35

A birthday, renewing my parenting license, & what's next | No. 012

Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash

I’m 29 + 6 as of two days ago. It was a beautiful day, and I was spoiled by people I love and the people who love me back. It doesn’t really get better than that, in my opinion. I don’t mind getting older (so far), but there is the lingering feeling of “how am I 35? That seems a little odd.” I distinctly remember my 30th birthday. After that, I have some trouble distinguishing the events for 31, 32, 33 . . . I don’t really know why that is, but one guess is that a few days after my 30th birthday, we became Officially Licensed to Parent.

We received our official license to be foster parents in our mailbox five years ago this week. The classes, interviews, home studies, paperwork, and waiting game were done. Our piece of paper had our names, license number, a signature from Someone Official, and the genders/ages/number of children we were approved to parent. The only next step was to wait for a phone call from Child and Family Services.

About one month later, we would get that first phone call. We met a sweet young teenager I’ll call Charlie. The picture of Charlie that hangs on our living room wall shows him and Troy twisting homemade dough into soft pretzels to bake. He was willing to try anything fun during his short stay with us. He loved our dog Boaz, playing foursquare and basketball, and going trick or treating.

After Charlie left, we met another teenager. I’ll call her Mags. Mags showed up with her little brother, Buddy. Mags loved her little brother, that much was clear. Mags stayed one night before leaving with a relative the next morning, but Buddy was with us a long time. Buddy stayed for the whole school year before leaving for the summer; he then returned to us the following school year. Buddy loved music, swimming, reading books with us, and being the life of the party. He had been dealt an impossible hand in life, but he also had an unmatched resilience and bravery.

In between Buddy’s first and second stay with us, we met toddler twins, L & L, in the height of the pandemic chaos during summer of 2020. L & L were absolutely wild, fun, adorable, and they could make each other laugh all day long. They loved singing, playing at the playground, running everywhere, and picking apples from our tree.

After the twins left, we met our Jordyn and Jaxsin. Jordyn was creative, thoughtful, smart, and kind. Jaxsin was energetic, funny, and one-of-a-kind. After spending over six years on the foster care roller coaster, including two years with us, we adopted them into our forever family.

During those two years, we also shared some time with another sweet toddler. I’ll call her Cici. She was made of sparkles, pink, and unicorns. Every night, she slept in her unicorn sleep mask. She loved art, playing jokes on everyone, and climbing on the monkey bars. Cici was thick as thieves with our boy Jaxsin, and they spent hours jumping on the trampoline, burying each other in stuffed animals, and getting into mischief.

This May, our girl Grace joined our forever family. She loves smiling, laughing at her siblings, and laying under the trees in the backyard watching the leaves shake in the sunshine. She has her dad’s blue eyes, my smile, and her siblings’ sense of humor.

We’ve parented 9 beautiful children these last five years. We’ve gotten phone calls for others and had to think about it, talk about it, agonize over it some more, and then ultimately say no for some relevant reason at the time. Those were actually some of the hardest days. We’ve parented some kids for a day, some for a couple years, some forever. Some we never met, but thought about them for days after the phone call that didn’t turn out to be our phone call to say “yes” to. Maybe all of this is why my recent birthdays have blurred together?

This week we renewed our foster care license, something we need to do every two years to keep it active. We are on a break from accepting calls from CFS right now, though. I believe we will start accepting calls again at some point, but when that will happen is currently a big question mark.

I don’t know what’s next for our family or myself, but was it ever actually the case that I did know? At 35, I have a fuzzier idea of what the future might hold than ever. At 35, I’m also more okay with that than ever.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash