The Tooth Fairy is Getting Pretty Lazy

About a year ago, right after the girls came to live with us, Mo lost a tooth.  Not an especially important tooth, just some lower incisor or whatever that popped out when she was playing.  She’d lost plenty already, so beyond the potential for some fairy scratch, it wasn’t a huge deal for her.  She just shrugged, brought it inside, handed it to us, and promptly went about her business. 

But for Amy and me, it was a HUGE deal.  It was the first lost tooth we’d ever dealt with as parents.  And because we had doubted we would ever be able to have this experience, that tiny, nearly weightless tooth in the palm of my hand made my heart pound and my breath catch in my chest.  We both looked at it for a while, neither of us saying much, passing it back and forth and rolling it between our thumb and forefingers, doe-eyed and contented.

That night, we reminded Mo probably thirty times to make sure and put the tooth under her pillow.  I have no idea what her previous Tooth Fairy experiences had been, probably not much if anything, so I think she was rather dubious of the whole affair.  She asked a few times if we really thought the Tooth Fairy was coming.

God damn right she’s coming.  I had already been to the ATM at the nearest gas station, where a tattooed tweaker broke my twenty and probably wondered what the hell I was on to be so happy.

When bedtime rolled around, I read to them for a long, long time, ensuring they were soundly asleep before daring to make my exit.  You see, at the beginning, Mo had an extremely difficult time falling asleep.  She was scared someone was going to break into the house and hurt her.  Most likely this fear was the remnant of some left over memory from her previous life, but since she never could pin the fear down to one specific occurrence, it is difficult to know for sure.  When I say she was scared at night, I don’t mean the normal “Mommy I’m scared of the dark” fear.  This was abject terror.  And when it took hold, she was so panicked that her fight-or-flight instinct took hold and she was a different kid altogether, hyperventilating and kicking and thrashing and saying anything, anything, she could to keep from having to stay in her dark bedroom.  Night lights didn’t help, because she thought they were going to catch on fire.  Shay (who’s never had even a moment of fear at bedtime…come to think about it, in any circumstance) even began sleeping with her in the double-sized bottom bunk of the bunk beds we bought them.  That helped a little, but at first, not much.  So most nights, in order to avoid this fear fiasco the moment I turned off the light, I had to sit and read for around forty five minutes to ensure Mo was actually asleep, because she’d get so panicked even at the idea that the lights were going off she’d keep herself awake.   And even then, about half the time, she’d either wake up when I left and begin hyperventilating and thrashing around, or she’d show up at our bedside in the middle of the night freaking out.  On those happy occasions, I had to walk her upstairs and put her to bed, prying her arms from mine.  Then I’d have to sit guard at the top of the stairs until she slept, which on more than one occasion left me asleep on the cold hardwood floor in front of their bedroom until dawn began to break.  If she heard me get up to leave, the process would repeat itself.  It was pretty brutal those first few months.  Luckily she’s gotten over a lot of that fear and will sleep through the night around 99% of the time, but Shay still sleeps with her in that bottom bunk.  Mo isn’t quite ready to let go of that yet.

I tell this story so it is clear how tenuous the Tooth Fairy operation really was.  Sneaking into a little girl’s room who is already absolutely petrified and is only barely asleep most of the night is risky business.  But it was extremely important the Tooth Fairy came for her tooth.  Not just because Amy and I wanted to have that cute little experience, but because these girls had had nothing but bitter disappointment their entire lives.  And they had to know that in our house, with us, they finally get to be kids.  And in my book, that means the Tooth Fairy comes to visit them.  Always.  Without exception.  There was more at stake than our parental yearnings.  It may seem overstated, but the tone for the rest of their childhood hung in the balance.  I was going to get up there and put that fucking money under her pillow, even if it killed me.

And good Lord, it almost did. 

After thirty pages of Harry Potter, the girls were snoring their little kid snores.  I snuck out as quietly as possible, made my way downstairs, and began to get ready for Operation Tooth Fairy.  I set out the money on the nightstand and my sneaky clothes (black tee shirt and shorts, you know, for camouflage, and my mostest quietest slippers) in the nearby chair.  I set my alarm for 3:00 a.m., got into bed, and tried to fall asleep.  

It didn’t work too well.

I kept waking up, thinking that I had slept through the alarm and that Mo was going to find, yet again, that the Tooth Fairy had failed to visit.  This anxiety kept me awake, watching the red digital numbers tick away in the darkness until it was time.

It took FOREVER to get up the stairs.  With each creak caused by an errant footfall, I stopped and listened intently into the silence, waiting for the scared whimpers that would surely come should she wake.  When I finally made it into their room, I listened to both of them breathe.  My ears rung and my chest pounded as I approached the bed.

It was then that I remembered that Mo had shoved that damn tooth sack deep under her pillow.  How was I going to get it?

But as I was thinking about how to best slide the pillow out from under her head, Mo began to shift beneath the covers.  I just knew that at any second she’d stop moving, stare at the figure looming next to her bed, and lose her shit. 

Instead, she just rolled over…and off the pillow.  Jackpot!

Without further delay, I got the sack, replaced the tooth with the dough, and hurried from the room. 

Mission Accomplished.

