty for not thinking about him. I wanted to be able to make some grand gesture and have it all be over. After that there would be no pain. I would not debate whether to allow my children to have time with him, whether to allow him to visit or to visit him. It would all be over.

As the adult child of an alcoholic I know it wouldn't have worked out like that and it almost certainly will not work out that way for Gary. Our relationships with people who raised us and failed us is part of who we are. Even if they die, the effects they have had on our lives remain. I am not saying that we never get over it, or maybe I am. The pain comes back at odd moments, but it lessens, becomes more manageable and ceases to define our lives.

And I don't think the TPR is going to make as much of a difference to Gary's emotional journey as he thinks it will, but it is important none-the-less.

On off and on again

2010-02-03T15:08:00.002-07:00

Okay... here's the scoop on the TPR process for Gary.

August: Gary's dad calls Gary, says unkind things including that he (dad) wants to terminate his parental rights.

Shortly there after state social worker (SSW) visits and asks what everyone thinks about TPR and adoption. We tell him that we are absolutely interested in adopting Gary if that is what he wants. Gary says he does, probably when he is done with high school.

September: Court changes case plan from long-term foster care (or whatever it said) to termination and adoption.

People scurry. SSW writes and files documents. Lawyers attempt to contact Gary's parents. All mailings to the mother come back as undeliverable. Attempts to find more current address fail. Everything sent to his father apparently falls into a black hole. There is no response. Notice is put in the newspaper of the father's most recent residence. Department prepares to put notices in the papers of the last known addresses of the mother. Permanency hearing dates are scheduled and are weeks away.

Then I get a phone call from the SSW worker who seems to have suddenly realized that Gary doesn't want to be adopted before he is 18. SSW mentions how expensive it will be to do the notices in the paper for the mother. Says that the department does not think it is important to do TPR if he won't be adopted before then. In fact they have a policy against making teenagers legal orphans if there is no adoption plan.

I tell him that the plan is to adopt Gary when he finishes high school.*

SSW tells me that he will write in the document that Gary is clear about wanting the TPR but is ambivalent about adoption so the department with withdrawal the petition for TPR. I try to clarify.

Agency social worker writes in her report that Gary has expressed a clear desire to "divorce his parents" and be adopted after high school. Though the TPR is not legally necessary for his eventual adoption, it is psychologically important to Gary.

Social worker files a petition (or whatever) telling the court that based upon Gary's ambivalence about being adopted, they will no longer be seeking TPR.

Okay, now we are up to this week.

I talked to my family lawyer friend who says that standard practice is to seek parental consent for adult adoptions when there has been no TPR.

Today there was a different state worker, one who does not seem to have difficulty understanding simple declarative sentences. I explain what the lawyer said and that I would like for the TPR determination to go forward. She checks with Gary and agency to see if they agree. They affirm that is what they have been saying all along. She says she will explain that to the lawyer.

We enter the court. There is a new judge, younger, more formal. He reviews the status of the case saying that his report from the department is that everyone, including the agency and Gary, have changed their minds about the adoption plan and so the department is withdrawing the petition for TPR. He asks Gary if he has anything to add. Gary states that he does want to correct the record. He does want the TPR to happen although he doesn't want to be adopted until after he is 18. The judge is clearly listening. This is important to him.

The judge asks if Roland and I have anything to add. I say, "Yes, your honor. We are in the process of adopting our older children from foster care. The family lawyer has told me that standard practice is to seek parental consent if there has not been a TPR. Since we plan on adopting Gary when he is ready, I favor the TPR." (Okay, I might not have been that eloquent, but that is how I remember it.)

The judge asks the state worker what she thinks. She says that they are in favor termination and adoption as the plan for Gary. There change was based upon a mis-understanding of what the family and Gary wanted. (Yeah, right). Given what we have said, she would like to re-instate (or not withdrawal or whatever) the petition.

The judge asks the GAL. She reports that this is not her case but that the previous GAL favored termination.

So it is back on. Judge asks if there is any reason why there have been two hearings scheduled for the TPR. No one has any reason. He confirms with everyone that all attempts to contact the parents so far have had no results. So he consolidates the hearings. In two weeks the court will consider the termination of both parents' rights.

And I feel like a weight has lifted, like we have decided that someone who has been sick for along time will be allowed to die. It is sad. I may wish that many things were different, but this the right thing to do. It is what is best for everyone else. It is time to let go.

On the way home Gary told me happily about that this means that he doesn't have to feel guilty about them or anything. They aren't going to be his parents and it just doesn't matter what they think ever again. He says, "And it will because of something *I* did. I decided, not them."

I think to myself that it is not going to be that simple for him, but I get it.

* Note: Gary will tell you "when after I turn 18." He also has a plan in which he finishes high school within a month of turning 18. If you can get him to consider the possibility that it might take longer to graduate, he will tell you that he wants to be adopted after that. It isn't really about his age. It is about him wanting to continue to receive full support from the agency for as long as he would have in any case. He LIKES his agency social worker.)

Guest Post: Adopting Teens?

2010-02-02T12:53:00.002-07:00

I have another email that I have permission to post for your guidance and wisdom!

Hi Yondalla,

I just stumbled onto your blog today, although I guess "stumbling" isn't quite accurate because I was doing an internet search on "adopting teenagers" and your blog naturally fell into that category. I hope you don't mind me asking for some advice.

I'm 50 y.o., my husband is 54, we have two daughters ages 23 and 18, the oldest graduated college last year and is living in another state and the youngest just started college and is close by. To my surprise I did not suffer from empty nest syndrome as I expected to. In fact, I found that I enjoy having the house to myself when I get home from work, cooking just one dinner instead of something for my husband (who is trying to lose weight) and something else for my daughter (who would like something more substanial, please...) starting some new hobbies and having the freedome to travel...well, you probably get the picture.

Then, somehow, I started reading about the foster kids who are awaiting adoption (I don't even remember how it started) and soon became fixated on the idea of taking one of these kids into our family. I finally got up the nerve to broach the subject with my husband this weekend and he wasn't quite as freaked out by the idea as I thought he might be, but I'm not sure at this point that he will ever be able to commit to it.

Anyway, what I'd like is someone with experience to answer some questions since I don't feel like I can start even the beginning process (where I might get those answers from the adoption professionals) until/unless my husband comes on board. Also, I've found posting questions on message boards on a topic with which one is unfamiliar, puts you in the bullseye for often harsh criticism from people "in the know".

First, these are my reasons for wanting to do this:

1) There are kids who will never have a family unless someone adopts them, and providing a family is something I feel we have the resources to do

2) I like teenagers! I know, it surprised me, but i found that to be my favorite parenting age. I liked my own kids and I liked their friends and I feel like I could do "just one more".

3) I think it would be nice for my girls to have a brother; as the youngest of 5 girls I always kind of wished I'd had a brother.

4) It's a good thing to do; whether it turned out as rewarding and fun as my fantasies, or was more difficult than I expected, I don't think I could ever say it was a bad idea...unless, I suppose, if things went horribly tragically wrong.

Here are my questions:

1) Is it OK to be choosy? I feel guilty even asking that, or running through the mental list of what I would ask for if being choosy, but realistically I would want the one child who would fit most perfectly in our family and who could best benefit from what we could offer.

For one thing, I think I would like a boy; ideally 14-16; and for reasons I can't even figure out myself (we are white) I am more drawn to the African-American kids whose profiles I have seen. I don't think we would be the best fit for kids with serious mental or emotional issues, but think we could be great for that kid who just needs a supportive family and has the motivation and desire to work toward his future. A kid who wants to go to college would be best, only because we have the means and knowledge to assist him with that, but I wouldn't rule out a kid who has the desire to learn a trade or enter the military. A kid who would be willing to move to another state, and while I would not have a problem supporting his ties to a birth or foster family, it would be better if those ties were not so strong as to prevent him becoming bonded to our family or require frequent in-person visits.

