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CHAPTER 1
Wanting a Family
In 1968 I stood in my classroom on the third floor of our high school. I had just finished teaching a home economics class in sewing. I remember Melinda, a beautiful slim girl with large blue eyes and long silky light brown hair. She had eagerly finished a turquoise blouse. It looked gorgeous and would accentuate her kind blue eyes. The bell rang and the students drifted out. It was break time.
I collected my notes and gazed out the window to the campus below where students were milling about. I saw tinfoil flashing as they passed drugs. It hit me: These were the parents of tomorrow's children. I looked again; there was Melinda. "Oh no," I thought, "such a beautiful junior and getting into that." It was a Catholic high school, and the authorities worked hard to keep drugs out, but they got in. Standing there as a nun in a long black habit I had no inkling at that time that I would leave this order, marry a fine man and adopt three children whose parents had been heavy on drugs, children whose brains were permanently damaged, children who would face many obstacles ahead. I had no idea that my first little boy would have Melinda's beautiful blue eyes, fair complexion and light brown hair.
The wind rustled the maple trees lining the street. A warm sun beat down. I glanced again at the campus. Foil was still flashing. Sad! Drugs reigned. I ached for the students who were bringing such doom on themselves and for the administration, who worked so hard not to have drugs on the campus. It was an impossible task. The culture made drugs the in-thing. No lecture, no program, no gifted speaker could stop them. Free will reigned. "Try it: you'll feel good." And they tried it.
Standing there that day I didn't realize what far reaching devastating effects drugs can have. Later when I was teaching in a high school, a young boy, Aaron, seventeen, tall, 6' 4," an excellent football player with muscles to spare, decided a few drugs would make his game even better. God only knows what combination he took. At seventeen he ended up in a care home, mute. Aaron had everything but wanted more, and now the medical team that works with him cannot reverse his situation. He cannot tie his own shoes or feed himself. I want to cry when I think about him, so young, so talented, with all those muscles going to waste and a good brain wrecked for life.
Later after we were happily married we wanted children, and since we couldn't have our own we looked at adoption. My wonderful husband, Marcos, was Peruvian. We visited his family in Peru. Walking in the streets we saw many beautiful children who were homeless, scrounging for food, dirty, half-clad and begging. My heart went out to them, as did my husband's, but we discovered that adopting from a foreign country involved many problems and red tape. So we looked to the United States. A friend who was a medical foster care person helped us.
At that time in the '70s it was not the policy to give out any information about the child's past, much of which was unknown. We soon found out that children come with mountains of unknowns. My friend helped us get a beautiful chubby cheeked, blue-eyed boy with sandy hair, Tony.
The first day at our house he sat on the basement stairs and wailed, "Mommy! Mommy!' There were no tears, just a steady plaintive cry.
I sat down beside him. I wanted to cry. My heart was breaking. What sort of hell have these children been through? I wondered. I put my arm around his shoulders. He didn't stop. He kept it up for a good five minutes. I said, "You want your mommy, and I'm not your mommy, but you are going to be our forever child!" Then I took him to the kitchen and gave him a snack and put my arm around him. He was quiet. I assured him again, "You are our forever little boy."
Later we took him to the basement play area; he was by the fireplace playing with a truck. Marcos and I were watching. Suddenly he picked up the truck and threw it at me. I dodged, and it missed.
Marcos got up, strode over to the fireplace, picked up Tony by his shoulders so they were face to face, looked him square in the eye, and said, "Don't you ever throw anything at your mom again!" He said it with such firmness and love that it never happened again, although Tony had a temper and did throw things.
Before we got Tony, we had scheduled a trip to Los Angeles, which included visits to Disneyland, Sea World, the zoo, etc. My husband's parents were coming from Peru to visit us for the first time. Tony arrived four days before this scheduled trip, so we took him with us. He was two and half years old, in the middle of potty training. I knew that change can be upsetting, so I took diapers with us.
Tony screamed non stop when I put him on the changing table. And he kept it up. In fact, he got worse. I kept telling him it was all right, but he couldn't for some reason feel safe. He did the screaming thing on escalators. In fact, he did a number of things that were not normal for his age. When we fed him he just kept stuffing food in, like a starved animal. He behaved very differently from children I had cared for, including my nieces and nephews. I had to give him little bits of food or drink or he would upchuck everything.
We visited Sea World in California. Tony couldn't handle any rides that went up and down. Heights bothered him. But he loved the fish. One time he got away from me, and I was sure he was going to jump in with the whales! We got splashed a lot, and Tony giggled and laughed.