In the morning, Mo was happy to find the money.  I was happy to have been able to give that to her, even though I was absolutely exhausted.

Fast forward one year.  Or, more appropriately, fifteen visits from the Tooth Fairy.

At this point, Mo has lost most of her teeth.  She still has a few left to lose, but they are far and few between.  Shay, on the other hand, is losing all her damn teeth at once.  You should see this kid.  She is missing ALL FOUR OF HER TOP FRONT TEETH, and a bunch on the bottom.  She looks like a hockey player.  Or an old lady who forgot to put in her partials.  Seriously.  She can barely eat.  Amy and I think that it might have something to do with improved nutrition, but what the hell do we know.  All I know is that right now, she’s downstairs watching TV, tonguing yet another loose tooth about to fall out of her skull. 

When I was a kid, we had a cat named Liz.  Liz was diagnosed with feline leukemia when she was one, and the vet told us she only had about a year to live.  Twenty years later, my dad finally had her put to sleep.

I think that vet was full of shit.

In any event, Liz, due to her multiple ailments, only had a few teeth.  We’re not sure which ones because no one wanted to get close to her mouth, which constantly dripped drool that stank like a dumpster behind a seafood restaurant.  But she was a good cat.  Well, as cats go, anyway.  She did, however, have an abnormally strong affinity for McDonald’s fries.  Every time Dad came home with a bag, that damned old cat would just howl at his feet, nearly tripping him as he walked.  When we’d sit down, Liz would howl from beneath our chairs until one of us would set a fry at the edge of the table.

The howling would immediately stop, and a second or two later, a little white paw would appear over the edge, pat around a few times, find the fry, then paw it down to the ground where she’d take it up into her inhospitable, toothless mouth.  Now, I know this is kind of mean, but after she’d have it clenched between her gums and hanging out of her mouth like a soggy cigar, one of us would invariably grab the end of it and begin pulling it out of her mouth.  That poor cat would try in vain to clench down on it with teeth she only thought she had until she lost control of it completely.  We’d laugh, give it back to her, and she’d run off to some corner with it and gum it down.  A few minutes later, she’d be back and the process would repeat.

It’s hard not to think of old Liz cat when I watch Shay eat.

As one could imagine, at this point, I’ve played the Tooth Fairy often.  And man, is that Tooth Fairy getting lazy.

After that first tooth and realizing how lucky I was to retrieve the bag under Mo’s pillow, I began coming up with new rules.  The first was:

“Don’t put the bag so far under your pillow!  If it’s too far under there, she’ll just go on to the next house because she won’t want to wake you.  Put it next to your pillow.”

Which led to:

“Just hang the bag from the end of your bed so she’ll know where it is.”

The tooth before last stands in stark contrast to the first.  Shay lost one of those front teeth on a Saturday.  Football was on and I had just had some friends over to brew some beer.  I had imbibed some.  Not terribly, but enough to make the Tooth Fairy a little less careful when making a visit.  That dumpy sprite tripped on a ton of shoes and other random crap on the way to the girls’ room (which on a few occasions showed how foul the Tooth Fairy’s mouth can be).  She no longer worried so much about the creaks and groans on the stairs, no longer worried so much about the speed in which she carried out her oh-so-important duties.  In fact, before she went into the girls’ room, she made a pit stop in the adjacent bathroom and urinated loudly in the toilet for a solid minute.  Finally she made it into the girls’ room and found the bag lying on the floor beside the bed (per the new instructions), fumbled with the tied drawstrings, fished out the tooth, and threw in two bucks (some of which was loose change).  At that point, the bag slipped from her hands and it fell heavily upon the floor.  With a somewhat whispered “oh, God damn it!” she pushed the bag near the bed and fumbled her way back through the darkness and downstairs.

 The loss of Shay’s most recent tooth left her with only one up top out of four.  For some reason, that single tooth was far more off-putting than all of them gone.  But it was hilarious to watch her carefully and tenderly brush it before bed, as if it were her baby.  We joked that we could use her as a can opener, and she took it literally and of course wanted us to try it.  We did not.

And this last one was the pinnacle of laziness.  Shay’s last front tooth fell out of her head on Sunday afternoon while she was outside playing, which (thankfully) evened out her gum line.  Anyway, lots had gone on that day, and we kind of forgot about the tooth.  As a result, I forgot to go to the ATM and all we had were dirty pennies and nickels sitting at the bottom of our car cupholders. 

Don’t worry, I didn’t give them to her. 

Instead, that night, I asked her what time she had lost the tooth.

“Uh, I don’t know…this afternoon.  Like, maybe two.”

“Oh.  Well, honey, I doubt the Tooth Fairy is going to come tonight.  It’s the weekend, and she doesn’t check her computer for orders past noon on Sundays, so I doubt that it made it into tonight’s bag.  Like UPS or something.  But I’m sure it’ll be in tomorrow night’s bag.”

She was a little sad at first, but then forgot all about it and went to bed.  Amy glanced at me a little sideways over that one, but the Tooth Fairy made it the next night and paid double for the delay.