Is that a lot to ask? Am I being unrealistic and/or naive? Will I be drummed out of an adoption agency if I go in with those kinds of restrictions?

Anyway, I appreciate you at least reading this, it gave me something to do with all of these thoughts while I wait for my husband to think about this. If you have any answers or advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Adult Adoption Progress

2010-02-02T10:30:00.005-07:00

So... adoption news. It's not much, but it is something.

I have received an update on the agency. It appears that they won't just pay their lawyer to do it, which they would if the boys were still in the program. However, they are doing some investigation into how much it costs and then will probably offer to reimburse me for some of the expense. We will do it anyway, but I am happy to accept help if they want to give it. Given that the boys are actually men in their twenties, I'm fairly confident that there is no tax benefit involved.

I emailed my family lawyer friend who does adoptions. She is the one will will hire if things go the way I expect with the agency. I did learn a few interesting things.

Standard practice, at least in the court that includes The City, is to require permission of living biological parents whose rights have not been terminated. She would like to tell me that that is the practice in my county, but she will make no predictions. Judges here have a reputation for being lax about such things as court room procedure and just about anything else not spelled out in the law. Still, I can tell Evan that it is standard practice, though not legally required, and therefore I can only adopt him if his mother gives her permission. She won't, which is half the reason I didn't want to do it anyway. The other half is that she is part of his life. I don't know if we would need her permission for Roland to adopt him. I hope not. I try not to say bad things about my children's parents, but she has a past pattern of manipulative behavior. I think it would be very unlikely to get her to actually agree as long as saying that she MIGHT agree would give her power over anyone.

Anyway, though I think Evan might be disappointed that I can't adopt him, I am relieved. To be clear, I would love to be his mother if he didn't already have one. If the law/standard practice allowed me to adopt him without his mother's permission I know that ultimately I would not be able to say no to him. I was hoping to persuade him that it was a bad idea.

That won't be an issue for the other two boys. Carl has a father who is probably still alive, and probably lives somewhere in North or Central America. I am hoping that standard practice includes not requiring permission from parents who haven't been heard from in 17 years.

Given this, I think I will talk to the state social worker about pursuing termination on Gary's father. It looks like it will make the adoption quite a bit easier later. I don't know if they will agree, but it is worth asking. If they say no, I will ask if I can have a report of everything that they did in their attempts to get his parents to respond to the TPR notice, or anything.

Agency on adoption

2010-01-23T10:21:00.005-07:00

Though I could probably get this into a tweet, and perhaps I shall, I heard back from the agency regarding our inquiry regarding assistance for legal fees to adopt older boys:

"I am gathering information about our legal services and will get back to you with a solid plan asap. Thanks and we are so happy to hear about this for your family."

2010-01-23T10:21:00.001-07:00

Adoption conversations move forward

2010-01-21T08:40:00.002-07:00

So Carl called me yesterday and we FINALLY go to talk about adoption. He is the only of the boys who calls us "Mom" and "Dad." He had no hesitancy at all. I think he was happy, and thought it was about time, darn it.

I've decided that being "engaged to be adopted when the parents get around to it" is too stressful for the older boys, especially Evan. So I am going to make definitely plans, and not wait until Gary is ready.

Gary says he wants to be adopted after he turns 18 in October. That is close enough that it would make sense to wait, EXCEPT what he really wants is to be adopted when he would be leaving the agency anyway, which is after he graduates. In his plans he graduates from an on-line high school in October, 2010. I agree it is possible, but I'm not going to make any plans for that. Since he could easily not graduate until May 2011, I'm going to move ahead on the older boys.

The agency typically pays legal fees when their kids are adopted. The social worker said that she would check to see if that is true even when the "kids" are 22, 23, and 26. We will do it either way, but I'm not going to turn down financial assistance.

Next I have to contact the family lawyer and get some questions answered.

I think it is possible to adopt Carl even if he can't be here physically, but that does not sound like fun. He tells me that he needs some lead time to arrange to be gone, but he can be here whenever. I want to do it when Andrew will be home.

So we are on the road.

---

Gary admits to feeling tired, but denies that he is sad or angry or anything. The permanency hearing is in about a month, and I know that it all stresses him out. He should see his therapist soon (same one he was seeing when he first came to us), and hopefully he can talk about it there. I've wondered if adopting the older boys without him will make him feel left out. I can't know for sure, of course, but I have decided that by adopting the older boys now I am at least making it clear that we are serious about adopting him. It will happen, and it will happen when he is ready for it, and not before.

My theory though is that he can't really think about that until after he is done grieving his first family and he can't finish that until the hearing is over and he knows absolutely that neither parent is going to show up and say they want him. He knows that won't happen, but I suspect he needs to go through it before some part of him stops hoping.

For those who don't know us, I want to assure you that we will always encourage the boys in any efforts they make to contact or develop relationships with their first families. Always.

And I have decided that I will let Evan decide whether he will be adopted by just Roland or by both of us. When I think about it in the abstract, I am convinced that the ethical high road is the one where just Roland adopts him. Evan's relationship with his mother, as I have said before, is complex. He tells me that I have been "more of a mother to him" than she has, and I think he is being honest. On the other hand, she IS his mother.

However, I will let him decide. Evan isn't an abstraction. He is a young man and I will let him decide what he needs. I won't deny him something I am giving to the rest of the boys.

Guest Post: Advice Sought

2010-01-20T09:04:00.002-07:00

I received the following as an email this morning. I've made one short reply, and now have permission to post this for your response. Please give any support/thought you can.

In subsequent emails, the writer asked for a list of appropriate reading materials she could get for the young woman.

Thank you from her and me!

*******************************************

Hello,
I've been reading your blog for quite a while. I'm a foster mom and had something happen this past weekend that I need some advice on how to handle.

My husband and I have been fostering a teenage girl for the past 1-1/2 years. She has been in and out of residential a couple of times during that time because of some pretty severe behavior issues but we are currently having her home on weekends and working toward bringing her back home soon. K is 17 years old but emotionally much younger. She has suffered severe neglect during her childhood and has severe abandonment issues. She is parentified, having had to care for three younger siblings over the course of a couple of years while mom was drinking. At one time before she was in our care, she disclosed being sexually abused but then retracted stating she said it for revenge purposes. Recently she said she thought it was real for a long time but now thinks it was just a dream.

This past weekend, she was home, using our computer and my husband found that she had searched on YouTube for "girls kissing and grinding." He asked her about it and she said one of the other girls in residential had told her to look it up. He simply told her it was not appropriate to use our computers to look for sexually explicit videos. About 5 minutes later she came to us and told us that she wanted to explain. She said she has been confused about her sexuality but she thinks maybe it is because she has been so confined and has lived with so many other girls for so long. She admitted to "experimenting" and then quickly added that she was "over it now." She was obviously scared and teary eyed when telling us all of this and admitted being afraid we would hate her. We assured her that we loved her no matter what but that she wasn't allowed to search out sexually explicit material on the computer. She came to me alone later and again said she was worried what we thought about her. I assured her that I was more concerned about her mis-use of the computer than I was about her sexuality. We talked at length about her confusion and I encouraged her to talk to her therapist about it but she was very hesitant to do that. She said she thinks it is just something that happens to girls when they are so confined with other girls. She suggested that a couple of the girls she lives with have made sexual advances toward her and she went along with it. I tried to validate her feelings and assured her I would be supportive of her either way. But this is new territory for me and I really wasn't sure what to say. There were tears and hugs and then it was over. It wasn't brought up again the rest of the weekend.

We have never suspected K of being lesbian. She has always shown an interest in boys. So this was a shock to us. We feel like we handled it pretty good. I hope. My question is where to go from here. Should I let her therapist or caseworker know what she told us? Should the residential staff know what's going on with the girls? Or should I leave it up to K to tell? Something about just leaving it up to her doesn't feel right because I don't really think she'll tell anyone else.

Thank you for any suggestions you can give me. I appreciate your blog and how open you are about sharing all the emotional ups and downs in foster parenting. Now I appreciate you even more because I really need support in handling this new little twist in our fostering experience!

