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Wooden Warships on the Medway (Man O'War at Anchor), by William Lionel Wyllie (1851–1931)
The case worker is driving Ray back to daycare from a visit.
We’re on the western edge of the big storm, and it’s coming down at a good clip. The roads are slick.
I’m a nervous wreck.
Agh
Holtzy's first visit is in progress. I'm taking Juni and Bean Sprout to get lunch. S got tricked into supervising alone at the DCS office because bio mom doesn't know how to care for Holtzy. Not knowing all that is happening is killing me.
Ray’s parents get one one-hour visit a week with him. It’s been that way since he got out of this hospital after he was born. His dad is very consistent about coming; his mom, only slightly less so.
Normally, visits are on Tuesdays. This week, my case worker called me a few hours before she would have picked Ray up from daycare to let me know his mom and dad had requested the visit be rescheduled. So we settled on Thursday at the same time, same location (an area library).
That was today. I’m sure you can imagine my surprise and disappointment when I got a text message from the case worker 10 minutes after the visit was supposed to start that Ray’s mom and dad were no-shows. From what I gather, it appeared they simply forgot.
I wasn’t annoyed (and neither was my case worker). I wasn’t upset or angry.
I was just sad. For them and for Ray. Sad that the three of them have never really had a chance to bond. Sad that their son is barely part of their lives.
Ray is the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think of when I go to bed each night. I can’t imagine forgetting my one chance in a week to go see him – in fact, I spend much of each day missing him and looking forward to seeing him when I finish work.
When I pick Ray up from daycare each weekday, as soon as he catches sight of me, he squeals and starts flapping his arms in excitement – and continues this until I pick him up. From what the case worker tells me, when he sees his parents at visits, he often cries – and they have a difficult time consoling him.
Ray is nearly 9 months old. He has been in foster care since he was five days old. He has never lived in the same home as his birth parents.
Foster care is tough.
Ray had a visit today. His parents are incredibly sweet people. I texted with his agency worker, who supervises visits, and she said they love reading the notes I send each week and were particularly excited to read that he's taking swimming lessons. They also showed her every photo of him that I sent (four today... and I need to get more printed...). Ray also charmed them and the agency worker with his ability to sit well without support - a skill he seems to have mastered practically overnight! I have high hopes that maybe - MAYBE - Ray's parents and I can have the idyllic, mutually respectful, minimal drama, open adoption relationship that I think many of us who adopt through foster care wish to have with our children's birth parents.
Didn't go far enough
I drove Ray to his visit today for the first time in a few months. His agency caseworker is on vacation and her colleague is supervising the visit, but I wasn't comfortable having a complete stranger transport him to and from daycare, especially if the weather was at all dicey. Ray has his visits in the children's area of an area library. When the worker got there, I excused myself to an adjacent room - his visits are only an hour so I didn't want to leave the building. I didn't go far enough, though. I could hear him crying and I couldn't go to him to help him. I could also hear snippets of Ray's dad talking to the worker (he said his mom was sick, so it was just dad today). The worker poked her head in to where I was briefly to ask if there was water in the bag to make a bottle (of course), and I assume she helped Ray's dad make said bottle... Thankfully, Ray seemed to be OK most of the time. And if he got really worked up, I wouldn't have sat back - even if that meant me getting into trouble. Chalk this up as one more reason for me to not transport to visits...