We stayed in a nice hotel and went swimming in the pool. The first time, Tony started to pull off his swimsuit. "No, no, this is not a bath; leave it. And don't pee in the water." He loved the water. And it was fun.
I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to him, because he had so much terror doing simple things. He had a lot of trouble sleeping. When we got back home he kept up these behaviors. He would wake up screaming. I tried to soothe him. Sometimes when I wrapped him in a blanket it helped; he wouldn't let me cuddle him or do any of the things that usually quiet a child.
I thought back to the first day we brought him home. Imagine bringing home your darling little two-and-a-half year- old boy and he immediately goes to his carpeted room and stakes out his territory by peeing in every corner. I couldn't believe my eyes. "What do I have, a cat or child? Dear Lord, this really scares me. What next?"
I called the adoption worker and asked her about these behaviors. She said, "Give it time, and hopefully things will get better." I called my medical foster parent friend and asked her if she knew anything about Tony's history. She said both parents were drug users. After visiting with her I began to put pieces together, realizing I was not just dealing with adoption loss issues. I was dealing with a drug-affected child.
Research helped me know that you can't handle this kind of child like an ordinary child. It is necessary to go through all the stages of child development, such as crawling and rolling over. This helps with bonding, but it will never be like the real thing between a biological mother and child.
I remember Tony riding his tricycle in our driveway one day, hitting against the brick wall between the garage doors as hard as he could. I went out and asked, "Tony, what are you doing?"
"It's fun hitting the wall!"
"Let's find a place where you can ride without hitting."
I took him to the sidewalk and watched him to be sure he was safe.
Research had showed me that crack-affected children have smaller heads and have trouble bonding. They cannot handle being touched or looked at. Because bonding is so crucial to child development, a foster parent must supply it.
I went through all the stages of child development, crawling, rolling over, etc. This helped with bonding. It will never be perfect, but it is possible to make it much better. It was encouraging to know Tony did better after those play sessions.
In one family I know, not drug-affected, the big sister, about fifteen, was babysitting her little brother, David, about three. He was acting up, so she threatened him, "If you do that once more I will flush you down the toilet." He believe her and refused to go to the bathroom.
When their mom got home and found out the problem, she told her daughter, "Never, never, threaten anything you can't or won't do." This is key to raising any child.
CHAPTER 2
Rough Beginnings
All three of our adopted children had very rough beginnings in life. In this chapter we will try to point out some of these difficulties they had in coping.
Tony was born in February 1976 to drug-taking parents. He was often left to fend for himself. The police who took him from his abusive parents found a screaming undernourished baby, in a dirty diaper at least three days old, with a nasty rash on his little behind and down his legs. As an infant he was placed in foster care. His foster mother loved him, and he began to live again. He was held and nurtured and let know that he didn't have to scream for hours to get a little food or a clean diaper. His foster parents were expecting a child of their own, so he was returned to foster care.
This is where we came in and adopted Tony at two and a half years old. He was a beautiful child with big blue eyes, blond curly hair, and a smile we couldn't resist. Tony didn't want to leave his foster home. It was a sad parting. He felt ousted by the new baby coming, so apparently in his mind babies were bad. Whenever we visited a family with a baby in a crib I had to watch Tony carefully or he would dump the baby out of the crib or pour milk from the baby's bottle all over it. He was very sneaky and did it when no one was watching. These babies were his enemies so he wanted to get rid of them.
Tony had a real fear of heights. He would scream at the top of an escalator and have a panic attack if placed on a diaper-changing station. This could have come from being placed in a high place at night and left alone to fall to the floor. When the police took him he had terrible bruises.
He screamed anytime we got near something high. Just to stand on a porch and look out would give him the shudders. We had to hold him and keep assuring him that he was going to be all right. Babies affected by drugs have different needs. It has to do with brain damage.
As adoptive parents it was difficult to find Tony's early history because his files were spotty. We did see a police report and discovered he suffered from malnutrition, lactose intolerance, allergies and ear infections. We were glad to know about these so we could deal with them.
Tony was partly potty trained, but I knew he could regress, so in any strange situation I came supplied with diapers. This paid off when traveling. There were many fears and incidents in his early life that were hard to explain. Drugs leave a very bad trail of problems. Even after years of carefully monitored guidance problems arose, such as the following.
At five and six Tony was telling people who were smoking that they were going to die from cancer. At nine, Tony was finding and picking up used cigarettes off the street and smoking behind the bushes.
When Tony was ten he was home and I was at a meeting. He went to get a drink and hit the water faucet wrong. It went over the counter and out of the sink with water spilling out. He was terrified and couldn't turn it off. He panicked and called me. His IQ was 147 but he could not get calmed down enough to push it over the sink and turn it off. It took ten minutes to calm him. Why? Because that part of his brain did not function, a sad result of drugs.