Update from Sis

2010-01-19T10:24:00.002-07:00

Sis is in a turmoil, of course. She is working out some plans. She has contacted BIL's sister and her husband. They are not surprised and have agreed to let BIL live with them for at least a while. BIL has been seeing a therapist and admits that his behavior has been abusive. He believes he needs to change and wants the change.

Sis is confused and trying not to fall apart.

She has turned down my offer to stay here or to send Nephew here for any length of time. A lot of Nephew's anger is directed at Brian. It is not that he thinks that Brian is the cause, but Brian got everything that Nephew wanted. He is deeply jealous and sometimes when Nephew has been jealous he has hurt people. Nephew is working on those issues, but Sis thinks that separating Nephew from everything, including his therapist, and putting him here would be a very bad idea.

I am sad that I can't be more helpful, but I know that Brian and Roland would not have been happy living with Nephew, so I am also relieved. Gary would not have been happy either, but he has a different perspective. He is willing to live with someone who makes him crazy rather than have that person go into the foster care system. Brian and Roland would agree theoretically, but ... well, they have less experience living with people who drive them nuts.

Help for my sister

2010-01-18T10:20:00.004-07:00

My sister lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Some of you have read her story here. The update is that her husband may be unexpectedly coming home from Iraq in less than four weeks. This is not good.

There will be a restraining order so that my BIL cannot come near my nephew, but Sis is frightened. She has been going to school full-time and doesn't have a job. She is looking but not confident that she can find something that will support her and the kids. She is not confident that BIL will continue to support the family voluntarily. The therapist has suggested that one option is allowing her son to go into foster care while she and her daughter continue to live with her husband. I don't think that is an option she can CHOOSE, though it might be a possible consequence of things she does not plan on choosing.

I've thought about letting her ship him to me for at least a while. Given that he did fire a gun in Brian's general direction (18 months ago, true) and has a good relationship with a therapist THERE, I don't think that is ideal.

I know some of you are in Minnesota. If you know anything that could be helpful, please contact me. Let me know if Sis can contact you directly.

pflagfostermom at gmail dot com

Update: Sis is contacting a couple of BIL's siblings. Though Nephew and BIL will both be angry that she "told" what was going on, she will do it. She is confident that these siblings will believe and understand. Her hope is that one or more of them will allow BIL to live with them so she and the kids can stay in the house.

coming out of denial

2010-01-03T15:58:00.003-07:00

Thursday the agency worker came for a monthly visit, but it was perhaps more serious than before. She wanted to spend some time just talking with me and Roland about adoption. We were clear that we want to adopt Gary, that we would happily adopt him now if that was what he wanted although we genuinely appreciate the support we get from the agency. Gary says he wants to be adopted after he is 18 (which is when he imagines that he will graduate). If he is sincere in that, I am happy to wait also.

She needed to know about this because along with the notification of the termination hearing she got some 60 pages of paper work for her to fill out. I don't know exactly what it is, but it is part of the adoption stuff. The worker talked to someone at the state office who seemed to think we were full steam ahead on the adoption, and that it would likely happen this Spring. The agency worker wanted to know if this was what we wanted or if it was a runaway train. I told her that I had tried to be honest with everyone, but that some of the momentum might be my fault. Though I think the advantages to Gary weigh on the side of waiting, if anyone asks me if I want to adopt him the answer is yes. I think though that much of the energy is coming from the state worker who seems to be so excited about being part of the adoption of a 17-year-old that he isn't really listening.

After talking to us she took Gary out to lunch. They were gone a while and he came back looking spent. The agency worker told me that she was going to talk to the state people and tell them that we did not want them to push adoption. None of us wanted to do it right now. She didn't tell me what Gary had said, but I think he had been clear that he didn't want to do it now.

We all talked briefly about whether it made any sense to do the TPR. I forget exactly how the conversation went, but the worker said something that made me think that it was important to Gary. I said, "I was always jealous of my mom because she got to divorce my dad and I didn't." The worker understood that sentiment and said to Gary, "And you get to divorce yours." Gary agreed, with emotion. It was a small emotion, but the most he has been willing to show regarding the TPR process. He took a step away from "I don't care what happens" to taking satisfaction in it. He is a child who has been abandoned in more ways than one and this time he is doing the leaving.

And the dam of denial broke.

A psychology professor once reminded me that denial is a good thing. It protects us from feeling and thinking things that we are not ready to think or feel. We need that protection or we could not cope. The feelings will come when we are ready for them. (Herein lies one of the great rewards of parenting traumatized children. Helping them feel really safe means allowing them to feel the rage and pain.)

Since Thursday Gary has had a hard time sleeping. He has, thank all that is good and holy, been talking to his social worker and given her permission to talk to me. He desperately wants to know who is biological father is. He doesn't know if his biological father even knows he exists, but Gary wants to know who he is. He wants to know which American Indian tribe he comes from.

He feels adrift, unconnected. His feelings of guilt for things he has done, things that precipitated him losing his place in his family, are once again haunting him. He does not feel worthy of being loved. He thinks often about just leaving on his 18th birthday next September, living a life of wandering, not being connected to anyone. Though he continues to talk to his girlfriend, she is not currently his girlfriend. He can't bear to have her tell him that she loves him when he is so unworthy. He texted his social worker yesterday morning and said that he is willing to go back to counseling.

The social worker talked to me on the phone while I was out taking Andrew last-minute shopping before catching his plane. She wanted to make sure that I was not going to have a hard time with Gary talking about feeling like running, unworthy of love, and unconnected to us. I told her that I was relieved that he was feeling. The denial bothered me more, and it renewed my commitment to hold off on adopting him. He needed time to grieve his first family before joining a new one. She said she was going to try to find him a counselor but that though they did work with some in Our Small Town, probably the best she could find would be in The City, would that be okay? I reminded her that I had a history of working with GLBT kids, all of whom had counselors in The City. Evan and Carl's therapists' offices were on the far side of The City, 45 minutes one-way. If she would find the right therapist, we would take him.

[And this, is what I mean about appreciating the agency support. I will not deny that that monthly check makes everything easier, but it is knowing that if the kid needs a therapist they will find one -- and the right one -- that I really appreciate.]

I caught up Roland. I told him that I officially didn't have permission to tell him, but I wanted him to know. I suggested that he try to give Gary a little extra attention without looking like he was being prompted to give him extra attention.

When I got back from dropping off Andrew I went to Gary who was at his computer. I told him that his worker called. He said he knew. I assured him that everything he was feeling was normal and good. He nodded and let me hug him.

Last night when no one was up but the two of us I asked him if he wanted to talk. He said no.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Probably not."

"Well, that sucks."

"Yeah. It is just the way I am."

"You know you can tell me and I will listen."

"Yeah."

"You can also ask for hugs."

"That's what girlfriends are for."

"And mommies."

And he gave me a small smile and a big hug.

I don't think the next part is going to be easy, but I think we will get through it.

Adoption and David

2009-12-26T12:20:00.003-07:00

So, I finally had the conversation with David about adopting him. He was pleased to accept. He doesn't tend to extreme expressions of pleasure, so the quiet smile and "Yeah, that's okay with me" was enough.

To back up: David was here with his boyfriend, the one he has dated for more than a year and whom we like so very much; Evan came alone, no longer dating the too-young, too-dependent boy we were always very nice to; and Andrew brought his girlfriend Alice. Andrew spent Christmas Eve with Alice's family, learning to make tortillas from scratch and scarfing down on all the tamales so that there were none to bring home to me, which Alice promised she would try to do.

So I had all my kids except Carl here for dinner yesterday. That alone always makes me happy, not the missing Carl part you understand. David's boyfriend has biblical (Hebrew scriptures) name and after one glass of wine I called him by another that really does sound a lot like it. Something like, "Micah, I mean Michael..." except his actual name and the one I called him are both uncommon. (I think I will start using "Michael" for him. It is a good name for someone who looks so lovingly at the man I call "David.") I corrected myself immediately and apologized. He smiled and said it was okay, "It's a mom thing."

