When I was quite young-- second or third grade-- a new girl came to my class. For whatever reason, she came to me, and over the weeks, we became friends.
One day, she confided in me that she was in the care of the foster system.
“The foster system? What’s that?” I had neighbors by that name, so I assumed the foster system would be wonderful.
“They take you away from your mom and send you to live with other people,” she told me breathlessly. “Sometimes you don’t even get to live with a family. You just live in a building with some other kids. Then if you get adopted you get a new mom and you get to go home.”
“Are you getting a new mom?” I asked. The whole thing sounded terrifying to me.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t have a new mom. But maybe I will sometime, if I find one.”
As we spoke, a plan started forming in my head.
She could share my mom.
I just knew my mom would agree; she was a kind, loving mom and would take care of anybody who needed it. So I told my friend to follow me home after school. I wandered home, finding patches of dirt and sand and writing directions: ‘This way,’ with an arrow pointing the direction she needed, ‘Turn left’, on a corner.
When I got home I went straight to my mom and told her the situation. “She’s coming,” I said, “I left her directions, and she’s following me home to get adopted.”
My mom sat down on the couch and pulled me into her lap. “Honey,” she said gently, “we can’t adopt your friend.” She brushed a wayward strand of hair from my eyes as I stared at her in shock.
“But… why not?”
“The foster system isn’t an evil thing,” my mom explained. “It’s not always fun for kids in that situation, but it’s meant to be a special system to help kids whose families can’t take care of them correctly.”
“But we could take care of her.”
“No, sweetie,” my mom said sadly, “we can’t. It’s best if she stays where she is and is taken care of by the people she’s with.”
I begged, pleaded and sobbed for her to reconsider. She gently held me and swayed back and forth, lulling me. We would help in any way we could, she reassured… but adoption wasn’t one of them.
My friend never did follow me home, and soon after, she was moved to a new foster home. By the time I ran into her again, we were much older, and I understood my mom’s reasons for saying no.
She had been adopted, and she seemed happy.
Over the years, we did help people. We donated money, food, and toys to fundraisers, drives, and secret Santas. We gave in every way we could, and often, were the recipients of such giving. When my youngest sibling was born-- making eight of us kids-- I was completely content and had all but forgotten about the incident. I had moved on. The dream of choosing myself a new sister had almost entirely faded from my vision.
It was eleven years before I thought of it again.
I hadn’t slept since the phone call that morning. At 5:30 am, my best friend,Teesa, had called me and told me she was admitting herself into the hospital for her own safety, and didn’t know how long she’d be there or if she’d be able to talk to me. “It could be three days, it could be ten,” she said, “But I wanted to call and let you know.”
Teesa had not been spared the tough side of the world, and was just now-- after nearly twenty-three years of abuse, control, and depression-- breaking through and discovering she was worth something.
I suppose part of that journey was forgetting.
It was late morning now, and Teesa was all I could think about-- where was she? Would she contact me? Could I see her? What on earth had happened the night before?
It took my son three tries to get my attention-- he wanted cereal. “I’m so sorry, babe,” I said as I dished him some, “Mommy’s so distracted.”
“Mommy’s fustated,” he said matter-of-factly as he balanced a spoonful precariously, leaning it towards his mouth. I watched, half-aware, as he tipped the spoon too early and a portion of it dribbled down his shirt.
“No, I’m not frustrated,” I replied, “Just tired and distracted. Thinking about Teesa.” I ruffled his hair and smoothed it away from his eyes. He munched away, unaware of my mental haze, blissful in his ignorance. I sighed. I wished I could be like him sometimes.
I reached over to the counter and checked my phone for the billionth time that morning. There was a message there from Teesa’s sister. “I got Teesa’s access code for you,” she wrote, “she wants you to call her.” A four-digit code followed.
A treasure.
“I’ll do you one better,” I muttered under my breath.
That night, I arrived at the hospital minutes before the visiting hour started. I gave her number, was escorted into the facility, and pointed in the direction of her room. “Room 119,” the nurse said, “and if she’s not there, she’ll be around the corner in the rec room.”
Her room was clearly empty, the bedsheets tousled, so I turned in the direction the security nurse had pointed-- and there she was, taking a stack of coloring pages from the secretary at the desk as they came off the printer.
I watched her spot me. In the moments before my identity registered in her mind, I saw a sadness I had never yet seen in her eyes, and it broke my heart.
I stayed until the speakers announced that the hour was up, and visitors were expected to make their way towards the doors.
I had never seen anyone so hopeless, and I had never loved that hopeless person as much as I did right then.
