There is no time in my life other than this one as Ty's foster dad when I have been so acutely aware of strangers and their potential impact on our lives. Juan and I have encountered what seems like an army of people, many who claim to have his and our interests in mind. We've met others who, on the surface, seem to have the best of intentions and give us no reason to believe otherwise. But who are these people? What roles do they play? What power do they have to shape our lives?
Friend or foe?
Maybe it's the sheer number of new faces that engenders my suspicion. Eight months and 20-plus people later and the names and roles are a blur - caseworkers, their supervisors, attorneys, doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, continuing placement workers. You need a chart and flowsheet diagram just to attempt to understand the purpose and relatedness of all these people.
The current caseworker is undoubtedly the most confounding of them all. Technically speaking, she is the worker for Ty and his biological family. Unofficially, I think her role is to keep us as deep in the dark as possible about Ty's case. She offers nothing and, if it were possible, would answer even less. For instance, she picks Ty up for weekly visits with his siblings and parents, she never tells us how the visits go. On any given visit-day, we're not even sure if they occur. We are left to figure out the outcome based on a combination of things - the time she returns Ty, the amount of food, drink, and diapers remaining in the diaper bag, Ty's level of crankiness, and the day's horoscope and biorhythm readings.
This caseworker mentions the need for us to act as part of "the team" - one that works towards reunification - yet she provides no information about a number of things - disposition hearings (a longhanded way of saying "Ty's fate"), team meetings, or approaching milestones. Her attitude is inconsistent. Her email correspondences verge on being stoic, full of agency lingo about processes, policies, and imperatives. When she visits us at our home, she plays the role of the happy, child-loving young woman. She calls Ty "Boo" and speaks to him in a sing-songy voice that grates on my ears worse than the sound of a dentist's drill. "Boo?", I've found myself thinking. "I got your #$%@! Boo." I am uncomfortable with and angry about her familiarity, forced or not, with Ty while she provides little if any help and information to us. To her credit though, we've heard that she has told others that we are good foster parents and that Ty is very attached to us. So, who is she and what is she up to?
I don't mean to focus on her though. Maybe because she is our primary contact with social services, she then gets to be the object of my frustration and anger, as well as my suspicion and distrust. I've got enough of that lately to go around though, and sometimes it's directed at others in this foster-maybe-we'll-adopt process. At the last two hearings, I remember standing with Juan in the waiting area outside the mediation room, watching people go in and out of the room, and I wondered about their involvement in the case and in our lives. I noticed how they walked by, a couple people acknowledging us and others ignoring us completely. Some had in common an expression of busyness but in that self-important way - faces that said "I'm doing something important here. Don't waste my time." I guess you start to feel important when you have others' lives in your hands. What power. What authority. These people...theses strangers can decide Ty's fate...our fate.
I end up having the same questions about them. Who are you? Where do you fit in all this? Do you care at all about our lives?
Strangers, of course, are everywhere. I notice them more and I blame that on my new status as parent to a ridiculously cute, mobile little man. Very recently, Ty got over his stranger anxiety. Now, he's all grins and inquisitivity. Ty flashes that dimpled-grin in an instant and before you know it, some stranger is coming over to exclaim how cute he is. A woman who lives a couple of blocks from our house practically drove her car onto the curb one day in an attempt to pull over and talk to us about Ty. "You must let me babysit sometime!" she gushed while her husband looked on. I had never talked to or even seen her before that moment. Babysit Ty? Shouldn't we at least know each other for a full half-hour before she offers to raise my kid?
Ty has no problem waddling over to strangers and striking up an interaction. At times, I stand there uncomfortably. Not everyone always wants to deal with a 17-month old kid no matter how cute he might be. And Ty isn't exactly the best judge of character. My protective, increasingly paranoid nature kicks in. Child beater? Pedophile? Gingerbread house witch? Who is this person and what's up with the niceness towards Ty?
Ok, maybe I am paranoid. Demons are not lurking in every shadow waiting to snatch Ty into the darkness and devour his childhood soul. I tell myself that I do have reason for caution and suspicion. Like many of you reading this, I didn't make it through childhood without some bumps and bruises. I look back at my days as a little one and marvel at the level of mean-spiritedness and sometimes downright viciousness that adults sometimes displayed. One of my most vivid memories as a child was when an "uncle" took me to the playground and conviced me to jump from the top of the jungle-gym. "I'll catch you," he said. So, after some hesitation...I jumped. Unfortunately, he didn't fulfill his end of the bargain. I ended up gasping for air as I landed face down in the hard, hot sand, the wind totally knocked out of me. Talk about an empathic failure. There were a few other moments like that, moments when I was reminded that people are not always kind and that motives and issues are not always what they may seem. And even family and friends can be strangers sometimes.
Intellectually, I know I can't protect Ty and my family from hurt. And I wonder if my new-found suspicion and slight paranoia is more of a response to a lack of control than anything else. There is nothing we can really do about social services - the process, the cast of characters or the issues and motivations they present. I feel stuck, waiting and watching for signs that tell me that things will be ok. I scrutinize others in the hopes that I'll weed out the foes from the friends and make it through one more day, bruise-less and bump-free.
I'm sure there's a better way to go about things, but for now, this is all I got.
-- D