We talked a little bit about the ways the boys could change their names, or not. Evan is thinking about asking the judge if he can change his last name to his father's. His dad died when Evan was three and having Roland, or both of us, adopt him while reclaiming his father's name would be a way of claiming us all, not to mention a way of demonstrating to his family that he means no disrespect to his father. David said he had been talking about how much he had just recently been talking about how he wanted to change his name. He told us about how he was struck with the name of one of his customers and had thought about changing it to that. Michael told him it would not happen in our state. Michael tried to change his name some years back and the judge told him that the only legal reasons for doing it were change in family relationships or if you were in mortal fear of your life. Since he had neither, she assumed he was trying to commit fraud and she wouldn't help.

As far as I understand the law, the judge mis-informed Michael. The law does state that you cannot change your name if the intent to do commit fraud, but does not specify legally acceptable reasons.

Anyway, we all agreed that Evan's desire to take his father's name would probably make sense to a judge and that David would probably have to decide between taking our name or keeping the one he has. I reminded everyone that they could make either name their middle or last name.

Now I have to get Carl on the phone to have the conversation with him.

I am talking to the older boys now because I don't want them to hear about it after hearing about the situation with Gary. I don't want anyone thinking that they were an after-thought. On the other hand, after talking the other day with Evan I am beginning to think asking them to spend a year and a half with a promise to adopt and no action may be more emotionally draining that I realized (which wouldn't be difficult because I stupidly did not even consider whether that would be an emotionally difficult position to be in). So I am seriously considering calling my family lawyer friend and seeing if I can't adopt the older boys fairly soon. I like the idea of doing all four at once, but that is a lesser consideration.

Anyway, we had a good day yesterday. Everyone was pleased with their presents, and we had the usual fight over the leg of lamb. Gary, David, Andrew and I managed to get some slices off before Roland saw it, exclaimed that it was going to kill us, and put it back in the oven until it was just pink, and not red, in the middle. "That is plenty rare. It is still juicy. It is NOT dried out!"

Evan and (the myth of) Adoption

2009-12-24T14:44:00.005-07:00

I had a longish conversation with Evan yesterday and I have been trying to write a post that is about my feelings without violating his privacy.

The conversation was mostly about his mother. He wanted to talk about what he did, and did not, owe her. She is far less self-destructive than many people I have known, but she does get herself into difficult situations and wants and expects her son to rescue her. That Evan's baby sister's welfare is sometimes at stake makes it all the more difficult.

Now, as most readers know, Roland and I are planning on adopting the boys who came to us from foster care. They range from 17 to 26. The older two have no parents. The stories are complex, but there is nothing in them that gives me pause. Adopting them fits clearly into my ethical framework. Adoption is to provide parents for children who don't have them. That these young men are legal adults does not mean that they don't need parents. They do, and we are the only candidates. The youngest is more complicated, but I've written about that recently and that is not what this post is about. The short version is that I wish what was happening to him wasn't happening, but if it does we will adopt him and not regret it.

I can't however find myself at peace with respect to Evan.

The truth is (and my darling, if you are reading, please don't be hurt) that if he were the only boy to come to us from foster care we never have considered adopting him. He has a mother. She is part of his life. She is a difficult, pain-causing part of his life, but she is there.

When Evan talks to me about his mother I think a lot about my father. I remember when I was Evan's age that I did not want to acknowledge his (my father's) existence. I was hurt and angry and slowly coming to terms with the truth that he was never going to be different. I had to give up on that dream. I was jealous of my mother because she was able to divorce him. She wasn't related to him any more and she didn't have to worry about him. She was no longer his wife, but I would always be his daughter. I struggled to figure out what that meant. I toyed with the idea of cutting him out of my life entirely. If I just didn't give him my address when I moved, would anyone else? Could I go on as though he didn't exist?

So when Evan talks to me and our conversation shifts from his mother to the adoption, I find myself wondering if it would have changed things if someone had adopted me. If I had a new, legal father, would that have given my father less power to hurt me? Would it have settled any of the questions about what, if anything, I owed him?

I don't think it would.

Because it is a myth that adoption, especially adoption of older children and adults, unmakes the previous relationships. I think it can make a new one, but it does not erase the past. It doesn't even create barrier between the past and the future.

I eventually found a degree of peace in my relationship with my father. He can certainly make me moderately nuts, but mostly I have my boundaries set in ways that make me comfortable. I accept what he wants to give us, but I no longer expect or hope for something he isn't. And if I had been adopted by someone else as a teen or an adult, I suspect I would have had to travel the same journey. It would have been no easier. And I think the same is true for Evan. My adopting him won't make his relationship with his mother easier. It could though make it worse.

One way that it would make his life easier is in all those getting-to-know you conversations, one of the really difficult things for kids who have been in the system. Most of us have different levels in friendship. Some people we interact with and know almost nothing about. Some we know better and we share a bit more. Some are intimates and know our pain. When you grow up in foster care (and probably other situations) it is difficult maintain that. So many questions don't have truthful, non-mysterious answers. It would be easier for Evan when he meets people to be able to truthfully tell them that his parents live in Our Small Town, are educators, and members of PFLAG, and only later share that we are adoptive parents, that he still has a relationship with his mother, and that relationship is complicated and sometimes painful.

I get that.

But here is my dilemma.

On one hand it feels impossible to deny to Evan what I am offering to the other boys and wrong for me to decide what is best for him and his life. I don't love him less than the other boys. I don't want to offer him less.

On the other hand, the idea of adopting Evan without his mother's consent, probably even against her wishes, is anathema to me. David and Gary's mothers have been completely out of their lives for more than a decade. Though I believe they think about their sons and love them still, they simply are not there. Attempts at reconciliation have been exhausted.

But Evan's mother is there. She is making him crazy and sometimes miserable, but she is there.

Though I say and believe that it is a myth that adoption unmakes families, myths are powerful things. And there are some things that are not myth. The legal changes will not matter as much as they would have if he were younger, but they are real. Part of me is firmly convinced that it is just wrong to do this.

And yet it feels wrong to tell Evan that I won't adopt him too. I feels wrong to make this decision for Evan. He has my heart as much as any of the boys. If he wants to be legally ours, it feels like that should be his choice. Telling him no just feels wrong.

I hate it when there are not right answers.

Hearing Scheduled

2009-12-23T12:56:00.003-07:00

The termination hearing is scheduled for two months from now.

Gary still doesn't want to go and doesn't see why he should make any effort to communicate with the court. Clearly, he says, it wouldn't have gone this far if he wasn't okay with it. I've told him that I will make sure he has a meeting with his GAL so that he will be represented.

Thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. I want his father to fight for him. I imagine scenes one would expect in an after-school TV special. In this case all fighting for him means is SHOWING UP. I think I am most afraid that his father will have just not bothered to respond.

I make up stories to myself to explain that and keep it in a positive light. I imagine that his dad has decided that he can't fight for him. He can't ever bring Gary home. I understand that. I don't like it, but his father has to make decisions that are best for all his children. And I don't think he wants to let Gary go. So I imagine him just putting off dealing with it, not being able to think about it. Maybe tomorrow.

But I don't know. Maybe he has responded. Maybe he is going to fight. Maybe he has signed forms.

I don't know.

I want to adopt him, but I cannot be happy about this.

My best information regarding his mother is that they can't find her. She's had no contact with him for a decade. My heart breaks less over that one. [Added: I mean about her losing her rights now. It feels like the court will only be acknowledging something that already happened long ago. It is more than that with his father.]

Judo and other things

2009-12-22T08:44:00.003-07:00

Just five weeks for the department to decide that it would be okay for Gary to take a Judo class.

I really am thrilled. It is local. I feel very comfortable with the instructors. They are volunteers, seem very dedicated and though the student participate in competitions it isn't all about getting on television and getting beat up. It is inexpensive and it is on the bus route. Of course classes are over after the bus stops running, but they can take the bus one way.

