Simply A Ramble

Thanks to The Mr. who came home last night, handed me some vitamins, sent me to bed and took over the kids, I'm feeling much better. Still slightly icky, but way, way better than yesterday. I was sleeping by 7:30 last night and that sure helped.

Today we've gotten sort of good news. The Little Miss has basically graduated from Physical Therapy. That is really amazing. She started out at a physical capacity of about 1/2 her age, and now is only about a month behind in one single area. That's a lot of work for one little girl. The other sort of good news is that her mom has graduated to two visits a week. When the goal is to send them home, this is happy news. I think for the foster family it is both good and bad.

You see, it seems good because it is closer to the goal. Baby goes home. That's the goal. And yet as the foster family, you have plenty of doubts. You wonder how this will effect the child. Will they go back to some of their "bad" behaviors, like pulling out their hair or vomiting, if the visits increase? Will the parent continue to make progress with having more visits or will it prove to be too much? Will this get even more confusing to a small child? When they go home, will the parent revert to the same things that got this child into care in the first place? Will this child even make it, or will I someday see her on the 10 O'clock news as the latest victim of a drive by, overdose, or some other violence? The reality is, that's the neighborhood she'll be going back too.

Personally, as a foster mom, I don't look too far down the road. It's just simply too difficult. I don't want to think about the big question of will she go or will she stay. I don't want to think about how long I'll get to love this child or what it will be like when she's no longer a part of my every day world. As a reminder to myself, whenever I schedule her next baby well check, I always say, this will be her appointment if she's still with us.

It's a strange and funny balance to love this child as my own, to think of her as always having been here and always going to be here and yet to have the distance and know that she will be going on soon. I am quite certain that by the time I'm done being a foster mom, I will have a heart full of scars. I don't know any other way to do this. You love them full out, just as much as your own kids, and yet you know the heart ache is just around the corner. I know that each long term placement child will leave a wound in my heart when they go home, but I don't know how not to do this crazy thing.

It seems as though people are given their thing. Each has their cause, their thing they try to make a difference in the world with. Mine seems to be kids. For me, I don't know how you can't be involved with them, I don't know how you can't see the importance of what we do to them and with them. I don't know how you can't be for helping kids and in turn helping families. Kids don't ask for the messes their born into, but they're there, so shouldn't we do what we can to help them?

But if your thing is saving the environment or changing the thought patterns of a generation or political revolution, this all seems like utter nonsense.

Heck, even to me there are days that this whole thing seems like nonsense. I often think that what I do doesn't make much difference in all reality. I mean, it's only really going to have an impact on a few kids, and even then I'm really being arrogant to assume that I'm making an impact at all.