I can’t describe to you the feeling. The first official meeting of our new daughters and we are LATE! Crawling on the freeway because of a fire beside the road. We left early. Not really early, but early enough that we should have been there. During the drive, we recognized that we had originally been trying to keep our driving distance down to less than an hour and it was taking us over 2 hours to get from Oakland to Sacramento. Not that we were having second thoughts, but it didn’t seem like the perfect way to start our visits.
We called, but the phone at the current foster home was disconnected. So, we called our social worker, M-, who was stuck in the same traffic ahead of us. She talked to their social worker, K-, and we got a message back that said they were looking at the book we made them and were excited to see us. We are guessing that K- got there around 2:30, we were due at 3:00, but we didn’t arrive until 3:30. Since we were anxious and nervous, I can’t imagine what they must have been going through!
M- showed up at about 3:15, which only made things worse; they were soooo disappointed that it wasn’t us! Of course, we knew very little of this. We didn’t know whether they would be thrilled or dread the idea of moving, yet again. We had read of the resentment that some kids have of being kept from their biological parents. We didn’t know what to expect and were grateful that K-, who knows the girls would be there to guide us through the first visit.
When we finally arrived, we left the car and heard some high-pitched noises as we approached the door. I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. It sounded like a combination of a ghosts howl, whimpering and giggles. As we got close, we heard T-6 say, “Mama, Daddy…come in! We’ve been waiting!” Of course, I had to choke back tears and as we walked in the door, they jumped into our arms.
I laughed because sometime earlier that day, I had been thinking about when would be the appropriate time to suggest that they call us mom and dad and wondering about how we would introduce the idea of their grandparents to them. I don’t think that I would have chosen “mama”, I knew mine as “mom” and “mommy”. But I love the fact that they chose for us. I also love that they love to say “mama,” sometimes over and over again, as if it were one long word, “mamamamamamama.”
The rest of the visit went very well. T-4 (who is 4) has a complex emotional life and didn’t fully understand what was going on. It was clear that she needed some space to warm up to the idea, but by the end of our visit, she had. The goodbye was horribly difficult. We would be back soon, but how could they trust that? How could they possibly relate to the concept of the day-after-tomorrow?
K- had known that they would be ready for a fast transition. While it is often easier on kids to go more slowly so that they can really be prepared and say the goodbyes that they need, each goodbye that we have with the girls leaves them in emotional limbo, which must be really frustrating.