Probably Gary will decide it isn't what he really wants to do, but he will stick with it for a while. I'm trying to convince him of what I do really believe to be the truth -- this class is far safer than the others he has looked at and getting permission for this one does not mean he will get permission for another. I think we can convince him to stick with this class (or at least not try for another) until he turns 18 in the fall.

In other news, Brian is lobbying to take a driver's education class. All the other boys waiting until they were 18 to drive. Carl took a class and finished learning at Job Corps. I taught Andrew and Evan. David came claiming he already could drive, those who have read the archives might remember this escapade. Brian though has no desire to wait. He is turning 16 in June and he could start driver's training now and he wants to! Part of me would rather he wait at least until the fall when Gary is 18 and they could both be doing it (part of the whole "fair" thing). I have begun to wonder though if it wouldn't be better to let Brian start early. It might help with the competitive issue if they are not doing it at the same time. Or not.

Part of the issue really is just that I don't want him driving yet. Although I am also getting tired of chauffeur duty too. My best idea right now is to find out what GPA he has to have for the safe driver discount, and tell him that he can't get his license until he gets that.

Having Andrew home is delightful. He has been cooking dinner all last week while the rest of moaned and groaned about final exams ... except Roland who merely moaned about being tired with the last week before break. He and his girlfriend have also been making Christmas cookies.

I still have a pile of grading, and then a very manageable list of work-duties for break. Grades need to be turned in on Wednesday and then I will just relax from Christmas until New Year's. Maybe I will even catch up on all your blogs I have not read for ages.

We'll see.

Oh, there is this lovely Christmas song I need to share with you. Sassy Cupcakes shared it with me. It is sung by an Australian atheist (agnostic?) and it is beautiful. It is about really liking Christmas, even when you have all those reservations about the consumerism and religious part of it all.

Tim Minchin,

White Wine in the Sun

MMA, Libilities, etc.

2009-12-16T18:48:00.002-07:00

Feeling frustrated.

Gary is always full of plans. He's has once again found another dojo, martial arts place, gym, whatever. He talked and talked to them on the phone. They are new. They said that he could help teach the younger students if he wanted. This could turn into a job! The coach/teacher/whatever there is great. It is going to be wonderful.

I took him. The atmosphere is more of a fitness gym than a dojo. There is a lobby with two flat screen TV's and two employees at the counter. In the back are mats, one of those cage things they have MMA fights in, exercise bicycles and other work-out equipment. Gary is welcomed by the instructor who asks if he is ready for his freebie. Gary goes back with much excitement while the people at the counter give me information on monthly membership fees (high) and a liability form to sign.

Now I'm not supposed to sign those. I did just for the night though. I even wrote on it that it expired tomorrow. That is totally against the rules and if Gary gets hurt tonight I really don't know what will happen. Like a teenager I'm just counting on not getting caught.

I took the form back to him to show him. I told him that there was no way we were going to be able to get it signed.

"So enjoy your one night here."

"Oh, I'll work it out! This is great!"

Sometimes his relentless optimism is exhausting.

Crime and Consequences

2009-12-16T09:50:00.004-07:00

**Originally I intended to write a post about parenting in general. I finished the intro-story part and then realized that I really don't have time right now. Normally I would save and write the post I really wanted to write later. Since I post so little these days, I changed my mind. Here's the story.***

It is final exam week here. I have a pile of grading and administrative work, but a relaxed schedule. Andrew is home for his winter break and he wants to drive me to work every day so that he can have my vehicle. He will get up at whatever time I want, having a vehicle is important, but he isn't normally a very early riser. All this means that when my alarm went off at 6am it seemed only sensible to turn it off and go back to sleep.

I got up around 8:30. I puttered, made tea, and mentioned to Andrew that the boys had left the bathroom fan on downstairs. When the fan suddenly went off I went to the computer to check if there were school closings. Andrew wondered why I didn't just ask. I told him that it would ruin my omnipotent reputation. There were no school closings so when Gary appeared just before 9am I asked him what was going on. He said, "My alarm didn't go off."

He sleeps through his alarm a couple of times a semester. Usually I am up and I wake him, though often not in time for him to catch the right bus. I'm not doing that on purpose, it is just that he often doesn't appear except to run out the door to the bus stop. By the time I know he is not up, he's probably missed the bus.

Anyway, this morning I just took another sip of my tea while Andrew said, "Can you get another bus now?" Gary said yes, that one would be there in a few minutes, and he took off.

And I realized I wasn't even annoyed with him.

Years ago I would have got angry. I would have felt at least the need to lecture him, perhaps to "impose consequences" (a phrase I hate since it really means "punishment" and if that is what we are doing we should be honest about it). Of course, if the other boys had done that it would be part of a pattern, not something that happened a few times a year. I know that what I did was the best response for Gary.

Still, I found myself wondering if I have evolved into the Zen parent I always wanted to be? Have I perfected the attitude promoted in my favorite parenting books?

Or have they just worn me down?

This is probably a bad time to ponder that question too much, you are invited to discuss it in the comments though. Not necessarily me in particular, but parenting approaches in general.

Rambling now.

Christmas during a busy year

2009-12-14T09:34:00.002-07:00

I did something I never thought I would do. I told Roland he was in charge of Christmas ... and I meant it.

He knew I meant it because he had been cuddling me while I cried in exhaustion. This was maybe two or three weeks ago. I told him about all the things that I had to do and how I was just managing to keep up, but I was worn out. I was fighting off a cold and SOOOO tired. And then, that very day, the college president (a new guy whom I am having deeply mixed feelings about) sent out an email telling us that many of our voice mail greetings needed to be changed. The email was really long, and talked about professionalism and our responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. My voice mail greeting is definitely one of ones that need to be changed to fit the new standards, but DAMN, I was so freaking busy and I've forgotten my voice mail pass code, and did the president really have to give us ONE MORE THING to do at the end of the term? Really? I mean, couldn't it wait until a time when we weren't exhausted? Or if he had to tell us now, did he have to send out a long email lecture? It wasn't a big thing, but it was just that one extra thing, you know?

So Roland asked if there was anything he could do to help, and said, "do Christmas. All of it. When it gets here, I'll cook, but will you take care of all the presents?"

After being absolutely sure that I really, really meant it, he said yes.

And so now there are boxes of unwrapped presents in our closet. There are no Christmas decorations out -- not even the advent calendar (no candy, every day you move a Velcro-backed figure from a pocket to the town above) that should have come out on Dec. 1. I've decided I'm totally okay with that.

It is final exam week now. I have things coming in from students on Wednesday and Thursday. That means that I can spend most of today and tomorrow doing administrative work. I have piles of things to proof-read for the catalog, I have to write the advising guidelines for the minor, hound a few department chairs who are as exhausted as I am so they will get done some work that I need them to do so I can get mine done. There are a few other things too.

Still, the list is doable.

Andrew came home yesterday. We talked about his classes and he cooked dinner. I told him that in my intro class I was giving the students something to read and then asking them questions about it. I had narrowed it down to three, but hadn't decided. He kindly looked them over and told me that he recommended the long one. Even though it was four pages, it was clearer than the others. That was wonderful.

Everyone else seems to be doing well. Gary is great, still coming up with plans and more plans. We haven't heard anything about when the hearing will be scheduled or anything else. It is bothersome, but then I don't really have time to worry about that, so I don't.

We had a planning meeting for the catalog. The good news is that all this work will over on March 1. The bad news is that all the work has to be finished by March 1. Still, the end is in sight. The Yondalla you have all missed so dreadfully will be back, I hope.

So for now, I will sign off and get back to work.

I still haven't fixed my voice mail greeting.

Let's see.... update...

2009-12-07T07:12:00.004-07:00

Okay, sorry I've been gone so long. This is the last week of classes and hopefully I will write lots and lots over break. I've been pretty worn out. I spent most of the weekend sleeping, so now I have to get busy and do the grading I assured my students I would do then.

