Losing Christian

Mary threw her clipboard onto the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. I watched from the front porch as the silver Buick crept down the gravel drive to the street. I meandered back inside my house. The only home that my fourteen-month-old son had ever known. I had always been aware that this was a possibility, even though the social worker said it was not likely. Today, however, she informed me that this probability was now my painful reality. They were taking away my boy. My dreams of adoption were void.

  Once inside. I leaned my back against the front door and slid to the floor. Tears already flowing. My chest was crushed under the weight of losing a baby that I had fed, diapered, rocked, and loved so deeply. A boy that was biologically related to one of my daughters. A child that had brought our large, adoptive family some unity. 

           “What’s wrong, Mom?” I glanced up to see my oldest had come in from shooting hoops, basketball on his hip.

           “He has to go back,” I said without looking up.

           “What! NO!” His shouts brought the other kids running in. Seven others. Two boys. Five girls. Two biological. Five adopted. Caucasian. Latino. Black. A crazy mixture, but all family.

Sarah sat the toddler on the floor and he immediately came to me.

           “Mamma. Sad?” I scooped him into a hug and held him until he wiggled away. The other children just watched.

           “OK,” I said, drying my eyes with my sleeve. I rose and dusted off my pants. “Here’s the scoop. Christian has to go back to his birth mother.”

            All the children spoke at once.

“Why?”

           “When?”

           “I won’t let them take him!”

           “It’s not fair!”

           I waited until they seemed to quiet a little then explained, “We have two weeks left with him. I know. It is not fair, but we are not the ones who get to decide. Birth mom has done all the things they asked her to do to get better and she deserves a second chance. If you were birth mom wouldn’t you want him back?” I headed towards the kitchen. “Right now, we need to start thinking about dinner. Dad will be home soon.”

           Sarah and Jenna opted to keep an eye on Christian while I cooked the spaghetti noodles. This was the only dinner choice that did not get complaints. Some ate it plain, some with sauce and one of my little ones had to have her noodles topped with Mount Cheese-a-manjaro. But I knew there would be no fights about eating dinner tonight. The last thing I needed was to have to the food struggle at this meal.

           As I stirred the sauce, lost in my own thoughts, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. A kiss on my neck and an arm around my waist. My husband pulled me close and whispered in my ear.

           “Just got home. James met me in the driveway and told me that Mary had been here. You OK?”

           “How can I be? They are taking our son from us.” The tears started again. I pulled away from him and grabbed a tissue. How can he be so matter of fact about this? It’s his son too!  

*****

           There was a shift in the household after that day. Suddenly the chore of watching the baby became a fight.

           “It’s my turn to watch him,” said Jenna

“But he’s sitting with me. We’re watching Clifford the Big Red Dog,” replied Sarah.

The little girls chimed in, “We were gonna play blocks with him.”

“No way!” said James, “It’s time for some male bonding us boys are goin’ outside to play ball.”

“Ball. Ball.” Christian clapped his chubby hands waddled out the back door with his brothers.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy, MOM!” The sibling rivalry was extreme. Each of the children tried to stake a special claim to their little brother so they could spend more time with him.

“Why don’t you girls go draw your brother a picture or make a special toy for him to take with him when he leaves.” I was hopeful that would keep them busy for a while.

Thud

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaah”

I ran to the back door just in time to be handed a screaming, bleeding toddler. It wasn’t a deep cut. Just a skinned knee. Probably more anger than hurt in his cry. Mad that he couldn’t make the ball do what he wanted it to do. He longed to be a big boy like his brothers.

“Mamma. Mamma.” This little one knew me as his mother. He knew his birth mother. He visited her and loved when she visited here. She always brought candy or a toy. He loved her. I knew he did. But when he was hurt, he wanted his Mamma. He wanted me. I swallowed hard to keep the tears in.

“OK, Buddy, let’s go find you a bandage.” I sat him on the counter by the sink. His legs dangled and swung. A little trickle of bright red blood ran down to his socks. It seemed that his pain had subsided. His little hands reached out to play in the water.

I handed him a cup to fill to keep his mind from what I was doing to his skinned knee. I wondered what would happen to him if birth mom should fall off the wagon again. Who would be there for him to kiss his boo boos? Would he be somewhere that could harm him more than just getting a skinned knee? OK, I’ve got to stop thinking about this right now.

I picked up my boy realizing how big he had gotten lately. Last doctor visit he weighed in at 25 pounds and was 33 inches tall. Big for his age. James was with me at that appointment and the pediatrician looked at my 14-year-old. “You’d better be nice to his little brother because someday he will be bigger than you.” Not something a teen boy wants to hear.

With his boo boo taken care of I sat in my bedroom and rocked him. I sang to him a lullaby that I wrote years earlier for my first baby.

