Our family was transformed in the summer of 2008. It was then that my husband and I met our two children, Katie and Roy, and the three children we already had – Julia, Jackson, and Jamie – welcomed two new siblings. Technically it didn’t all come about so quickly, and it would be four more years until Katie and Roy shared our home for good, but they were a part of our family long before that.
I met them first. Katie was a wild thing, like an animal uncaged. She used each minute to have as much fun as possible, to live as much as possible. You could see the energy coming off of her in waves. Roy was clingy, desperate for attention and affection. Both were extremely thin, and very hungry. Roy was eight years old, had just finished second grade, yet he was only as tall as Jamie, who was six. He had just lost his two front teeth, whereas most children I knew had lost them in kindergarten or first grade.
It was clear from the beginning that something was wrong with their home life. The more time they spent with us, the more obvious it was that they were neglected, at best. Possibly more than neglected. They spent a lot of time at our house, and never wanted to leave.
Roy, who couldn’t say his r’s, cemented himself in my heart permanently the day he asked, “Can you buy me fwom my dad?”
“Well, I would if I could, but it’s against the law to sell children,” I explained.
He thought about this for a minute, then asked, “Can you give them away?”
When I explained that yes, in some circumstances you can go to court and a judge will say if a child can live with somebody else, he said “I’m going to ask my dad tonight to give me to you.”
I can still see his snaggletooth grin, his skinny body in his borrowed swim trunks, planning a way to come be with us forever.
This is a long story of abuse, neglect, drugs, and other ugliness, and all the ways in which the system did not work. Said system is geared to protect the rights of the parents more than the rights of the children, despite horror stories you hear of the reverse. The ugliness has been told elsewhere in writing, to the court. It doesn’t bare repeating here.
Child Protective Services was involved many times, but it is difficult to prove neglect. Each time they would give parenting advice to the custodial parent, their father, check up for a few weeks, and then close the case. The children had been primed on what to say, warned that they would be sent separately to live with strangers, and their father would go to jail if they ever said anything other than what they were told to say.
As summer gave way to fall, weeks turned into months, and months became years, we struggled to give these kids all we could, without having the rights to truly change their lives. My husband taught Roy to play baseball. We bought him gear and paid for Little League. We put him in soccer. We paid for soccer camps and baseball camps. I helped both kids with homework. I talked to teachers. I bought Katie maxi pads when she started her period, and I bought her her first real bra. We bought both kids clothes, fed them, and had them over our house as much as possible. We celebrated birthdays, and had belated celebrations together for Christmas and Easter. Katie called us Mom and Dad.
Years before meeting Katie and Roy, I had felt as though our family was not complete. I wondered if we should adopt, or maybe foster a child. But our own children had so many needs and special issues, I wasn’t sure they could handle an addition being thrust upon them. Our house was too small for any more people, and we didn’t really have the funds, so I put those thoughts away, thinking maybe when our three were older it would be a better time. I remember asking God to lead me if he had plans for us.
Frankly, I didn’t think Katie and Roy would ever get away from their father. My husband had to constantly remind me that they were not our kids, not legally. We prayed for them. We thought the best we could do for them was to provide a better example, take care of them when they were with us, and give them a respite from their stressful lives. It wasn’t easy, as they both had emotional issues which affected our family dynamics. But, our three biological children accepted that Katie and Roy were a part of our family, understanding that they needed us. I can’t count the number of times Julia said, “Let’s just not take them back.”
Fast forward to 2012. Things were not going well for Katie and Roy. But in the span of one hectic 24 hours, things came to a head and they were here. Living with us. There was a court dependency case that lasted almost two years, and a lot more ugliness. Yet within that ugliness, just as nature reclaims with new growth areas devastated by disaster, tiny seeds sprouted and grew.
Our house is very small, still we somehow managed. We bought a loft bed for Katie, and Julia made room for a sister in what had been her private domain. In order to fit three boys in one room, we had a custom three-layer bunk bed made. We were officially a family of seven.
I don’t’ know how to explain what came next except to say it was very, very hard. For all of us. We were crammed into our house like sardines, and our biological children suddenly had to share everything, including their parents, all the time. Katie and Roy had to adjust to new rules, and Roy particularly suffered as the move brought home to him the fact that his biological family would never be a functioning unit. A lot of childhood hopes and dreams were obliterated overnight.
Kids who have had trauma in their young lives do things that are strange to the rest of us. Katie would fill her plate to the brim, leaving nothing for others, then not finish what she had taken. She hid food in her bed. Actually, she kept all of her belongings in her bed, and hoarded everything.
She was a sophomore with almost no hope of graduating, ever, let alone with her class. She had no sense of who she was, did all sorts of things that we had to make clear she understood were not allowed while living in this house, and entertained no thought beyond the present moment.
Roy was argumentative, desperate for affection and attention, and prone to tantrums. He was so hyperactive he would watch TV, play with a moving toy, and play a handheld video game all at the same time. He was 12 years old and could barely read.
Katie had to go to adult school every day after her regular high school classes, and had to go to summer school every summer. It was touch and go, but she graduated with her class. She is now slowly making her way through college, studying psychology and American Sign Language, and working in the floral department at Safeway with her sister.
I fought tooth and nail to get Roy tested for special education. After being told endlessly he would not qualify, once tested he qualified in three categories. With the proper support, he slowly made up for lost time. Today he is in college in Minnesota with his older brother, where they both play baseball. He works on campus, and is academically sound and independent.
Sometimes I look back and wonder how all of us made it this far. And yet, we are all so blessed to be a part of this bumpy journey. Our biological kids learned compassion, forgiveness, patience, hope, and to love when loving isn’t easy. For Jerry and I, it has been a fascinating process, watching all of our kids grow. Many times we get so bogged down in the day to day struggles that we don’t see the progress, but when we get a chance to breathe deep and step back, it truly has been amazing every step of the way. I marvel that God placed such trust in us. We are so ordinary. We are not out to save the world. Shoot, sometimes it seems like a miracle we even get through the day!
Katie and Roy are still a work in progress, as are we all. But this is a story of what may lie hidden in every kid who seems like he or she is going nowhere. Every kid who gets in fights, skips class to get stoned, has no friends, has too many friends of the wrong sort, acts out, shuts down, and is academically light years behind, has a spark inside that just needs a little fresh air and fuel to brightly blaze.
The story here is what stability, unconditional love, and a safe place to call home can do for a kid. This is Katie and Roy’s story of courage. Jerry and I are the supporting players. We opened the door, but they had to walk through it.