One reason for not writing is that things have been quiet and easy. Brian and Gary have been getting along. Remember when that was an issue? Aside from the things that were going on before we changed it so that they don't share kitchen duty. They take turns doing the whole job. That gives them one less thing to quarrel about, always good. They play video games together often.

We still don't have a date for the next hearing. Gary's previous CASA worker is no longer working with them, and he doesn't have a new one assigned. We are working on it though. The social workers really want him to go to court himself, and he really doesn't want to. He hasn't protested when I said that I would be pro-active about setting up an appointment for him.

Roland says that Gary's constant changing of plans wears him out. I seem to flow with it. Of course I am the same way, though better than I once was. The blog started out as a way to release some of the obsessive pondering without driving my friends and family crazy. Of course, then Evan admitted to an addiction and the blog started fulfilling a new need altogether. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Gary's changing plans. He keeps changing them. I think right now he still wants to be a nurse, but is disheartened to learn that I might really have to brush up on math skills. He is trying to find the right way to get through it all.

We learned that because his juvenile offense was before he was 14 (he was 11), the record is automatically sealed. When he is 18 people can do a background check on him and nothing will come up. Of course, if they ask if he is on probation, he will have to say yes. At this point his PO considers him to be on "unsupervised probation" which is just like not being on probation, except that if you get arrested your PO gets called and you go back to being supervised. The social workers tell us that the PO is trying to get him totally off when he turns 18, but it is my county's practice to keep kids on probation until they are 21. That may be unconstitutional, but there it is.

I just got an email from Carl. He is still living at the retreat center. He is now a paid employee, actually running the place. It really is good for him there.

David is now a manager of the video store where he works. He wasn't able to come over for Thanksgiving because he was working. He is still dating the same man he was a year ago, maybe longer.

We changed our phone number and made it unpublished because of one adult child's on-going fight with creditors. We kept asking for our name to be taken off the file. We would be assured it had, then it would go to a new department and we would be getting calls again. We do business with the company, so we couldn't put them on a no-call list. I have decided I love having an unlisted number. Nobody calls. We haven't quite worked up to just turning off the phone completely. I'm nervous that if we do we will have to give out our cell numbers to people and then we will get calls all day.

Evan is working as a supervisor at the television-content-provider. He told us a story about taking out some of his supervisors and to find out why he didn't get fired for being such a pain. Evan knows he pisses everyone off asking for things to be explained, challenging decisions, and generally being insubordinate. He said they told him that if they fired him they would lose his team. They (the team) might not like him all the time, but they trust him and if he told them to walk through hell they would do it. So that was cool.

Brian is doing really well. Every now and then I remember the anxious kid I was so worried about a few years ago. Now there is this confident fifteen year old, taller than I am and with a voice I don't always recognize.

Last week Brian and Gary had a concert here at the college. They spent most of the day on campus, rehearsing in our facility. On the bus over Brian called to say that he and Gary had not remembered to pack lunch, would I please buy them something? I told him that I was very busy but that if they met me in the student union at 12:30 precisely, I would. When we got there I asked what their classmates were doing for lunch. Brian said, "Well, some of them packed a lunch."

"And the rest had money to buy it on campus?"

"Well, no."

"So what did they eat?"

"Umm ... a boxed lunch from the cafeteria."

"And why didn't you two do that?

Brian gave me a wide-eyed innocent, puppy-dog face, "Because we have YOU."

While we were prepping Thanksgiving, Andrew wanted to ask me some questions about the philosophers in his Analytic class. Evan, wanting to participate, asked what the difference was between Analytic and some other philosophy. I told him that in some ways it was a difference of style, but if we were talking about history, for instance, a Continental philosopher would be more likely to say that there were only competing stories and that it made no sense to talk about what really happened. An Analytic philosopher, on the other hand would be more likely to say that the project of discovering, writing, and evaluating those stories only makes sense if we believe there is a truth about what happened.

We debated that for a while and then he asked if there were other differences. There are of course, but I gave him the one I use to tease my colleague who teaches Continental philosophy. "Yes, Analytic philosophers are committed to writing clearly and making arguments."

Last week I got a text message from Andrew:

"So prof r described analytic philosophy today now that were past the whole examing language as a way of figuring out reality thing. It was pretty much exactly how you described it: people who write clearly and use arguments.
and I smiled."

Update on Talking to Gary

2009-11-23T05:53:00.002-07:00

In the car the other day I told him casually that I was going to make an appointment for his GAL to come talk to him about what he wants, "That way the judge will know what is important to you and you won't have to go to court."

I've decided that even though he is 17 I will be aggressive about making sure they have time together. In the past I just made sure they had each other's phone numbers and left it up to Gary. Once I get her here, I will get out of the way. Maybe she will even take him somewhere for fast food or something.

Anyway, I think that is the best I can do for him.

Asking What He Wants

2009-11-19T13:02:00.003-07:00

So at the meeting a week or so ago the social worker (state) said that he had done all the paper work and that we would be informed about the TPR hearing. What discussions they may or may not be having with Gary's parents we don't know. Well, we do know that the address that previously work for his mother no longer does. The private agency is really trying to track her down to see if she will provide photos of Gary's siblings and tell him (again) the name of his genetic father. At this point Gary has not expressed much interest in meeting him, but he has expressed a great deal of interest in knowing more about his American Indian heritage.

When the agency worker visited last week she told Gary that the judge would want him at the hearing. At 17 the judge won't want to make a decision without knowing what he wants. Gary said that he hates going to court. The social worker suggested writing a letter, which Gary didn't seem enthusiastic about. I said that it was important to be sure to talk to his GAL (CASA worker) so that she could include his wishes in her report.

We tried to talk to him about he felt. He kept insisting that he didn't have any feelings about it one way or another. He didn't care. He will go so far as to say that if his dad doesn't want him, then that's fine. He doesn't actually say, "then I don't want him either" but it comes close. The agency worker and I both tried to communicate that it would be normal to have complex feelings, that he might feel one way now and a different way later, and that it was important for the judge to know what HE wanted.

In the car the other day I asked twice if he had decided what he wanted to tell the GAL. He changed subjects without really seeming to notice. I mean that he didn't seem to be trying to avoid the question. He didn't seem awkward. He just said something like, "I don't know her very well, not like I do the workers at the agency. They really are cool. Some of them remind me of [one of his MMA instructors]. They are a lot better than the state worker. Did you know that the state worker didn't even call me by my right name in the meeting?"

When I ask him about whether he wants to be adopted, he beams. He says he does, and then he will debate whether being adopted before his 18th birthday (and therefore being able to take driver's education and go to Judo class) would be worth giving up the financial benefit of staying with the agency. Right now when we shop for clothes (for instance) he just picks out what he wants because he knows we are going to be reimbursed. If we weren't going to be, he would care about price and it is just so fun not to care at all. He tends to decide that he would rather be adopted after he is 18. It is just so much easier.

We have, by the way, assured him that he is not a burden, that we can afford to buy him clothes, etc. He says he understands that. I think I understand what he is saying too. He actually have very modest needs for clothes. We don't let him go nuts, but he still experiences a kind of freedom picking out a shoe that is more comfortable and costs $10 more; something he wouldn't let himself do if we were paying.

Anyway, I am trying to think about his resistance to saying one thing or another about the TPR.

I think I get it. He wants to be wanted. He wants for his dad to fight the TPR. That's what he wants. Given that his dad is unlikely to do that he is protecting himself by saying that he doesn't care. Certainly he doesn't want to try to make a parent stay if that parent doesn't want him. This whole process started with his father telling him that he was going to initiate termination so he would have to pay child support.

I have mixed feelings about pushing him to make a statement to the GAL. On one hand, I think that at his age it is inappropriate to make decisions about his life without his input. On the other hand, maybe it is wrong to ask kids to make a formal statement saying they don't want to have their parents to be their parents. Certainly it is much easier for Gary to say that he wants us to adopt him (at some point) than to say anything at all about the TPR.

