A Tree

my (foster) son. What they don't know #1

A walk around my neighborhood used to be a joyful moment for me but these days it comes with many layers. Every stop sign, flower, street sign, and child I walk by, is a trigger. Even a tree. Most of all a tree. 

I’ll take you on this walk. I step out of my house, with my headphones on so that I can avoid talking to anyone. Sometimes music is playing, sometimes it’s silent. Either way, those headphones are my shield from the outside. I turn left. I walk a few steps until I pass the orange building. Ugh, this orange building. This orange building has a water fountain he loved visiting. It has a metal sunflower that smiles that he loved to point out and say “mama, the flower is smiling”. Breathe. Walk past it. Then I get to the first Stop sign. S T O P echoes in the wind. He learned to spell his first word just weeks ago. The pride. “Look! A STOP SIGN!!” I hate that stop sign. Breathe. Walk past it. I pull up Spotify on my phone and put on the new Kacey Musgraves album. It’s one of the only things I can listen to right now. A few songs in particular mess me up, but somehow I still only want to listen to them. I walk three blocks and turn right. I’m listening to “Heaven Is” now and these lyrics pierce me for the first time 

“I don't care for money or fame

All for you, I'd give it all away

The way you sound when you call my name

That's what heaven is”

I stop. The tears start. I know they won’t stop. And the moment I hear these lyrics I’m stopped at a tree. This tree I never noticed before. But in this moment I hear it “mama, look at this tree!” in his excited voice, the way he’d exclaim it! The excitement he showed for almost every tree, rock, flower, Stop sign, truck, car, and person we’d encounter on our walks. He isn’t here, but I heard it. I know he would love this tree. This tree resembles him in a funny way. So puffed out at the top like his big beautiful curly hair with a lanky trunk for a body. This tree gave me his voice for just a moment. “The way you sound when you call my name”. I continue on the walk that comes with all its bittersweet memories and keep trying to avoid people so they don't see the mess I am. I do this every day. I get back home and back to the deafening silence. It used to be so loud in here. Now, it’s just a big confronting wall of silence.

I went to the tree this morning. This time, a woman came out of the house the tree belongs to. She was taking out her trash, and I was listening to that Kacey Musgraves song again. It’s been weeks since I could muster a moment of conversation with a stranger. My voice has been trapped in my throat. But at that moment I had to ask “Excuse me, what kind of tree is this?” I had high hopes there must be some sign or mystical reason drawing me to this tree. But the woman stopped and said “oh, this tree? I hate this tree, it makes such a mess of my yard. It's a Podocarpus. Look it up!” I nodded and kept going on my walk. 

She doesn’t know that the tree she hates is the only place I can go to clearly hear my son's voice outside of playing voice memos. She doesn’t know I still had a son only weeks ago, and that now I don’t. She doesn’t know I sometimes visit that tree twice a day. She hates the mess it makes. I love that tree. 

There is no blueprint for this path. There’s just me, and a tree. 

I want to start by acknowledging this post might be triggering to people who have had a child pass away, people who have been adopted, fostered, been foster parents, or the relative reunifying with a child out of the system. I can only speak to my own experience. This isn’t a blanket statement for all, it is intended to shed light on the foster parent experience.

If you don’t know me personally then you won’t know I became a (foster) mother a little over two years ago. It’s not something I’ve shared online. But it’s Foster awareness month and Mothers day around the corner so I decided to rip the bandaid off and shed a little light on this for anyone who might be going through the same thing.

It had been a dream of mine to adopt since the age of 6. When the time came, a pandemic landed at our door and delayed things. So I started to learn about the foster system and how dire of a situation it was in. I also learned about adoption through fostering. It felt like a better fit. April 26th 2022 was the scariest/best day coming home with a beautiful little three month old baby boy. I’ve spent the last two years being a mother to him, while also building a relationship with his birth parents. Recently we were finally in the early stages of the adoption process. 23 months, 687 days and nights of loving, mothering, raising, planning a life with this boy. He was and is the love of my life.

If you are a foster parent you know this road can be rocky and the unfortunate and heartbreaking thing happened when we, through no fault of our own, lost our baby boy back to the system in a very shocking and unexpected very sudden twist. I cannot go into details about the case but what I wanted to share is this. For anyone that has gone through this, what they don’t and truly can’t prepare you for is this type of loss. When they have known you as mom, loved you as mom, you have been mom 24/7 and suddenly one day someone comes to your door, takes them away and you don’t see them again. And your child doesn’t know where you are, it’s all you can think about and it feels like actual hell. I have never related to birth parents who have had their children removed more than I do now. Even though I know he’s alive, it’s an all encompassing and death-like grief. When you suddenly don’t know if you’re anyones mother anymore, it’s a new hellish and complex feeling right around the corner from Mothers day. “The Tree” is just a little essay to share what a few moments in a day feel like right now.

If you’re experiencing foster loss or anything similar, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Because it can be deeply isolating and a very nuanced thing most people cannot relate to. The truth is, no-one can understand this grief unless you’ve experienced this very thing. And the last thing I will say is I know a lot of people feel as though “that’s what you sign up for” however until you go into this process, there is no way to know what you actually signed up for. I promise you that. x