I guess I should feel bad, or at least, worse than I do.  But we’re getting into a grove of normalcy, and in that normalcy, things slip.  They just do.  And you know, we’re happy with that normalcy.  We don’t feel like a makeshift family anymore, like we did those first few months when we were all getting to know one another and figuring out how this was all going to work out.  It’s working out on its own and it’s going well.  Very well.  We’re a family that is going to finally be permanent.  I didn’t mention it before, but the girls’ bio mom managed to lose all rights to the kids and they are officially up for adoption. When we got that news, we had mixed emotions.  Not because we had doubts about adopting these kids, which we are in the process of doing, but because it’s kind of hard to be so happy about something so pathetic.  This woman doesn’t know, nor will she ever know, how awesome these girls are.  But we do.  And we’re ready to have them in our lives forever. 

And I get to continue being the Tooth Fairy, lazy or not, until these kids don’t have any more teeth to lose.  

World's Okay-est Dad

There is a phrase that comes out of my mouth at least four times a week since the girls have come to live us.  It spills from my brain and out of my mouth before I can stop it, like an escape-artist dog which, if even the slightest lapse in care is taken to hold it back when the front door cracks open, bolts out into the unfenced world, free to do its damage until it is dragged back into the house by its collar.  It’s bound to happen.  It is a phrase born of fatigue. 

Born of irritation.

Born of being a parent.

 “I…don’t…care!”

Man.  I typed these three words, and on their own, out of context, they look so harsh.  In retrospect, probably the harshest thing one could say to a kid.  I mean, if there was ever a duty as a parent, it’s to care, right?  Perhaps someone reading this might say, “Oh, Matt, really, you shouldn’t say that to those girls.”

Well, okay.  The next time we’re running late for school and Mo comes into the kitchen, still half-dressed and sobbing, I’ll take a knee and say, “What’s the problem, sport?” 

“I…can’t…find…my…orange…sock!”

“I see, I see.  Now why do you need the orange sock today?  You have a pink one on the other foot.”

“Be… cause … my friends … we … we were going … to all wear… orange … and … and … pink … socks …tooodaaaaaaay! Eeeeeeeeee!”

Rubbing my chin thoughtfully, I’ll say, “Hmmm.  That is a problem.  Well, let’s take ten minutes to look for an orange sock, okay?  Because I’m sure that’s extremely important, and I’m sure your friends will all remember the sock pact you made on the playground two weeks ago.”

“Oh…kay…”

Sure.  That would be what “World’s Greatest Dad” would do.  But really, it went down like this.

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?!?”

“I…can’t…find…my…orange…sock!”

“Sock?  Orange sock?  You don’t have any orange socks. And you’ve already got a pink one on!  Where’s the other pink one?”

“But…I have to have one!  I promised my friends!  We were all going to wear…”

“Oh, for the love of God!  I don’t care!  Get dressed already!  We gotta go!”

“But…”

“I…don’t…care!  Go!”

And then she cries harder, wailing from every corner of the house as she mopes and moves as slowly as possible.  And when she walks past me, she turns up the water works on command and looks squarely at me so I can see that she is still crying, and that she’s still so very, very angry with me.  In the car, she’s silent the whole way to school because I’m such a huge prick for not letting her find a sock that doesn’t exist.

Meanwhile, Shay is just chattering away, happier’n hell.  Because if it isn’t one, it’s the other.

On average, kids’ moods are mellow and easy going.  Now, I said on average.  Over time.  If I were to take a data set and assign a number value from “1” to “10”, with “1” being utterly despondent and “10” being a goddamned screeching maniac jumping out of their skin with joy, the set would look like this:

1,10,1,10,1,10,1,10,10,1,1,10,1,10,1,10,1,1,10,1…5 (the 5 is fifteen seconds prior to falling asleep).

Average that out, you get 5.  Juuuuust right.  So the problem isn’t the average, it’s the variance.  That’s where I go insane.  And to add insult to injury, when one of them is at a “1”, the other is at a “10.”  Or so it seems.

“Why can’t they always be at a 5?” says every parent ever.

I’ve found this leads to stress.  And with stress, comes questionable parenting.  If one were to score my parenting moments over time using fictitious 1950’s dads as the scale, with “1”being Don Draper from Mad Men (basically a sociopath with zero fatherly instincts) and a “10” being Ward Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver, my data set would look something like this:

8,4,7,5,4,3,7,8,6,9,5,4,7,6…and so on.  The variance isn’t as drastic as the kids’ moods…I’d like to think I’ve never dipped below a 3 and that I’m north of 6, but there are times where I’ve thought,

“Prob’ly should’a handled that a little differently.”

Case in point.  Saturday morning, about a month ago.  We had just adopted another Basset hound from some lady up in Kansas.  I was going to leave that morning to drive up to Liberal to pick him up. 

A four hour drive.  One way. 

So as I was facing an all-day affair, I wasn’t in the best mood.  I walk into the living room with my cereal.  Shay is watching some kid’s movie on the big TV.  I tell her that she needs to turn it off for a few minutes so I can watch something while I eat, and that she can go into the bedroom and watch her show in there.

“But I was here first!” she said, pouting. 

Now, we’d had this discussion before.  Multiple times.  When I actually get five minutes to sit down and shove some food in my mouth, I get to do it in front of a show that I want to watch.  I do.  Or Amy does.  Not her or her sister.  They can go into another room and watch, but the big TV in the living room is ours when we want it. 

