In the Light of Yesterday

When we meet someone new, the person is "born" in our sight in that very moment. We learn about their past experiences over time and incorporate that into our view of them, but it's easy to forget people come with baggage.

It's especially easy to forget the "baggage" when one blends an adopted, foster or step family. When we brought our first adopted daughter home at the age of four, I put on her bedroom wall a photo collage of our family, pets and extended family. Bethany had only been with us for a few days when she tugged me over to the photo collage and ran her fingers over each picture, brow furrowed, naming each new person in turn. Then she looked up at me and said, "But where is the REST of my family?" I double checked the photos and assured her that everyone was there. "Nope," she said, "Where's my sissy? Where's Jacky-mom? Where's my Terri-mom? Where's the REST of my FAMILY?!" Her voice was plaintive and tinged with worry.

I remember feeling a moment of panic. I didn't want pictures of those people on our daughter's wall. They wouldn't be a part of her new life. Stalling for time, I pulled out her photo album and listened as she pointed at each picture and shared bits and pieces of her life story. She lingered at the "mommy" pictures, the photos of her biological and foster mothers, tracing their outlines with little freckled fingers. I felt so sad watching her. I could feel the yearning inside of her and I KNEW that the hatred she professed to feel for me was partly born of her not having wanted a NEW mommy when she'd already had two of them. Bethany's coming to our family was OUR dream, not hers.

She helped me pull out her favorite photos and we layered them into the photo collage on her wall, and it hurt. It hurt to realize how much our new daughter had gone through, the people she had loved and lost, the people who had loved her back and those who had hurt her. It hurt because I realized we couldn't erase it all. We couldn't give her a NEW START. We could only build on what already was. She was a little four-year-old person with a history and a life that happened before we even knew she existed.

I had to fight down the desire to shush her when she talked incessantly of the past. Her language was littered with declarations of "Terri-mom did this" or "Jacky-mom did that." It was especially hard when she talked so lovingly of her biological mother, who I knew had used drugs and alcohol throughout her pregnancy, then serially abused and neglected Bethany until she lost custody of her. I also knew that she'd lost custody of Bethany's four older biological half siblings. The fact that Bethany professed to love her so was a hard thing to swallow.

It was hard to see Bethany hurting and missing the people who had been an integral part of her first four years of life. We couldn't provide contact with her birth mother because of her persistent drug use and frequent incarceration, so we returned to the foster mother.

It was a five hour drive to "Jacky-mom's" house. She lived in a ramshackle rental with peeling white paint that was snugged right up against rail road tracks. The yard was barren of grass but littered with toys, and a half broken trampoline stood in the far corner. As we turned onto the dirt driveway, Bethany's voice rose in pitch until she was screeching, frantically telling story after story in broken bits and pieces. Her frenzy was frightening to see.

On the wide porch with it's broken rail stood at least a dozen children of all races, shapes and sizes, many of them with grimy thumbs in their mouth. Jacky came through the door with a baby on each hip. We later learned that they were AIDS babies that were nearly impossible to place.

As the children screamed in joy or ran and hid or rocked in corners, we watched Bethany crawl into her Jacky-mom's lap. We watched as she patted and petted her and ran her fingers across her nose, lips, and eyes, and I had to leave so Bethany wouldn't see me crying.

I stood with tears streaming down my face, looking down at a baby, dark as night, and she stared back at me with ancient eyes as I reached out and touched her cottony hair. One of the older children sidled up to me and told me the baby's name, said she had AIDS and would die soon but that I shouldn't cry. My mind exploded with the knowledge of the hardship these children endured, with the awful reality that they'd never been sheltered from, not even for a minute. That a child should speak of the impending death of an infant with such resolution.

We went back many times to visit Bethany's Jacky-mom and I came to love and respect her hugely. Her home and yard and children may have been unkempt but there was love there. Was it enough? Not even close, but the job was HUGE and who was there to do it?

The connection with Bethany's past allowed us to see her with new eyes in the present. It wasn't the prelude to happily ever after nor did it fix anything, but it helped us to find compassion for Bethany as she struggled to make her way, exploding with anger, having tantrums and fits, loving her father with over-the-top demonstration, and rejecting me at every turn.

People come with history. It's an important fact to remember. I'm confronted by the reality of this every day, parenting our adopted children. I'm often momentarily staggered by this or that behavior or perception, then I realize that it's alien to me because it was born in a past I never knew and only makes sense in the light of yesterday.
©Just Kate, 2009