What I want out of the process is for his parents to be notified that we are going to adopt him if they don't make an objection. It would be hard for me to make such notification, given how difficult they both are to find -- not to mention the anxiety issues. Having the state do that feels right.

But past that? I don't know.

I also don't know, at all, if that advantage is really worth going through this. If his father follows his past pattern he will avoid responding, and that is going to be painful for Gary.

TPR, in case you were wondering

2009-11-16T12:47:00.002-07:00

I asked for an update on the TPR process. This is what I know:

The state worker has finished the paper work and we will be told when the hearing is scheduled.

No one has been able to make contact with Gary's mother.

And that's all.

Catch UP

2009-11-13T07:53:00.004-07:00

So, still outrageously busy. There is just so much going on at work this year. I've been forbidding myself the blogosphere at work, which has really been helping. I work longer days and I WORK hard. However, it has the unintended consequence of leaving me really not wanting to sit at my laptop when I go home. All I want to do is crash and read trashy (not too trashy) novels. My Google Reader is now so full that facing it feels like another overwhelming work assignment, so I just don't do that either.

Things really will ease up soon, and for a while.

In the meantime, I am giving myself permission to post at the beginning of my work day. Here is what is going on:

Gary decided that he hated graphic design, because he got a C on one project. He decided then that he wasn't going to do any more work, get to the point where he was definitely getting an F, so the school would have to let him out to use the time as a study period. We talked about it and he confirmed with the school that since he got a B during the first quarter he was not going to fail and he had to stay in the class.
His social worker and PO are trying to get him off probation and have his juvenile record sealed/expunged when he turns 18. He is considering medical careers and no one will hire him if he is still on probation. I hope they succeed. Of course, the grade he is likely to get in Graphic Design will be a probation violation, so who knows. I am trying to stay out of that discussion because if he is lying to them about his grades I don't really want to know about it.
He told me, like it would be news, that he realized he has a problem with over-optimism. I was proud for not doing a spit take as I swallowed my tea and said, "really?"
He has found a martial arts instructor who currently doesn't have a space to teach. Gary has talked to him and volunteered to help him find a space, set up programs in school, recruit students, and teach classes. He envisions this turning into a partial ownership of the business.
He found a Judo class that is actually in our town. I am so very pleased about that. It is run by a volunteer organization, the instructor really impressed me, and the classes are only $30/month. I think it is safer than MMA, and being a student is so much more appropriate than trying to help run a business. I want to get him signed up and going on it before things progress too far with the instructor above. Gary wants to get going on it because with all his background he already knows most of what they teach and he needs to get training for the junior Olympics where he will defeat everyone and receive many medals.
The social worker can't sign the permission form for the Judo class because it includes a waiver of liability for death. He (social worker) has sent it to his supervisor who will discuss it with the program manager. The social worker tells me he supports it but doesn't know what will happen. I am considering preparing an appeal to the governor. (Actually, I don't know who I appeal to).
Brian is doing well. It looks like he had the flu, though it was relatively mild. I hid myself in the bedroom and avoided catching it. I'm beginning to think it has peaked at our campus. I hope so. Something like 20 percent of our students have been identified as having flu. By the time we know how many of them had H1N1 it will be long over.
I started a new treatment for anxiety. It seems to be working. I realized a certain appointment is coming up. A month ago thinking about it being so close would make my heart race, my head feel light, and my hands and feet tingly. This time I just felt really nauseous. That's improvement and I have only been on the new meds for 3 weeks. So, yay me.

And for those who are interested in the female troubles:

After seven weeks I am spotting again, very lightly. The physician said that it would take 3 months before we knew if the procedure worked, so I have no idea if this means anything. Maybe it will stop again. Maybe wearing a panty liner every day is just my fate for the next five years. I don't know. The only other medical intervention they can offer me is removal of the offending organ and at the moment I would have to sigh deeply and say that the benefit of NOT having to wear a panty liner every day for five years probably doesn't outweigh the expense, pain, and risks of the surgery. Still, it irritates.

And now back to work...

Nook v. Kindle

2009-10-30T08:36:00.002-06:00

I will come back soon to write regular posts again, but a couple of people have asked me if I would have bought the Nook instead of the Kindle if I were buying now. That seems an easy thing to write about between catching up on all this other work. My answer is no. I'm thrilled the Nook exists because I have been worried about Amazon having too much control over the book market, but I'm happy with the Kindle. If I were picking one right now I would ultimately pick on the same basis that I picked the Kindle over the Sony reader: availability and price of the books I want.

1. Nook improvements.

So Nook did do some things that are cool. You can replace the battery yourself instead of having to send the machine in (though the Kindle battery should last a very long time), and you can use a memory card, just in case you want to carry more than 1,500 books around at one time. This makes the device just a little thicker and about an ounce heavier.

The buzz is all about the color touch screen. It doesn't appeal to me. I don't like virtual keyboards much, but that is a personal thing. Mostly I just see it as a battery drainer. However, if you like the idea of seeing color pictures of your books and you like virtual keyboards, you may love it.

I was excited when I heard that you could lend Nook books. Then I found out that you could lend a book for 14 days one time...ever. Not so impressive. I guess I will still hope that Amazon decides to let me lend books.

2. Non-Improvements

Nook didn't fix the things that most frustrate me about the Kindle: lack of organizational tools and no page numbers. I'm beginning to figure out that the lack of page numbers is not something a device can fix. It is a problem with all ebooks, in nearly all formats, on all devices. The Kindle has location numbers and will tell me how far through a book I am (e.g. 47%) which is fine if I am just reading for myself. Part of what I do with books though is talk to other people about them. Right now I am teaching a seminar and we are allowing the students to get paper or electronic copies of the book. It is a small class and everyone has a sense of humor about it, but it is a nightmare. If the people with paper give us a phrase, we ebook folks can search for it. If we want them to find the place we are reading we have to say something like, "um...three paragraphs before the subheading..."

The lack of organizational tools though is just horrible. I know have over 100 Kindle books. I can search them by author, or title. My Kindle is set so that the books I have most recently read are on the top. I can't ask it to show me all my non-fiction books, all my mysteries, whatever. On the up side, Kindle won't let me buy a book I've already bought and the Amazon "My Collection" page automatically lists everything I have ever bought from Amazon and does allow me to keep an organized record of what I have bought.

3. Books!

Okay, so this is why we consider these things, right? We like to read books. B&N is claiming a larger books store than Amazon based primarily on a deal with Google Books to make available out of print books. Apparently, there is a way to get those books on your Kindle. If that really interests you, read this.

What I strongly recommend that you do is pull up B&N's & Amazon search pages. Now search for books you have bought or considered buying recently. Here are some of my results:

Superfreakonomics:

Kindle: $12.95

Nook: $14.99

Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series:

Kindle: all 9 available, $5.59-$9.99

Nook: numbers 5-9 available, $6.99-$20.00

Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save:

Kindle: $9.99
Nook: $17.60

Your results may differ of course, but for me the choice is still clear.

Catching Up

2009-10-11T12:57:00.002-06:00

Yesterday Gary was in a one-day men's choir event. Boys, more than 200 in all, came from high schools in two counties. At least at Gary's school, the boys had and practiced the music some before hand. The even started at 10am. They did nothing but practice, with a break for lunch, until the concert at 3pm. Brian's Drama 2 class had the two final productions of Dracula. He had to be there at noon. They performed at 1 or 1:30, scattered for dinner, and then had to be back at for the second performance at 5:00. So...I drove Gary to The City in the morning. Roland drove Brian to Schoolville at noon. We both drove to the City, stopping at Schoolville to give Brian dinner money, in order to go to the concert. then we drove back to Schoolville, at fast food, and went to see Dracula.

Both boys did well, had a good time, and, like their parents, were exhausted at the end of the day.