As the child gets older problems are manifested in different ways. When Tony was fourteen he dropped a heavy Skate board ramp down the side of his leg and tore the flesh off so the bone was showing. He came into the house and said, "Mom, I need a Band-Aid." I took one look, told him to lie down, wrapped a clean wet towel around the leg, packed it with ice, and took him to the hospital.
These children can look normal, but they cannot act normal. The damage does not go away. It just comes out in different ways. Even as adults they cannot function socially or economically in an acceptable manner.
When Tony was fifteen he had gotten in trouble, and the judge put him in a treatment center for adolescents. After he came home he was lying on his bed crying, and he said to me, "I wish I could go away again and come back out of your tummy so I wouldn't have all these problems with drugs!"
I looked at Tony, and two tears slipped down my cheeks. My heart said, "Dear God, what has our society done to innocent children? What a sad heritage we give them by using drugs. How unfair!" I gave Tony a hug and said, "I wish you could have been my real child too." He tried to smile, but it was a very sad smile.
When we adopted Tony we had a six-month foster adopt, which meant his biological parents had six months to get their act together, to get drug and alcohol treatment, get a stable home, get a real job and be able to support a child, and get some counseling at a mental health clinic. They failed to meet any of the requirements, so our adoption of Tony was finalized.
At the end of those six months, when Tony was three, we got a call from the agency asking if we wanted a three year-old girl whose mother was giving her up, asking that she be put in a Christian home. We had one week to decide after our initial visit at the agency. We asked to meet this girl. We prepared Tony, explaining that he might have a little sister. Terri was a tiny three-year-old, very small for her age, weighing about twenty-nine pounds. Her fuzzy Afro hair was bigger than she was.
When we met her at the adoption agency, Tony walked up to her and said, "I don't like you. Go back home."
Her lips quivered, but she didn't cry, just stood there trembling. I picked her up and gave her a hug and said, "This is my Husband, Marcos. I'm Mariah, and this is Tony." She relaxed a little. The agency asked if we wanted to take her out for a day. We agreed.
She seemed comfortable with us, but I could see she was keeping everything inside. Her mother had given her up so many times before that there was hardly any trust left.
We did fun things. We asked her what she wanted to eat. "A hotdog on a stick and ice cream." We ate and went to a park. She had fun on the swings and merry-go-round while Tony watched. We fed the ducks and walked around the river.
After this first visit, which went very well, we got a call to see if we wanted her for an overnight visit. After that visit we sat down together and prayed and discussed. There were many tears; it was a tough decision. We decided yes. We went back to the agency to finish the paper work and finalize the adoption.
We told Tony, "Terri is going to be your sister."
The two played nicely together while we did the paperwork. That was a relief. But before they started playing with the toys in the corner, I could see the wistful look on her face. "Are you going to leave me too?" Her trust level was zero. We got in the car with two car seats and put them in. Big tears rolled quietly down her cheeks. I undid the car seat straps and put her on my lap.
We assured Tony from the day we brought him home that we were his forever parents. We assured Terri also. But she was hyper vigilant. She couldn't sleep. Our bedroom door was open, and so was her bedroom door. She seemed to question, "Am I safe?" It took a long time for Terri to have that fear leave her eyes.
When a child is hyper vigilant she has not had a safe predictable pattern in her early life. A child moved repeatedly to different homes or schools lacks a sense of security or accountability. Her well-being is shattered. Security is gone. Limits help her to feel loved and safe. It took Terri two years to feel safe. After two years she really believed she wouldn't be sent away.
She liked fluffy pink dresses and pretty things. She wanted to be our little princess, and we tried to help her feel at home. We told her we had some names picked out for her if she wanted a new name. She chose Theresa, and so she became Terri.
What we didn't know was that she had been sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend, who was dark skinned like my husband, so Terri cried whenever Marcos picked her up. She couldn't relate to him. She wanted to. I could see it in her eyes as she watched Marcos and Tony playing and roughhousing together.
Terri wanted to do everything right so she wouldn't be sent away. One day the furnace man came, and when I opened the door, she panicked and grabbed me around the leg. "You are not going to let him take me away!"
"No, no," I replied. "I'm your forever mommy, remember? This is the furnace man; he will not come in the house. He has to fix the furnace in the basement." Relief flooded her fearful eyes, and she gave me a quick hug.
Every time we went to visit at a friend's house, I had to carefully assure her that she was not going to be left behind. Sometimes she would say, "You're not going to leave me, Mommy, are you?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Love Alone"
by .
Copyright © 2018 S. Wahrheit.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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