Much like the “I don’t care,” written out this little argument about the television seems fairly petty.  But it’s just one of the rules we made.  I don’t believe in having kids just run amuck in the house.  Nothing drives me more insane than watching a parent being walked on (or in some cases, out-right bullied by their kids) just to avoid conflict or whining or temper tantrums.  The establishment of boundaries and unrelenting constancy in enforcing them is paramount.  Anyway.       

“Don’t give me that, Shay.  You know the rule.  I’m going up to Kansas to get the new dog today, so how ‘bout you let me watch something I want to watch for a few minutes, then you can come back.  Okay?”

“No.”

Uh oh.  My hackles just went up. 

“You know, Shay, when it sounds like I’m asking for your permission to change the channel, I’m not really asking.  I’m just being polite.  I’m telling you. It’s gonna happen with or without your consent.”

At this, she flips over in the chair and begins to moan.  Ignoring her, I walk over to her chair, take the remote, and switch it to the news or whatever.  She sits bolt upright, looks me dead in the eye, and says, “I can’t wait for you to leave!”

Yup.  That did it.  I turned and said, “Why don’t you quit being such a butthole?”

That’s right.  I called a little seven year old girl a butthole. 

Judges say:  “3.”

Her eyes went wide and she yelled, “Hey!”

“Well…uh…stop being mean to me, and I won’t be mean back!”

Good one, dipshit.  What are you, in third grade? 

She sat there glaring at me, and I took it, because I deserved it.  So I just got up and left.  Ran away.  Amy was in the kitchen.  She’d overheard the amazing parenting I had just done, and quietly asked, “Did you really just call her a butthole?”

Looking at the ground and kicking my feet, I said, “Yes… but she was being one.”

“Jesus, Matt.”

“I know.  Good thing I’m bringing a new dog home today.  Hopefully she’ll forget it.”

“Uh huh.”

For that matter, I hoped Amy would forget it.  Not my best moment.

Fast forward a week.

The girls were having a really rough time.  CPS had taken visitation rights away from their bio mom (won’t get in to it, but it was necessary), and the girls had been told this fact by their therapist a few days prior.  They always seem to take this kind of news in stride, but it shows up later.  Mo will get sad, but she’ll at least talk about it, and then she feels better.  Shay won’t even hear about it.  She’ll literally run from the room if it comes up.  It’s heartbreaking.  She seems fine, but then she starts acting out.

So one afternoon, on a rare occasion when I beat Amy and the kids home, and I’m rummaging around in the fridge like some dumpy bear when Amy comes storming in.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, paws full of snacks.

“Matt, I’m just…ugh!  I’m so annoyed with Shay right now that I can’t even handle it.  Can you deal with her?”

“Sure…what happened though?”
Amy proceeds to tell me a string of behavior very, very uncharacteristic of Shay. She was being obstinate with her after-school daycare provider (it’s at the school, so they’re there with a bunch of their friends).  When Amy went to pick the girls up, Mo ran up to Amy, happy and excited to see her.

Shay, on the other hand was hiding from her.

When Amy found her under a lunchroom table, Shay wouldn’t come out.  When Amy started threatening the loss of privileges, Shay finally crawled out from under the gross table and bolted out of the building without permission or escort. 

Big school no-no.

Once outside, Shay decided to hide behind a tree.  When Amy once again began counting to three, Shay stormed past her and said something about Amy “not being her real mom.”

Uh oh.

This really didn’t bother Amy too much.  We’re prepared for those kinds of outbursts.  One doesn’t become a foster parent without realizing that’s going to happen from time to time.  But from Shay…well, it was unexpected. 

In the car, Shay proceeded to throw fits, hit her sister, kick the seat in front of her, and on and on.

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll go talk to her.  It’s probably because of, you know, the deal with their bio mom.”

“Right,” said Amy.  Again, looking at this in writing, it seems pretty obvious.  But time had passed since that news, and the girls had seemed okay, so it moved to the back of our minds.  Life went on.  But it was becoming obvious that for Shay, it hadn’t.

So I went out to the car to talk to her.  As I rounded the car, she scooted to the opposite side of the back seat, got out on the side away from me, and sprinted inside.  She ran up the stairs, into her room…and slammed the door.  Another big no-no.

Amy about lost her mind.  She’d had it.  She began to march up there.  But I felt a Ward Cleaver coming on, so I stopped her and asked her to let me deal with it.  She agreed.  On the way to the stairs, I passed Mo.  She was twirling around in circles, singing a Justin Bieber song.

Like I said, if it ain’t one, it’s the other.

I knocked on Shay’s door and she responded with a mighty, “Go away!”  (To reiterate, none of this is anything near what she is normally like, so it was weird).

“Shay, I’m coming in.  Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”  I opened the door, and she was curled up on an arm chair in the corner of her room, crying softly.  I gently sat down on the bed across from her.

“Shay, what’s going on?”

She only shrugged from within her balled-up frame.

“Can you sit up babe?  Talk to me please?”

She sniffed, slowly sat upright, and began to stare at her hands.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked.

