At no time in the whole long process did I ever feel as adrift and clueless as during this process. I felt in a no (wo)man’s land betwixt and between caseworkers, procedure, and status. There were no guidelines, no protocol, no supervision. Sly, Patty and I were pretty much left to our own discretion, and we had very different ideas of what and how visitation and disclosure to the children should go. They were in favor of telling the kids that they were getting old, and so the children would have to go to a different home. I pointed out that I, too, would one day be older and perhaps that wasn’t a good thing for them to be worrying about in the coming years. Then they thought that telling them that Patty had hurt her back might help them to understand whey they needed to move -- ??? – And if I were to get hurt at some point in the raising of them – what might they think? You get the picture……… As it turned out, Patty and Sly had never gotten around to telling the children that they weren’t their birth parents. They were of the opinion that since they might not understand, truth was irrelevant and beside the point. At any rate, we muddled through as best we could – my visiting Camaro there, him visiting me in my home, and eventually including an overnight that was, looking back, arrived at much too quickly.
As I put him to bed that first night, and the inevitable tears and heartbreaking pleading to be returned to his daddy and mommy came rolling out of him, I couldn’t help but cry myself, and wanted nothing more than to jump the both of us into the car and drive the hour and a half to take him home. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of awful system I had become a part of? What pain was I inflicting upon an innocent child “for his own good” and was it really the right thing to do? Who was I to take such drastic measures and to witness and participate in such trauma? It felt all wrong. By removing him from everything and everyone familiar to him, I felt like I was part of breaking an unspoken promise to this sweet little being who had had so many promises already broken in his short life – promises that I suddenly realized I, in my upbringing, had always been able to take for granted. It broke my heart. We held hands as we lay there and cried our separate tears.
I got a little teary reading this entry, very well written, keep it up I can't wait to read more!
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