The next morning, my mind was no less distracted. Teesa’s children had been passing hands in an infuriating fiasco, claimed by multiple parties, all of whom were certain they had the right, and I was stranded nearly two hours south, watching her designated caretaker flounder under the pressure of her family’s attempts to control the situation.
CPS will take them if they’re not with family, they claimed, the kids know us, they’ll be happier here. As I watched the drama unfold, the thought came unbidden to my mind:
She could join my family.
She had listed me as her primary contact; the person to be called for discharge information, the designated pick-up person. She said they’d encouraged her to use family-- she’d refused. She didn’t trust them, she said.
I did a quick google search. ‘Can you adopt an adult?’ Reading through the results, it looked like it would be relatively simple-- but I quickly dismissed it. It’s a daydream, I thought; It would never happen.
I closed the internet tab and moved on.
The week went ahead with drama after drama unfolding. A few people-- including family and friends-- insisted that the kids should be with family, claiming over and over that CPS would take them from any non-family caretaker. I had looked up the CPS guidelines and felt that the exact opposite was true: kids were to be left with the designated caretaker under all circumstances, unless in cases of abuse, neglect or a six-month lapse in parental contact. Only under those circumstances would the children be removed.
Eventually, they claimed that Teesa was in an unfit state to care for the children or make decisions regarding their welfare. They arrived at the home of the caretaker, took the kids, and left him defeated, with a fridge fully stocked with the week’s supplies and beds already prepared.
I watched helplessly, unable to do anything but spew forth words.
As words were my only power, I chose them carefully.
‘If you insist on taking the kids,’ read a part of my message, ‘I won’t try to get the law involved, because I know their needs will be met. But understand that going against Teesa’s will for her children will drive some major rifts in your family and they may not be able to mend.’
Friday came. I got a call from the hospital with Teesa’s discharge information, and was instructed to arrive at the hospital the next morning at eleven to bring her home.
We’d made it through the week. Thought it had not been without considerable fuss, the kids were back in the home they were originally meant to be in, and we would come home to relative quiet.
I picked Teesa up the next morning and drove her home. We had a lot to talk about. She was on new meds and seemed a great deal happier than she had last time I’d seen her in person; though I’d talked with her on the phone every day of the week, it was better to see her in person by far.
We had nearly arrived at the home of her children’s caretaker when she said something that shocked me.
“Jenica?” she paused, almost embarrassed. “Do you think your parents would consider adopting me?”
I balked. I remembered my google search earlier in the week and felt a glimmer of something rise in my chest-- not exactly hope, but… truth. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I think they’d at least consider.”
She got visibly excited. “I looked up the process,” she admitted, laughing a little. “It’s not too hard.”
I laughed too. “So did I,” I told her, “but I didn’t think it was an actual possibility. You really mean it?”
She did, she said-- she was tired of the broken pieces of her family ruling her life. She was tired of feeling lonely, judged, and controlled. “And if this ever happened again,” she said, “my kids would go straight to your parents. I feel a lot more comfortable with that.”
That evening, alone with my mom, I told her I had a question to ask. “It’s a big question,” I warned, “don’t be too shocked.”
Her eyes went wide when I delivered the request. “Oh,” she said softly, “I’ll… need to think on that. And talk to Dad.”
“I expected so,” I said, shivering from the intense nervousness, “no rush.”
We discussed a little further the reasons for Teesa’s wish, and the next morning I went home.
It was a couple of months later-- four days before Christmas-- that my parents visited Teesa in her home and told her that they felt she was meant to be a part of their family. She called me beaming to deliver the news, and we spent the weekend teaching our children that they were cousins.
Teesa and her children joined our traditional pile on Christmas Eve, sleeping on the floor amidst people and blankets, and spent Christmas morning with all of us. Things felt shockingly normal as we lounged in our pajamas, hair askew, and laughed as my brother-- our brother-- announced from around the corner, where he had previously been lounging pants-less, “The pants are on, I repeat, the pants are on.”
We tumbled down the stairs and watched our children delve into their stockings as my mother-- our mother-- read aloud from The Living Christ, a manger resting in the center of the floor.
She belonged.
She belongs.
Most people don’t get to choose their sisters. It’s a privilege I doubt I will ever happen upon again in this life. It’s a blessing beyond anything I had ever imagined.
I have been told throughout my life that God will surprise me with the blessings He has in store. I wasn’t certain I believed it, but I do now.
He has a plan. He has a plan that nobody can see or imagine. He knows us and who we are and where we’re headed. And He knows where we belong.
Welcome home, Teesa… welcome home.