“Well, that depends.  Amy told me some stuff that doesn’t sound like you at all.  So what I want is for you to talk to me about it.”  Shay has never been a big communicator, and getting her to talk about anything is always like pulling teeth.  “Can you do that?”

She kept looking at her little hands, folded in her lap upon her striped dress.  “I don’t want to,” she mumbled.

I sighed.  “See, Shay, if you don’t talk about it, we won’t know what’s wrong and why you’re acting a certain way.  That’s why Amy was so mad at you in the car.  We aren’t mind readers, so we can’t know what you’re feeling.  To us, you’re just misbehaving, and we get mad.  But if we know what’s wrong, well, then maybe we won’t get as mad and maybe we’ll all try to work it out.  Do you understand, Shay?”

She looked up from her hands.  “Say my name right.”

“Uhhh…what?”

“Call me Shay-Shay.”

Oh.  Right. 

That was what her bio mom had called her.  Not hard to see how we got “Shay” from that.

“Do you want me to call you that?”

She shrugged.

“Well, if I can’t get you to talk about it, can I guess what’s wrong and then can you tell me if I’m right?”

Shrugged again, then a short nod.

“Okay…I think you’re missing your bio-mom.  Am I right?  Is that why you are so worked up?”

She looked up and water had gathered upon her large unblinking eyes, threatening to coalesce into a torrent of tears.

“You haven’t been too worked up about it so far.  I guess that’s why I kind of forgot about it.”

Her head shot up and she stared defiantly back at me. “But I don’t want to forget her!” 

And then came the sobbing. 

I let her cry for a few seconds, thinking about what to do next.  But I guess I knew.

“You don’t have to forget her, hon, no one’s ever gonna make you, okay?”

Sobs in response.

“Do you want to sit on my lap?” 

And man, she bolted up out of that chair and dove into my lap, pressed her wet face against my chest and I almost lost it myself. 

So I rocked her.  For a long time.  Until she quit crying and was still.  I thought she had gone to sleep, but then she looked up at me with red eyes.

And smiled.

“Do you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“You know we love you, right?”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“Good. You see?  If you tell us what’s wrong, you might get hugs.  If you don’t, we’re confused and get all mad.  Like badgers.”

She nodded, sniffed, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Okay.  Let’s go downstairs now.  I’ll bet Mom has dinner ready now.”

“Okay!” she squeaked.

Downstairs, Amy looked at me quizzically, and I just nodded and smiled, letting her know it was okay.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” said Shay from around her knees.

“It’s okay, honey.  Don’t worry about it. You hungry?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Have a seat now.”

Judges say:  I dunno, pretty good, maybe a 9 or 10 on that one. 

Just then I’m noticing the empty seat where Mo usually sits.

“Where’s Mo?” I ask.

Amy wearily shakes her head.  “In our bedroom.  Crying.  She lost some ‘best friends forever’ necklace her friend gave her or something.”

“Mo!” I yelled.  “Get your butt in here and eat!  I don’t care about that necklace, get in here!”

And now we’re back to a 4.

 

Well, hell.  I can manage only so many “Ward Cleaver”s in a single day.      

The Continuing Education of a White Foster Dad

This is a post I knew I would have to get to at some point, and now I’m nervous about writing it.  I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, hoping that some epiphany would come to me.

How am I going to approach it? 

How will it be received? 

Can I even do the subject justice?

Will I sound like an ignorant fool?

In the end, I suppose I have to trust my gut, be as honest as I can, and hope for the best.  And damn it, this blog is my forum (as insignificant as it might be).  I’m not forcing my opinions or notions on anyone. I’m not spraying it on Facebook like some pissed off barn cat.  But I feel strongly enough about it that I want to address it.  It’s relevant to my little story here, and most of all, it’s relevant to my girls—the girls I’ve grown to love with everything I have and then some. 

As a kid in the 80’s, I freaking LOVED Diff’rent Strokes.  I mean, who didn’t?  Arnold, Willis, Mallory, Mr. Drummond, Mrs. Garrett…and the lady after Mrs. Garrett went to live with the girls of The Facts of Life.  You know, to teach them about right and wrong and their menstrual cycles.

Pearl.  Yes.  That’s who it was.  Pearl. 

Diff’rent Strokes was so popular that other networks were combing the country in search of their slice of the stunted black kid pie. Because it was comedy gold.

Soon thereafter came Webster, (which in my opinion was inferior to Diff’rent Strokes, but still good), the story of the little orphan boy who went to live with George (Mongo like candy!) and Kathrine (Ma’am) Papadapolis. I remember that Webster had little secret passageways around the house, most notably behind the grandfather clock.

God, how I wanted a secret passageway.  I remember how I’d keep hoping that our suburban ranch house had one hidden somewhere and that I just hadn’t found yet.  I’m sure I looked behind our grandfather clock at least a million times to find it.

Anyway, the popularity of these shows was undeniable.  America fell in love with the notion of poor little orphaned black kids being hilariously raised by white people.  I suppose in some ways, it was a step forward from the decidedly segregated sitcoms such as All In The Family and The Jeffersons. 

American TV was breaking down racial barriers, one funny little black kid with an inoffensive birth defect at a time.

