A few months ago, I was reading through the comments posted to an article I wrote about my late mother and grandmother, and was stopped in my tracks by an incredibly detailed recollection of my childhood.
The writer described my mother playing the piano in our living room while I belted out songs, and walks with my sisters to our grandparents’ house down the block. She wrote that my mother, grandparents and sisters were “rare jewels” in her life, and from the moment she met our family she wanted a family of her own; and when she gave birth to her daughter years later, she named her after my youngest sister.
The comment was written by the first foster child my family took in — nearly 50 years ago.
“Your family played a big role to me in my life, for which I will forever be so thankful! Not only did your mom take care of her four children but she took in foster children and gave each of them love and her time as well,” Vicki wrote.
I was only about 5 years old when Vicki came to live with us in our modern house in Florida, and so have scant memories of her from that period, but she’s made a point of keeping in touch with my sisters and me from childhood to middle-age, from marriages to divorces and deaths. A few years back, when I was going through a crisis, I picked up the phone to hear Vicki’s sweet voice calling to offer support.
In a recent exchange, Vicki, now 62, recently wrote, “If you are ever part of a loving and caring foster family, it makes a major impact on your life in such a positive manner. While we all live in different states, and have for many years, and many have passed on, I will no doubt always feel that magical connection and bond, and realize every day just how truly blessed I have been due to the kindness of one very special lady, your mom.”
When Vicki wrote about the positive impact on her life, she wasn’t only talking about her own.
Many years after she lived with my family, Vicki became a foster mother to her cousin’s daughter, whom she eventually adopted; and for the past seven years she has cared for her youngest granddaughter, who goes off to college next year. Vicki’s experience illustrates one of the greatest gifts of fostering: It’s not unusual for foster children or the children of foster parents to grow up and foster themselves.
From the time I was a very little girl my mother was a foster parent. It was something she felt strongly about. Born into an affluent and stable home, my mother was devoted to helping children as an adult. Vicki and a number of other children came to live with us in Florida. When we moved to the Upper Valley in the early 1970s, we again became a foster family.
It wasn’t always easy. We already had a full house with mother, stepfather and four little girls all going in different directions. But my mother somehow made it work. And then it didn’t. At some point my three sisters and I felt that we weren’t getting enough attention from our mother and we asked to stop being a foster family. We had family issues of our own, and needed her to focus on us. So we stopped taking in foster kids on a regular basis, but we continued to be a foster family.
We became the family of last resort, meaning we got the most hard-to-place children and most traumatic cases. I remember three children coming to us late one night after their father had killed their mother. I remember little rebellious boys, masking pain with bravado and fighting my mother’s rules tooth and nail. I remember a 3-year-old girl named Ceci sleeping in her crib in my bedroom when I was in middle school. Each case was more heartbreaking than the last.
Fostering children is not simply opening your home; it’s opening your heart. It involves sacrifice. It can be emotionally exhausting. And it can literally change a child’s life. I’m reminded of this every time I think of Vicki, who grew into a wonderful, loving and compassionate woman.
Not unlike her foster mother.