Gary keeps making and re-making plans for finishing high school. I had an uncomfortable conversation in the car yesterday. He asked what I thought about him doing his senior year at Our Small Town High. That sounds fine to me, but he wanted to know whether I thought he should take AP classes.

Sigh.

It was hard not to be encouraging, but I have made that mistake before. I stumbled around for a bit, pointing out that the AP classes require things like high-pressure big projects that kill your grade if you don't work on them far in advance. He responded that he needed to get used to that if he was going to go to college. Finally I said that if he took the regular classes he could go to school part time and take other classes at the community college and that might be better use of his time. He agreed that made sense, but he has in no way settled on a plan.

He still in not at all good at predicting how difficult something will be for him. He is taking an on-line course in physical science. He was sure it was going to be easy. He would just tear through it. He did the introduction and passed that test in a week. The next chapter though was about calculating forces. He can't do the math. He is frustrated because he is good at science, just not math. The school has recommended an advance student to tutor him, but he doesn't want to talk to her because she is good at math, but she doesn't know anything about physics. (Roland and I believe that he doesn't want to look "dumb" in front of a girl close to his own age.)

The tutor problem aside (which is a problem I can do something about), there is this constant issue where he expects things to be easy and then is frustrated when they are not. There are other examples, but I won't list them.

He has decided he wants to be a nurse, which is cool. However he simply does not understand that you have to do science classes and that after junior high there really is no such thing as being good at science if you are not good at math. I've encouraged him to try taking it one step at a time. He is thinking about taking EMT classes and then working to get an LPN before doing the RN program. Sigh.

I've known so many college students who have worked hard and not made it through nursing programs. I know that he is smart enough, but I don't think he has any idea of how difficult it will be.

Mostly I am pretty good at letting these things just be his problems. I really am convinced that kids (and adults) learn by trying to do things they don't do well. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they don't, but they learn much more than if they don't push themselves. Most young people discover what they want to do while actively pursuing something they learn they don't want to do. I guess it was the conversation in the car yesterday that pulled me in and made me anxious for him.

Can't Go Home

2009-10-08T21:47:00.003-06:00

Do you know this boy?

Of course many of you have seen this photo. He is Corey's son. She loves him with all her heart and he can't go home again. Not her home. He needs a new one.

He is a little boy who has been victimized. He has been abused. He struggled to understand that and in doing so he hurt his siblings. He needs a home where he is safe from being hurt and safe from hurting others.

It is going to be incredibly difficult for him. He has been given so many reasons not to trust. Moving to a new family will be unspeakably difficult. He is a child. He deserved to be a cherished and protected infant, a safe toddler, a small child full of wonder and laughter, playing, hiding from his parents and knowing they would find him and bring him home. He deserved so much, and he did not get it.

And life is simply not fair. He can't live safely with his sisters, so he must live somewhere else. No matter how much everyone wants something else for him, that fact is an unmovable object.

He can't live with his sisters. He must live somewhere else.

I've been trying to write a post since I read Corey's, but it is hard. When I write, I find I am telling Gary's story. He was hurt by those who should have protected him. He struggled to understand and in doing so, he hurt his sisters, and now he just can't go home again.

Not that home.

Healing is possible. I know that. There is a teenager in my basement, playing his guitar, who is evidence that it is possible.

The challenges will be different. For Corey's boy they will almost certainly be more difficult. He won't heal just because someone loves him. If that was what it took, he would still be living with Corey. He will need more than that.

As you think about this boy, know that though it will be difficult, it will be possible. Inside him there is pain, but there is also laughter and love.

I'll miss her so much

2009-10-07T07:48:00.002-06:00

One of my heroes died this week. She was in her mid-eighties so it is what I would call a sad death, not a tragic one. But I am sad.

She was the mother of four. Around 1980 she stood up in front of the national assembly for her church and read the coming out letter her son had written to her. She never, ever stopped lobbying. She went to conventions, was a charter member of the state's largest PFLAG chapter.

In the mid 1990's she buried son who wrote that letter after he died from AIDS.

She has been the heart of a group of us who try to have monthly potlucks.

It was at her anniversary party that I wrote this post.

The world has a Carol-sized hole in it. She was a short, slight woman, but it is a awfully big hole.

You are not hearing much from me because...

2009-10-07T07:34:00.003-06:00

...work is a giant, time-sucking monster this year.

Normally in the fall I teach Logic which is an extremely light prep for me. This semester I have three preps and none of them is logic. I have more students than I usually do, and keeping up with the grading is time-consuming. I ALSO have a student who is doing logic independently. That usually isn't a lot of work because those students usually teach themselves. She however is spending 3 hours a week in my office getting direct tutoring. I didn't realize she would need that, but too late to back out now. (I have another student who signed up for logic independently, but hasn't done a darn thing and I'm just going to fail his butt.)

Also the faculty is doing the most complete curriculum over-haul ever (really, no hyperbole) and I am not only on the curriculum committee, I am the "catalog czarina." That means it is my job to print, record, and generally stay on top of every freaking thing.

I am also still department chair, and so have to deal with things like our annual collection of assessment data, which means hounding my two recalcitrant colleagues.

Who are especially recalcitrant this year because one of them is on sabbatical and the other has just decided he is definitely going to retire. This is his last year. He has been my mentor since I got here and I would describe myself as "coping with the devastation of him leaving."

Since he is leaving, I now need to hound the dean for permission to do a search for a one year replacement, and then for another search next year for a tenure-track replacement. If we get that permission, then I will have to do the freaking search, which will take time I do not have.

Thank goodness the boys are doing well.

So, I will see you around the Internet tubes periodically, but not nearly as much as in the summer and not even as much as during previous school years.

Should I write?

2009-10-05T18:48:00.002-06:00

The state worker told me that after the agency worker and he had both written to Gary's parents, I could write them letters too.

I have no idea what to say or even if it is appropriate to say anything.

I think it would be inappropriate to say anything that might sound like I was trying to encourage them to relinquish their parental rights, and just about everything I can think of seems to fit that.

So maybe it just isn't appropriate for me to write to them. I feel comfortable with the idea of answering any questions they might have for me, but I just can't think of anything that I might say that wouldn't amount to "reasons why you should give up your kid and let us adopt him." Everything I can think of just makes me feel icky.

But I thought I would throw it out there. Is there something that it would be appropriate for me to say -- with out them having asked me a thing?

Monthly visit from the social worker

2009-10-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

I came home a bit early yesterday so I would be here when the social worker was doing her monthly visit. I know that she was supposed to be writing the first letter to Gary's parents and I wondered if she would tell me about them.

I didn't really learn anything. When I got here she was downstairs with Gary looking at his new guitar. Roland said that SW had mentioned that she had written the letters. She had asked Gary if he had heard from his parents, so apparently the letters were written long enough ago that they might have responded. She said that she told them that he was healthy and doing well.

That is what I got from Roland. He didn't ask any questions. I assume that the letters also said something about the change in the case plan, since that was the reason she was supposed to be writing them. However I don't know. My entire conversations with her consisted in her laughing about how really horrible my current letters were in a game of Lexulous (all vowels except for one V).

I asked Gary how he felt about all this. He said, "pretty indifferent." He gave me a straight-in-the-eye look, like he was daring me to challenge that. I didn't. I figure he is working pretty hard at not caring. If that is what he needs to do right now, okay.

Everything about this is awful. Waiting to see if his parents will bother to respond when they are told that the state is thinking about terminating their parental rights, and thinking there is a good chance that they won't, is just terrible.

On one hand, I can find a sympathetic way to think about them. I have a difficult time facing conflict and the possibility of failure. Both of his parents may feel that there is no chance that they could possibly win a fight for him. His mother hasn't seen him in a decade. His father could get him under different circumstances, but taking custody of Gary would mean leaving wife and young children. He isn't going to do that. I imagine them wondering what they could possibly say to Gary. I can understand why they don't call.

But on the other side is a teenage boy who knows his parents have been told their relationship will be severed. He is wondering if they will even bother to call him, and telling himself that he doesn't really care either way.