The similarities between our situation and those 80’s sitcoms are pretty obvious.  And when they first moved in, I thought, “hey, kinda like Diff’rent Strokes!”  I knew we’d have tons of hilarious misadventures (as long as everyone stays away from the bike shop…if you’ve seen the show, you know what I’m talking about).  Hell, we even had the older one who was very intelligent and much more reserved, and the younger one who spoke with a slight lisp and said the most out-raaageous things! 

I’m living an 80’s sitcom!

And most of the time…yeah, it is a little like that.  There are a lot of funny moments worthy of canned laughter (if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you might already know this, or else why in the hell are you still reading), heart-wrenching moments where the audience is uncomfortably silent, and touching moments worthy of drawn out “awwwwwws.” We are different from other families in town, and that’s something in which we pride ourselves. 

And ready for it or not, we found a new perspective.

The girls had shown up with the social worker that very first day with only with the filthy clothes on their backs and a single stuffed animal each.  Their shoes were falling off their feet, their legs and arms were covered in bed bug bites, and they smelled awful, like sweat and urine. 

They were not what I had expected to come walking through our door.  I had expected cute little…well…I guess in my mind’s eye…white…kids. I didn’t really know why I thought this.  It wasn’t like they told us that only white kids would be placed in our home.  In fact, they told us it was far more likely that an African American or Hispanic child would be here.

But I still pictured white kids.

And when they showed up, scared, shabby, and dark skinned, I just thought:  Oh.  Huh.  Ooookaaaay…and a general feeling of doubt began to rise in my heart.  Like when a Christmas present isn’t quite what you had pictured it, even though you never really realized you had pictured it at all.

I’ve never said that out loud or even wanted to admit it to myself.  But as I said before, I’m laying it out there.  Because it’s too important not to be completely honest. And not just with you who may be reading this, but with myself.  It’s the first step.  But I’ll get to that later.

So the first thing we did was take them to Wal-Mart to gather some quick clothes.  Not my first choice for apparel, but it was an emergency.  They had to have something. 

I remember thinking, we’ll have to get them some decent clothes ASAP.  Because where we grew up, if you wore clothes from Wal-Mart, you were gonna get made fun of.

As we drove in silence to the store, the car filling up with the unkempt reek that clung to their clothes, I was having doubts.  Would I be able to do this?  Was I ready for these challenges? 

Can I love these kids?

When we got out of the car and began heading into the store, I felt a little hand tentatively grab my pinky.  I looked down and Mo was staring up at me, her large, brown eyes shimmering there in the dark beneath the street lights, wondering if it was okay to hold my hand.  When I looked down she pulled away and shied, as if she had maybe done something wrong. 

I said, “It’s okay, you can hold my hand if you want.”

And she smiled at me. 

And I smiled back.

And we held hands through the parking lot into the store, with her fingers occasionally tightening around mine.

Inside the store, we perused the aisles.  The girls were pretty giddy to be getting new clothes, taking cheap Hello Kitty tee shirts off the rack and twirling around with them, like twin brides to be with new wedding dresses.  Amy and I had to check the tags (those that were still there) on the clothes they were wearing to see their sizes.  We had no idea.  I joked that Amy should just get them her sizes, because she wasn’t much bigger.  Amy shot me a look of mock disgust, but then giggled.  Like always.  But we were both tense.

After we had gathered a cart load of shirts, jeans, jackets, sweatshirts, underwear, socks, a few toys, we went to the dressing rooms.  A middle aged white woman, bespectacled and strange, watched us intently as we ushered the girls into the rooms.  While Amy was in there with them, the woman looked at me and said, “They yours?”  This is a question we had been prepared for by the agency, and we had canned answers prepared.  Most people are obviously curious, mean well, but don’t know how to ask tactfully.  At least she waited until the girls weren’t right there with us.

“Well,” I said, “kind of.  For now.  They’re foster kids.  They were placed with us just this evening.”

“Oh!  That’s great.  Congratulations to you.”

“Uh…thanks.”

“You know, I’ve thought about being a foster parent a lot of times, but…you know.”

“Yeah.  I’m sure it’s going to be tough.”

“And plus, my husband, well, he’s got a temper, so…”

“Uh huh.  Probably not the best then.”

Jesus. 

She went back to folding clothes and I stood there thinking a bit.

A few minutes went by, and from behind the slatted door beneath which I could see a jumble of feet and clothes, I heard Amy say, “Okay, go show Matt.”

The door swung open, and Shay came out wearing a new shirt and jeans.  She smiled impishly and tugged at the shirt tail, shifting her weight back and forth upon her bare feet.

“Do you like it, Daddy?”

Daddy.  Wasn’t ready for that.  My brain said, little soon for that, isn’t it? But I shook that voice from my head and said, “Yeah, Shay, I like it a lot.  Do you?”

“Yes!”

“Okay then.  Does it fit?”

“Yes!”

“Okay then.  Alright, go back in and try some other things on.  We’ll have a fashion show.”

“Okay!”

She waddled back into the little room, closed the door behind her, and she said “He likes them!”

Amy said, “Okay!  We’ll get them then.”

From behind me I heard someone say, “awww.”  I turned and saw a large black man in his mid twenties standing there, grinning.  He was wearing baggy pants, baggy shirt, and a pristinely white cap with a perfectly straight brim.  His teeth glinted in the store light.  He was wearing a grill.