Close your eyes, go to sleep and dream of something good

           Dream of fields to run and play in and great big trees to climb

           Dream of mommy, dream of daddy too, ‘cause they have dreams for you

           They pray you’ll know the God who loves you so and watches over you

*****

A few days later he was sleeping on my shoulder again when the doorbell rang and Chad went to answer it. I couldn’t quite hear what he said but I’m pretty sure he called her a not so nice name. He hated social workers. Never had good things to say to them or about them. I can’t blame him too much. To him they always meant upheaval and being taken to yet another home to live. I’m not sure he believed he would stay with us even though the adoption was final.

Mary brought the car seat over and I was able to strap Christian in without waking him. His transition would be better this way but what I wouldn’t give to see that beautiful smile one more time. I called the kids to come say goodbye. Chad and Sarah couldn’t bring themselves to see him leave and I didn’t pressure them. The rest kissed his cheek and told him how much they loved him. Then he was gone.

Ten minutes later, David walked in from work. He did not get to see him before he left. He did not get to give one last kiss or hug. He must be so upset. I can’t imagine how unsettled that would make me.

“Hey, how’d it go?” He sat down and put a hand on my knee. I cried. He waited.

“You just missed him. I thought maybe you’d be able to get away early so you could say goodbye.” I look my husband in the eye and noticed that his eyes were dry. I had cried every day since Mary told us he was leaving.

“Why don’t you look upset? He’s your son too. You lost your son!”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I don’t feel like I’ve lost him. I just have this feeling that he’s coming back.”

“Really?!” Somehow that simple statement gave me hope. I felt a weight lift off my chest and I could breath again. But walking past the crib or seeing a baby toy could bring the tears back. I never really knew when they would come.

We fell into a new normal with just seven kids. We had school and work and church to keep us busy. We called and talked to birth mom often. She assured us that he was doing well. We asked to see him, but she was not ready for that.

*****

Several weeks later, David came home from work looking like a kid with a secret he could not wait to tell.

“I need to talk to you alone.”

It did not take long to climb the stairs but in that time my mind sped. I went from thinking someone died, to the possibility that he lost his job, to wondering if he had talked to Mary and Christian was coming home. I shut the door to our bedroom.

“What’s wrong? Why all this secrecy? Did someone die? What’s going on?!”

He took his shoes off and sat back on the bed putting his feet up.

“You’re looking at the new minister of First Church. I got the job.” He smiled and waited for my reaction.

“That’s wonderful! I think moving to Indiana will be a good thing for the family. Living here in Ohio we are always running into old foster parents, birth parents or something. It’s hard on the kids. This will be a new start for us all.” My mind suddenly went to Christian.

“Wait,” I said, “if we move out of state then if birth mom messes up will social services send Christian to a foster home? I need to call Mary.”

David grabbed me into a tight hug. “Hold on. You can do that tomorrow. Let’s go break the news to the kids.”

“Move?!”

“I’m not goin.”

“I’ll stay with Aunt Jenny.”

“I can’t leave my friends.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Don’t you care about us at all?!”

I was trying to allow them to feel angry and get used to the idea. I noticed that I had only heard from six of them. One of my little girls was off by herself in a corner. This tough Tomboy of a daughter was sobbing. I walked over to her and sat in the floor beside my six-year-old.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?”

“You said I was gonna have to move.”

“That’s right.”

“But I don’t wanna switch mommies again.”

I had no idea that this child had never moved with out changing families. I am not sure if any of our adopted kids had. So, we started doing whatever we could to help our kids understand that we were all moving together as a family. That is every one of us except Christian.

We gave each child a moving box of their own to put toys and personal belongings in. We showed them pictures and videos of the new place. We set up times for them to say goodbye to their friends. We gave them address books to get addresses and phone numbers of their friends here. Everything was moving forward.

*****

When the phone rang the next day, I was putting together boxes. I handed the packing tape to Jenna and ran to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Julia, this is Mary. We have some news about Christian. Birth mom lost her job and apartment. They have no place to stay. She can’t keep him if she is homeless.”

“I was meaning to call you. David got a job in Indiana and we are moving in two weeks. How does that affect us? Will we still be able to get Christian back?”

“Oh my. That does present a little bit of a problem now doesn’t it? I’ll do some checking and call you back. For now, Christian is at with his Nana.”

I hung up the receiver and prayed. I wanted my boy back. I did not want to leave the state without him. If we were going to move together as a family, we needed Christian to come with us. And now that decision rested in the hands of children’s services.

I picked the phone back up.

“David, I just talked to Mary.”

When I relayed all the information to him, he did not see it as a huge barrier. All he said was, “I told you. I had a feeling he was coming back.”

It took ten days full of phone calls and paperwork to get everything arranged. And finally, one hot day in August a silver Buick drove up the gravel drive to our house. The kids were already outside playing.

“He’s here! He’s back!”

Mary could hardly park the car for the crowd of kids waiting to see their brother again.

Chad opened Mary’s car door for her, as I opened the back door and stuck my head in to see my baby. There it was. That smile with those six little teeth. Oh, how I loved that boy!

The older children gathered around each vying for a turn to hold him. But all he wanted was his mamma. He toddled toward me, almost falling twice. When he got to me, he threw his little arms around my bare leg and squeezed. He was home.