The Re(re-re-re)turn
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
3y ago
My prodigal is home. At least, I believe he is home but I can’t confirm it. I see an unfamiliar car in the driveway so I can only assume he’s here. He’s currently quarantined in our basement with his girlfriend L. Marcus left is after having a hard time following our Covid-19 safety precautions. I guess life with his buddies didn’t work out the way he planned. In retrospect he’s staying with us for longer chunks of time and living in his car for shorter amounts of time. Luke started getting text messages last night that Marcus has no place to stay and needed a shower. Luke encouraged him to mo ..read more
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Hurricane Season
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
3y ago
The first sign of bad weather for me is always a dull ache deep down in my bones. My hips creak in complaint when I walk. My lower back joins in with its own throbbing beat. The resounding echo within my body repeats to me, “A storm is coming. A storm is coming.” Before a rain storm cool winds will often whip through the landscape bringing blessed relief from the hot summer sun. This time, however, the air was thick like a viscous soup. The breeze felt unnatural and wrong somehow. Isaias began with air so full it was pregnant with the promise of destruction. Destruction is what we got. Tropica ..read more
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The Protection of Sunscreen
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
I have always been white. There was never a time when I went out into the sun without first slathering on a layer of vaguely coconut flavored suntan lotion. When I was heading to the beach I remembered the delicacy of my pale skin. It was the only time I actively thought about the color of my skin and made preparations because of it. It never occurs to me to remember that I am white before I leave the house. I can remember the 1992 LA riots after the Rodney King incident. My (white) friends and I all agreed it was all around terrible. Racism was awful, rioting was awful but we “didn’t have tha ..read more
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Plot Twist
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
It is a strange thing, how this quarantine has affected the family. There was a time when large amounts of relatively unstructured time at home with us would have sent Mary over the edge. During school vacations or weekends she would tantrum and rage. Therapists would always remark that these school holidays were typically “slow times” for their agencies. They would marvel at how our children’s responses were completely upside down from the “normal” problems they encountered. Yeah, I know, major plot twist! Inwardly I’d groan and roll my eyes because attachment difficulties present quite diffe ..read more
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Keep a Lid On It
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
It’s been four weeks since surgery. Last night I was able to cook some red lentil pasta with vegetables. The pot of pasta boiled up a white foam dangerously close to the lid of the pot if Mary and I didn’t stir it constantly. I greased a glass pan and gathered three kinds of shredded cheese while Mary stirred the lentil ziti continuously. Each time she would lean over to stir the pot of sauce and chopped veggies, the lentil pasta would heartily foam up again and threaten to overflow. She’d jump back and stir furiously while we laughed uproariously. Such hubris, trying to escape the pot like th ..read more
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Frankenbelly
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
“He says he never wants to be adopted.” “He told the social worker he doesn’t want to live with the family. He is pursuing an independent living option.” “Unfortunately, he is having difficulty with adapting to another mother-figure right now. Sometimes this is hard for older kids to accept.” These are all things we heard time and again from social workers involved in Marcus’ case when he was a teenager. We would spend time together as a family. Things would seem to be going well. Then, out of nowhere, Marcus would pull back and everything would change. He act out against me. He’d ra ..read more
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Prometheus Sneezed
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
I feel empathy for Prometheus, the immortal Greek who angered Zeus. His punishment was such that an eagle came and ate his liver right out of his body every single night. When I woke up from donating my kidney the pain was similar to this. The worst was sneezing. Every time I sneezed, the pain was excruciating to the point where everything seemed doused in a haze of red. Amidst strange drug-induced hospital dreams of receiving Prometheus, I wondered what I’d done to anger Zeus. Luke faired much better than I, as donor recipients often do. He was alert, his entire body was actually function ..read more
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Transplant Day
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
It’s transplant day. This early in the morning I can see my breathe when I step outside. The blackened sky is absolute. Just Luke and I are awake in the house. It’s just the two of us, the way it was before we started this family. Mary is staying with friends. Marcus and Carl are still sleeping. Luke and I feel like the only two people awake in the world. We are subdued in these early hours. As the parent to children with developmental trauma, I’ve often felt so helpless. I can’t undo what my children have been through. I can’t undo their hurt, their fear, their overwhelming damage of ..read more
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The Push of Gravity
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
Maybe I’m not as cut out for this whole thing as I imagined. Years ago I felt like a kind of warrior, fighting against past traumas alongside my kids. These days I am battling my own trauma and trying to make it through as best as I can. It isn’t as if things are terribly bad or difficult right now. They’re not. At least, not in the way they used to be. Violent meltdowns where I’d get punched, kicked, bitten and shoved down the stairs are long since over. It’s more that traces of those memories hang in the air like so much extra gravity pressing me into the ground. Still, I trudge through ..read more
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What We Take For Granted
Herding Chickens and Other Adventures in Foster and Adoptive Care
by HerdingChickens
4y ago
The cheerful bubbling of my radiator on a cold New England morning. The warmth of my husband’s chest against my back in the middle of a wintery New England night. The lucidity of children grounded in this reality. The things we take for granted. Luke was admitted back into the hospital this week. More complications of kidney failure are plaguing him. The latest complication was stomach pain. This is in addition to insomnia, short-term memory loss, always feeling frigid, persistent exhaustion and general aching pain. He’s so ill most of the time that it’s hard to know when to bring him in ..read more
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