Secret Identity

The other day I was at Walmart with my 8month old baby boy.  Just me and the baby doing some grocery shopping minding our own business.  Now when you go shopping with a baby you can expect people to stop you to admire your child.  You can expect the comments about how adorable your baby is and you're not surprised when they want to touch the little piggies that you didn't cover with socks (cause they won't keep them on and you didn't want to lose them in the store).  Well the other day we were shopping and this older lady came up to us and asked a question I didn't want to answer.  It was a simple question and I ignored it.  She proceeded to ask me over and over again, it was ridiculous!  Want to know the question she seemed to demand an answer to?

"Where'd he get that bright blonde hair?"

As I said, it's a simple question.  And at that moment I very much wished it was his dad that was the blonde in the family.  If it was his dad I would easily answer that his daddy has blonde hair.  Sure she would assume that means my husband has blonde hair, which he doesn't, but she doesn't need to know that.  She would move on to something else feeling her question answered.  Or she might mention something about how with bright blonde hair and my dark hair she's surprised he didn't turn out redheaded.  And I could make a comment about how I thought it was going to be red, looked kind of strawberry blonde this summer...  Yadda, yadda it would have been fine.  But no, it's not his dad.

The blonde in his family is his mother, which is who she assumed I was.  It's a nice assumption that I gladly take, and truly I am his mother - just not biologically or legally.  If this woman already knew he was my foster child than I'd easily say his mom is where he gets the blonde, but then if she knew that already then she probably wouldn't have asked.  When I told this story to my sister she wanted to know why it's so hard to simply say: he's my foster son; he gets the blonde from his mom. 

Why is it not easy to say that?  Why do I want to avoid telling strangers that he's a foster kid?  Because I knew the kind of comments that would follow.  Comments like:

How could she already fail to take care of him when he is so little?

Was it drugs?

People like that don't deserve to have kids.

You are such a saint to take him in!  I could never do that, I'd get too attached.

He must have been a drug baby.

You are such a blessing to him!  Thank God for you!

Will you get to keep him?  I hope you do.

How could someone not love this little guy?!  I can't believe his mother...

The world needs more people like you in it.

The comments pretty well go one of two ways: make the parents sound like garbage, or raise us up on a pedestals as saints.  Often times it's a combination of the two.  People just really don't know what to say.  Usually the comments are from someone who is outside of the fostering world who is naive to what it's like being in it.  You don't have to be a foster parent or a foster kid to be in this fostering world.  There are teachers, daycare workers, cops, lawyers, judges, and so on and so forth.  My family is all being introduced to this world because we are now a part of it, and eventually they'll probably understand it as we do.

Anyway...  When people trash the parents: I want to defend them.  I don't want to hear all that negativity.  I want to have hope for the parents and they present them as a lost cause even though they know nothing about them.  A lot of times those comments just make me mad, especially if it's coming from someone I know of who professes to be a Christian.  Because aren't Christians the ones who say everyone deserves forgiveness?  But comments like that quickly say they don't believe the parent deserves it.

When comments are said to make us sound like saints...  I don't like that either.  We are not perfect, we're are just willing to do what many people are not.  Willing to be vulnerable to the hurt of losing someone we love.  We get attached to these kids, Jared gets attached almost immediately.  These children are a blessing to us, probably more so than we are to them.  People say the world needs more good foster parents like us, but then tell us they could never do it because they'd get too attached.  Know that that means?!?!  They should become a foster parent because getting "too attached" would mean they'd be good at it because getting "too attached" would mean they actually love the kid.  And that's all these kids really need; someone to love them.

Getting back to my story of the lady in Walmart... I didn't really answer her question.  I told her about how his brother has blonde hair, and about how my sister and my brother started out blonde and it got darker.  Those two things are both true, and when you put them together like that...  Well she felt satisfied with my answer.  She assumed he was my own child, and I let her continue that assumption.  But she never really asked me if he was mine or not, now did she?  So why answer a question she didn't ask?

You see these children are mine.  I love them.  I care for them.  I am their mom.  But when it comes to strangers my kids have a secret identity, and that identity is that they are also not mine; they are fosters.