As Our Life Hangs in the Balance…

I know it may seem hard to believe, but in the next days and weeks Michael and I talked so much about Faye and how her poor little life is turning out. She most certainly had been abused in the past and now she was just being bounced around from place to place. It seemed clear to us that her life might never be what she deserves. Despite being the family in the hot seat, I was glad that there was someone to advocate for her. In a perfect world, all foster homes are safe, loving homes. In a perfect world, children never need to be removed from their own homes, but let’s face it, in reality sometimes these children go from the frying pan and into the fire.

Christmas and New Year’s came and went and we hadn’t heard anything from the DCF. We were waiting patiently for word that our case was “unsupported”, but the time for being patient was over. Apparently, nothing about this was going to go smoothly and we were going to have to chase people down for the answer. Emails were flying this way and that. Fingers pointing this way and that about who dropped the ball all the while we waited in frustration.

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease” is a popular adage because it’s true. After Michael learned that Lisa had long since finished her paperwork and that it was sitting on someone’s desk waiting for a signature, we only needed to make one more call. We were given the name of an Ombudsman, which to this day I truly have no idea what exactly that means, except that soon after Michael spoke with him, the papers were signed and calls were made to us. The charges were unsupported. I even received a call from Lisa herself. She apologized about how long it took, but explained that it was out of her hands until it was signed off on. She knew that her paperwork declared it unsupported, but didn’t want to call until it was official. I did tell her that, everything aside, I was happy that Faye and other children like her had someone to advocate for them. That she did her job well and it’s a great service to these children.

The next important call came from Maria. She was just as relieved as we were at the outcome. Of course, even with the case coming back as unsupported, she knew that she was still at risk our losing us as a Foster home. Would we hang up our hats now and more on officially? If you asked me this on December 23rd, I would have said, “100% yes, we are done. We are SO done with this.” And even though she didn’t ask, I’m guessing because she wasn’t ready to hear it, I knew in my heart that now, I couldn’t say with certainty that we were done.

I had long ago packed up that room of all the spare clothes, the smorgasbord of toys and the bed that were all waiting on a child. The room was quietly converting itself into a media type room; complete with several video game systems for the boys. It was like the curtain was closing at the end of play. Or was it just an intermission?