Liz’s Rants: Fostering love

A friend of mine recently entered the world of foster parenting. For years (and years) her greatest desire has been to have children. Alas it was not to be.

She and her other half recently jumped through the hoops, cut through the red tape, and otherwise did everything in their power to be foster parents.

A few weeks ago, they welcomed a girl into their home. Last night, they were approached about another child as well – a boy.

It seemed in its romantic state to be the perfect family in the making.

But as my friend has made clear, her hands are tied in many ways with the girl in constant contact with her mother and six other siblings. Almost a teenager, the girl’s goals and priorities – perhaps her lot in life – have been set in rapidly-hardening concrete.

The other child – long abandoned, seems to be facing an equally difficult reality of his own, parents who beat him physically and mentally before finally walking away from this child they brought into the world.

It’s a scenario I can not imagine. Frankly, I don’t want to imagine it.

I just know that my friends offer the total opposite for these kids, with so much love to offer. They know the value of a hard day’s work, responsibility, self-sufficiency and achievement. It seems as if by fostering these children, my friends could finally give two children the lives they so richly deserved.

“Don’t be fooled,” she wrote me last night. “Regardless of what they’ve been through – no matter how badly kids are abused or mistreated, no one ever really takes the place of Mom and Dad.”

How could that be? How could it be that an innocent child holds that bond of love with someone who regularly abuses them?

If she’s right – and much to my dismay, I suspect she is – this life lesson serves  only to solidify the importance of being a parent. And it magnifies the point that no village, regardless its size or the intelligence of those who inhabit it, is capable of loving, teaching, preventing or healing fully what begins at home and stays ingrained, regardless of the paths in life that follow.

Her statement also makes me even more thankful for my own children. More humbled by the love they show me – even when their room is a tornado in a box, even when they question my decision that they may not spend the night at a friend’s house, because I don’t know his parents.

The love of my children makes me ever more thankful for their inquisitiveness and general awe for the world around them. It makes me more cognizant of the most important role I will ever play, and reminds me of the understated and unequaled honor of being “Mom.”

-Liz

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