Every day

I think about how many women/men/couples out there could be foster parents as good as—and far better than—I am.

I'm not being hard on myself. Well, okay, I am—but it's still true.

Social services didn't call me three times in the first two weeks because I'm awesome. They called because they really needed someone and I was available.

What would it take to recruit more foster families? More diverse (racially, economically, religiously, etc.) families? What would be the effects of recruiting those families? Could the system support a large influx of families who might foster only once, as a few-months or few-years-long stage of their lives, rather than making a career out of fostering?

For the RSS haters

Blogger lets you email your posts to a list of up to 10 people. I only started using it because a friend's in China and she can't access my blog right now. But that still leaves 9 slots, and I know a lot of my friends/family don't particularly like RSS.

So, let me know if you want to get this blog by email instead. I doubt I'm gonna get more than 9 people who want on the list for now.

Self-care

I can't tell you the number of times people have said to me, "You won't be any good to Rocky and CeCe if you burn out."

I don't disagree. It's just that it's a hard, almost impossible task to decide what is intelligent burnout prevention and what is plain selfishness.

Playing our parts

This whole time, CeCe has been pretending to be scared and grossed out by bugs/slugs/etc., while I've been pretending not to be scared and grossed out.

We're each playing the role we think we're supposed to play: she—cute little girl; I—mature, collected mother. We're both so good at it that no one would ever guess we're acting.

We discovered this the other day while reading a book about bugs and had a great laugh over it.

"Tell her that she needs to get a man

...and give those girls a daddy."

You don't have to be awesome to foster

but it helps if you have friends and family who are.

I won't go into a long thing about my issues with self-sufficiency and asking for and accepting help, because that would just detract from the main point, which is:

This wouldn't be working if it weren't for the people who step up over and over again, the people who keep giving to me even though I don't have a lot to give back right now.

I made this (incredibly unexpected) decision to do foster care, and in a way I was making that decision for everyone. I knew that before, but I understand it so much better now. So: thank you.

Too bad, commerce committee

I already have a car named Tesla.

Yes, in case you were wondering

it is in fact crazy fun to receive a check in the mail and use it to buy whatever clothes I want for a six-year-old and a ten-year-old girl.

Did you think I let them pick their own clothes? Not a chance—they wear what I buy and they like it.

It makes it doubly fun that they can wear colors I can't even be in the same room with without looking washed out. Pass the neon, please.

This sums up so much

Me: Does anyone want to take the trash out for me?

CeCe: I'll do it.

Me: Thanks, honey.

CeCe: ...Mommy, can you go with me?

Me: What? I thought you were going to do it for me.

CeCe: But I won't have anyone to talk to...

Sweet dreams

My last words to the girls each night are usually something along the lines of, "Love you lovely ladies!"

But depending on my level of frustration on that particular evening, the phrasing might be altered. Rocky and CeCe have learned to just cheerfully parrot whatever I say back to me:

"Goodnight, I love you psycho ladies!"

"Goodnight, I love you psycho Mommy!"

This is the way the world ends

The last thing I ever expected in foster care was Rocky, curled up next to me on the couch, checking my whispered recitation of The Hollow Men against the text.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer.

Lest you think I'm a total pushover

I made tofu the other day. The girls ate one bite each without prompting, and agreed that next time they want three bites.

The basic task of the foster parent

so far, as far as I can tell:

is to confront, daily, our own weaknesses, limitations, and moral failings, and, instead of falling into pointless self-abuse about them, learning to work within and around them.

Now that I'm fostering, I believe more than ever that fostering doesn't take "a special kind of person." It takes an average kind of person who's willing, for the sake of a child, to make the best they can of the randomness, ambiguity, and ethical complexity of foster care.

Someone has to take on that responsibility, and it might as well be you. Or me. We're not angels, but we're better than the alternative, which is crazy foster parents, or bad foster parents, or no foster parents.

If a vegetarian bakes chicken in a forest...

...at least her foster daughter will give her an award for perseverance.

Day care

One of the things I knew I'd struggle with as a single parent was putting my foster kid in day care or after-school care.

I know, I know, millions of good parents do it. But I never went to day care or after-school care, and not providing the same number of hours of parenting to my own kids just felt like slacking off.

Rocky and CeCe have a 10-hour day at school, and at first I felt really guilty about it. But after a couple of months, I'm seeing that my guilt is about me, not them.

Rocky and CeCe are fine in before- and after-school care—better than fine. CeCe often asks me to pick her up early, but then when I come at the same time as usual, she doesn't want to leave. Rocky doesn't usually drag her feet like CeCe does, but even she admitted the other day that she'd be fine with getting picked up at the last minute before after-school closes.

The girls love the structure, activity, and social stimulation of after-school. It's hard for my introvert mind to grasp, but they really are better off there than they would be with me if I were a stay-at-home mother.

Like they teach you in MAPP class, foster care is about being flexible and willing to do things differently from how you've done them in the past.

The biggest adjustment

is learning to pack the day with things to do. Down time is Rocky and CeCe's kryptonite. A Sunday morning where we have nowhere to be until 12:00 or 1:00 is by far the hardest part of the week.

Of course, the more we do, the further behind I get on cleaning and house maintenance and paperwork and friendships and and and...

Everything in the single-foster-parent life is a tradeoff, and while I'm slowly getting better and smarter at it, I'm still not anywhere close to the point where it feels like it's working and sustainable.

I cringe every time

...I think about describing Rocky and CeCe as gifts to me. They aren't gifts—they're people, and obviously foster care is no gift to them. It would be better for them if they'd never had to be placed in a stranger's home at all.

But the only thing I wanted for my thirtieth birthday was to be doing good, meaningful work, and Rocky and CeCe gave that gift to me.

As I've said a hundred times, I am so incredibly privileged—yes, even alongside all the hardship and sacrifice of being a single foster mother of two.

It's the best gift. It's everything. I hope I can be grateful for it without minimizing what it is to Rocky and CeCe.

Fast forward

Rocky picked up Twilight last night.

Why, Rocky, why? Don't you realize I'm too young? I was supposed to have until I was at least 40 to prep my speech.

Enjoy this for what it is, but remember, in real life a guy who acts like Edward is probably some combination of 1) too depressed to date, 2) gay, and 3) a psycho stalker. Also, in real life teenage boys are not "the one." Why? Simply because they are teenage boys. I know that's impossible to grasp when you are in fourth grade, but try, honey, try.

By "parenting changes you"

do they mean the part where I want to throw out all my colorful skirts and start dressing industrial punk, or the part where I started reading Reddit every day?

Either way, I'm not terribly impressed with the changes wrought by parenting. My old self had higher standards.

As for "you get better at parenting," I'm pretty sure that's just code for, "you get better at sneaking junk food when the kids won't see."

If there's more to it, by all means please clue me in...

Forgiving my pre-kid self

Back then I used to feel so guilty for not fully appreciating the things I had: down time, exercise time, money for travel, etc. I knew there were people who wanted those things desperately and hadn't had them in years. I was sure that someday I'd be castigating myself for not enjoying what I had while I had it—after all, that's what so many parents say happens after you have kids.

In my experience: dead wrong. Yes, I miss the luxuries I once had. But I don't blame my old self for not appreciating them more. Why would I have? Those things are meaningful only in contrast to the experience of not having them.

Someday I expect to get those luxuries back, and I'm sure the way I enjoy them will be forever changed. I don't think there's any way I could have mentally engineered that experience just by getting up every day and telling myself: Be grateful!