Sarah Sentilles - Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isnt Ours

Faded pink construction paper letters taped to the wall of the Department of Human Services classroom spelled W E L C O M ET OD H S . Eric and I sat in the back, near the door, on blue cushioned chairs with wheels. On every long table, a scattered handful of hard candypeppermints, butterscotch, Tootsie Pops.

Wed eaten dinner at 4:45 so wed arrive on time. Though the departments office was less than ten miles from our house, class started at six, and in Portlands traffic, the drive could take an hour, which it did. The classroom was cold. I took off my jacket, but not my scarf, thankful Eric had brought us insulated mugs of herbal tea.

The facilitator stood at the front of the room. Our goal at DHS is to keep biological families together, she said. The first plan is always a return-home plan, but in the meantime, kids need a safe place to go.

A man in an orange sweater at the table next to us crunched one Tootsie Pop after another, scrolling through his phones Facebook feed while the facilitator talked.

Kids in foster care are our most vulnerable citizens, she said. And the state doesnt make a very good parent. She handed us posters outlining foster childrens rights: access to free soap and shampoo, to clean drinking water, to a working phone.

Hang it somewhere visible in your home where your foster kids can see it, she said.

She wheeled an ancient television into the middle of the room, inserted a VHS tape into the VCR, and pressed Play so we could watch a video about being mandatory reporters, which meant when we were certified as foster parents, we would be required to report any suspected violence. As the video played, she sat with her back to the television, doing paperwork. When the tape froze and wavy lines filled the screen, she didnt notice, until we told her. Nothing important happens at the end, she said and turned off the TV.

I walked out of the classroom during a break and into a larger room with glass-walled offices on one side and a waiting area on the other. Couches, chairs, toys, games, multicolored rugsa place for parents to visit their children, who have been taken away.

Remember, the facilitator said when we returned, forming a healthy attachment to a child is very different from making a claim on that child. Foster families have to parent knowing the child will leave. She looked around the room. How many of you are relatives of a child in care? she asked, and everyone, except Eric and me, raised their hands. Our classmates were there to be certified as foster parents so they could care for nephews and nieces and grandchildren whose biological parents couldnt care for them.

Youre doing a good thing, she told them. There are about four hundred foster homes in this county. Sixty percent of those homes are like yourelative care providersbut they take care of less than half of the kids in the system. The rest of the kids are living with people who arent blood relatives. She gestured to Eric and me.

We call it stranger care, she said.

I still think about that meeting in Portland six years ago, about that version of myself, with my hope and my fear pointed in the wrong direction, afraid I wouldnt be able to love someone elses child, unaware of the joy to come, and the heartbreak, the helplessness.

Given what you know now, would you do it again? people ask, and I know what they are trying to say is that they wish they could lift this grief from me.

But it isnt the right question. Because this is how we find you.

Some say children come from stars, look down from that hot bright fire to this cool green blue and choose their families. Others say children arrive by stork, winged through sky, cradled by beak and blanket and brought to doorstep. But you will come by phone. For this reason, we have a landline, a word I like to say out loud because of the earth it names and roots me to, plumb line, divining rod, beacon to find your way home. There will be ringing and a voice saying Are you ready? Then we will ask questions, and the voice will answer, and you will wait, patient, already knowing our yes because you decided it. You will teach us that family is everywhere, well beyond the cul-de-sacs of our narrow minds, taking the edges of the ideas we have about who can be loved and who belongs to whom and stretching them wide.

There will be a social worker who will tell us there will always be holes in your story, missing pieces we cant provide. You wont be able to tell them what it felt like when they kicked your ribs, she will say, and I will want to tell her I knew you before I had ribs. I knew you before bone, before marrow. I knew you when we were dust gathered and mixed with water and animated by wind. Seed, egg, division, explosioncountless are the ways youve been born.

You have so many mothers. The one who birthed you. The one who brought you home. The earth. The mountains visible outside your bedroom window. The three spruce trees in our yard. Ocean. Rocks. Rivers. Moon. Stars.

I remember a childrens book about a baby bird looking for his mother. Are you my mother? he asked a cat. A dump truck. A wrecked car.

Are you my mother? he asked a cow.

How can I be your mother? said the cow. I am a cow.

Are you my mother? he asked a dog.

I am not your mother. I am a dog, said the dog.

But in your story, the one I tell you now, everyone answers, Yes.

I

SHOW YOURSELF TO BE A MOTHER