I smiled, nodded quickly, and turned away.  Looking back on it, that’s how I’d always reacted to that situation.  I’d acknowledge the presence, then separate myself.

“You’re doing a good thing,” the man said.

I turned back around and looked at him.  He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t being sarcastic, he wasn’t being anything but genuine.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I said, y’all are doing a good thing.”  It was then I saw the others behind him, presumably his family, a wife and a little boy, standing there as well. 

Where had they come from?

The woman was smiling too.  The kid just stared at me with his mouth open.

I smiled, nodded again, and turned back around. 

The girls came out periodically, showing off their clothes and laughing.  Eventually, they were finished.  They had their old clothes back on.  Amy handed the weird lady at the counter the clothes that hadn’t fit, and as we ushered the kids past the family behind us, the man said, “you girls sure looked nice in all your new clothes!  Bet you can’t wait to wear them, can you?”

The girls smiled sheepishly, holding their shoulders up around their ears.

“Okay, girls, let’s go,” I said.  As we continued past, the two adults were still smiling at us and the little boy was still staring.

“Have a good night,” the man said.

“Yeah, you too,” I replied.

This kind of thing happened a lot over the next few months, and still does.  In the grocery store, in the park, wherever.  We notice black families noticing us.  We get a lot of smiles.  We smile back.  We talk to them.  Only every so often do we get a sideways glance from a black family, perhaps wondering what in the world these two cute little kids are doing with these white folks.  But that’s very, very rare. 

I want to reiterate…we notice more black families, and we notice more smiles.

Were they always there and we just never saw?  Did we always simply acknowledge their presence and quickly step aside, smiling broadly but never making eye contact, trying to distance ourselves?

Did we really do that?

I would imagine it’s a two way street.  I would imagine that before we had the girls in tow they would glance up at us and us at them, then unconsciously avoid one another.

But who can avoid an 80’s sitcom coming down the cereal aisle?

White people grin at us as well, take time to talk to the girls.  And everyone, black or white or other, asks their strange questions that now just slide off our backs.

Are they yours?

Did you adopt?

Do you have any real kids?

The girls get it at school and daycare as well, but their responses are always so much more straight forward.

“Are those your parents?”

“Yes.”

“But…they’re white.”

“So?”

There are a lot of mixed families in our neighborhood.  Our neighbors (the family to which the little towhead boy whom Mo is “totally in love with” belongs) has biological kids, adopted kids and foster kids.  We couldn’t be happier that the girls have a family to play with that has the same things going on at their house.  They see it as “normal,” and have, to my knowledge, never felt a moment of embarrassment for their situation.  That family has introduced us to another family who has both bio kids and adopted kids, and we spent a wonderful Fourth of July with them at a nearby pond.  Where all the kids just got to be kids.  A luxury I have always, always taken for granted.  As the adults sat on the deck, we talked about these very issues.  The host family shared with us an experience they had.  The kids (an older biological child and at least one of their adopted Hispanic children) and the dad were out somewhere, and a person asked the dad, “Where did he (or she, can’t remember) come from?”

The dad replied, “Lubbock.”

The man grinned in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink manner and said, “I mean, where do they come from?”

It was then that the biological kid said, “Lubbock!  Geez!”

The girls are innocent of the issues of race.  I mean, they’re aware their skin is different from ours, and they don’t pretend to be our biological kids, but they simply don’t care about it.  Never did.  And as time has worn on, even in this short period, I truly think about their skin color less and less.  It’s unnerving to me that I ever really did.  I always believed in myself the bullshit that people tend to say:  “I don’t see color.”

Of course we do.  And I’m coming to grips with my own previous notions, notions that were, I believed, benign.  I mean, I never thought that all African Americans were gangsters or on welfare or anything terrible like that.  It was never, ever that obvious. 

But that’s the real issue, isn’t it? 

I was unwittingly distant from an entire portion of our American population.  Not that it’s my fault, I wasn’t raised around a lot of African Americans or Hispanics.  I enjoyed white privilege my entire life without ever really knowing it.

It wasn’t that I disliked black people.

I just rarely thought about them at all.

I used to, and to some degree still do, use terms like “us” and “them.”  It’s hard not to.  There’s a partition built up in my brain and it’s hard to break it down and talk around it.  Because it’s engrained in me. 

In us.  All of us.  Black, white, Hispanic or Asian.

But I’m working on it.  I’m working to understand why I had this division in my brain. And by acknowledging it, by getting it out there, even by posting this entry, I’m going to keep self-analyzing and working to break it down.

Because the girls are innocent of it, and they deserve to live in a place where “us” and “them” has become just…us.

I’m not naïve enough to think that they won’t lose their innocence of this matter.  One day someone’s going to sling a terrible word at them and we’ll have talk them down.  And that frightens the hell out of me. 

But because I’m not black, I won’t know what it’s like.  I can’t relate.  All I can do is love the hell out of them and hold them.  They will never be able to look at me and say, “Dad gets it.”  Sure, I’ve been called names before, been hurt by them before, but as you can tell by the name of this blog, I make light of it.  But I have never experienced that feeling which just about every minority in this country has felt at some crushing point in their lives: I cannot expect the same treatment in all things as my white friends do.

I realize the inflammatory nature of that comment, and I realize that some of you reading this may feel uncomfortable with that assertion.  Well, quit reading then. 

When I voice this fear to some of my friends, they say well intentioned things like,

“Teach them that it doesn’t matter, that people are just stupid and that they shouldn’t let it bother them.”

“Teach them not to be a victim.”

“Teach them to ‘rise and overcome.’”

Of course I’ll teach them these things.  I’ll teach them that their skin does not define them, that what is in their heart is the only thing that matters.  Because an individual is responsible for their own lot in life. 

But should these words not bother them deeply?  Should I be so dismissive of it? 

Should I teach them to distance themselves?

To turn a blind eye to the issues of race in this country?

Is that responsible parenting?

I’ve seen a lot of terrible traffic on social media regarding this whole George Zimmerman case.  I’ve gone a few rounds on Facebook over it, mostly colliding with people who say things like, “it’s over, it’s done, let’s move on.” It’s been bothering me deeply.  Things like,

“Why was this case such a big deal?”

“Nobody cares when a white kid is killed by black people!”

“The black community is using this as a crutch!”

I’ve tried to gently tell people why it is a big deal, and why this case has gathered so much traction in the social realm.  Because the implications go far beyond the verdict.  I’m no lawyer, but I recently served on a small jury that was, oddly enough, kind of like this one, where the issue of self defense was used.  It wasn’t racially charged, just a couple of meatheads fighting in a public place and no one died.  We found the kid not guilty because the way the law was written and the way it was stated in our jury instructions.  The prosecution couldn’t prove it wasn’t self defense.  That was it.  That was our job.  So in this case, again, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I can see why the jury came to the verdict they did.  But I digress, and all in all, the verdict itself isn’t what’s most important. It, just like most cases that are racially charged, simply served as a condensation nucleus for outrage over how an entire population of people feels they are being treated.  That this significant portion of the population can’t expect the same justice as the rest of the country.  However you feel about that statement, it cannot be denied that millions upon millions of our neighbors feel they are being treated like shit by the justice system. 

“Al Sharpton is just inciting more racial tension so he can win an election or get money or something.”

To this I ask:  Is the outrage felt by such a huge population the product of Al Sharpton, or is Al Sharpton the product of the outrage felt by a huge population?

Do I really believe that so many people are just whining?

That they secretly want to keep the issue of racism alive so they can continue to have an excuse to get “our stuff?” 

“Our scholarships?”

“Our grants?”

“Our jobs?”

Or let’s call it what it is…a piece of “our” white privilege?

I, like many of my friends, and the majority of white America, whether we knew it or not or want to see it or not, were born on third and wonder why the hell people can’t hit a triple like we did.

“We” want to believe we hit that triple.

This is not universal across every individual, and I’m sure a number of you disagree whole heartedly with what I’m saying and are poised to come at me with anecdotes of why I’m wrong.  Well, save them.  This isn’t open for anecdotes.  Anecdotes cannot and do not refute the fact that so many for so long have felt so put down.  Again, whether you believe it to be true or not, the fact is that it is FELT, and therefore it is real. 

The question we must ask:  Do I care?

Do I care about my neighbors and friends of color?

Or do I just think there’s no problem and assume millions of people are just whiners?

That “they” must simply “get over it?”

“Rise and overcome” as an ENTIRE society because of all the wonderful things “we” have bestowed upon them?

Really?

Even though I will never feel as “they” do…can I at least acknowledge that there is an issue here?

Can I TRY to walk a mile in their shoes?  Can I at least SEE them as people?  As my neighbors?  As people I smile at and talk to in the grocery store?  As people I love and care about?

Can I see them as my children and not as props to some hilarious ‘80’s sitcom?

If I cannot, then there will always be “we” and “them.”  There will never just be “us.”  The term I want so badly to say for my girls.  I want it to come off my tongue naturally, without thought, without the notion of separation.  There are many more subtle forms of racism than those of open hostility or posts on Facebook about “being proud to be white.”  Indifference, indignation, and resentment are the more insidious of them. If you are not working to at least get to the root of the problem, regardless of political views, then you are a dinosaur and are destined for extinction.  Your last throes of relevance will be angry and hateful and ugly.  But you’ll go away, banished to the fringes along with people who still believe in slavery.  Because when someone says to Mo, “but they’re white,” she says,

“So?”

 

I realize some of you might be saying, “Damn, Welch, I just wanted to read a funny post about your kids, not a dissertation on race.”  Well, I assure you, this blog will not become some platform of social justice.  I have not become some crazy person who thinks that just because he has a couple of black kids in his house he needs to start a revolution.  That’s just dorky and embarrassing.  But I got out what I wanted to say, for better or worse.  And the main thing I want you to understand is that my views will continue to change and flow, because I’m trying my damndest to grow.  I’m trying desperately not to be so stuck in my ways and my beliefs that I too become a dinosaur.  I’ll keep learning more, listening more, and trying harder to be the person and father the girls deserve.  Because I love these kids.  So much.  From our frustration and pain of not being able to have our own we found in these girls our purpose.  And they deserve to expect the same out of life and this amazing country as I do.