Over the years,
times changed. Open-adoptions began.
Foster parents began to have some contact with the adoptive and/or birth
parents. The times were finally catching up with what we already understood.
We kept other
medically fragile children, including Robert, who lived with us while awaiting
his kidney transplant and Kristen, who died while waiting for hers. Robert was a chubby little black
baby. This was the early-1980’s in
Alabama. Although race wasn’t a
daily issue for us – I was surprised by the number of people who were offended by
the fact that we were taking care of a black foster child. This was after Timothy and so most of
our friends expected the unexpected from our family. This was just another crazy thing our family did. Strangers weren’t always so
understanding.
The day Robert’s
kidney became available, my mom was out shopping with Robert. This was before cell phones. We got the call from the transplant
center and had only a matter of hours to find them and get Robert to the
hospital. We called all of the
usual places she shopped – asking if there was “a white woman and a black baby”
in the store. At that time, it was
a novelty. But that novelty
may have saved his life because we found her and he got his transplant.
Twenty-five years
later, Robert is still an integral part of my parent’s lives and his mother is
a close friend of the family.
And then there were the older kids. We didn’t have many, but they were memorable. While I was studying for the bar exam, my parents took in 6-year-old Lavar, who had been confined to the hospital for almost four years of his life. He came with a tracheotomy, but he was as solid as a tank. He rammed into you so hard he could knock you over – and that was when he wanted a hug.
My mom was good with the kind and gentle children, but she wasn’t naturally attracted to the rough and tough kids. I was attracted to the 6-year old football player with an afro, who had to put his finger over his trach to eek out raspy words. The boy who carried around an oxygen tank with a 100-foot cord so he could move and play. That relationship worked out well for us.
There always seemed to be at least one of us in the family who was perfectly suited for the personality of each child. I was living with my grandmother only a few miles away, but I made it a point to have a relationship with Lavar and when he was hospitalized right before Christmas, I used my newly acquired legal skills and knowledge to fight for his right to visit his mom on Christmas Day. I’m not sure what ridiculous things I surely said, but he got to go home for the day and I felt like I was following in my parents’ footsteps as an advocate for the best interest of the child – even when it didn’t match protocol, the rules, or what the world thought. That trait has come in handy over the years.
And no one can forget Fini. She won’t let you. She’s the star of every social event. When she was born to poverty stricken parents in South Alabama, she had tetrology of fallott (three heart and lung defects). She was in and out of hospitals for much of her first two years of life.
She suffered from brain damage that left us uncertain about her future. Never afraid of the challenge and always deeply committed – my parents hardly flinched. After working with her parents for almost two-years to get her back home, Fini’s parents decided to allow my parents to adopt her.
Now my 23-year-old dark-skinned little sister – her simple mind and big heart have done more to change, inspire, and soften the heart of my father than any other person on earth. She will always need my parents. But the truth is – they need her too.
Yep. It must be gain, because I’m now 49-years-old and ultimately, not much has changed in my life. There were a few gap years in between the time I grew up as a foster sibling and the time my husband and I became foster/adoptive parents. At first glance, it looks as though my life took me in a totally different direction from the one I lead now – but God knew what I needed to accomplish to be useful to Him!
Now bear with me
for a moment because the next part of my story has a lot to do with my
education and career choices, which can seem boring and unrelated. But looking
back, I can now see that themes began to develop early in my life and that many
of my seemingly unrelated decisions turned out to be key components of the big
picture of my life. In other
words, they are important.
So, in between, I
went to Samford University on a debate scholarship, hated it, and transferred
to the University of North Carolina during the Michael Jordan Basketball Era. (Claim
to fame: Michael and the rest of the basketball team were the “co-ed” part of
my floor in our dorm). Being a classic overachiever, I earned two degrees in 3
½ years: There was a B.A. in Speech Communications and a B.A. with Honors in
Public Policy Analysis – with a specialization in Race Relations and Human
Inequality. I wrote my Honors
Thesis on desegregation of campus housing at Carolina. It required me to go
into the archives of the University and interview people who had been around
for the 20 years since the school had become integrated. I was an advocate for improving
measures to desegregate campus housing.
Both my
specialization and my thesis were influenced by the fact that my best friend in
college happened to be an African-American male. This was the early 1980’s, but
it was still considered taboo for me to be friends with a black man. I suppose
growing up with black foster-siblings gave me a different view than most of my
peers.
I say “happened
to be” because circumstances brought us together – but color didn’t keep us
apart. He was a Resident Director in the set of private off-campus dorms where
I lived and I worked under him. We
had a lot in common and formed a lasting friendship almost immediately. We talked openly about race
relations. He came from a large
family and lived poor in a rural town where he wasn’t allowed into an
integrated school until 5th grade.
I grew up with
extremely frugal parents on a limited income, but my dad made a living wage and
also saved and paid cash for everything and as a result, I was afforded many
opportunities. My friend worked
his rear off to make opportunities for himself. He was the first and only one
on either side of his family to graduate college. I worked hard too. Both he and I valued honesty and hard work and diligence and
neither of us was concerned by what others said about us.
We weren’t even
dating – which would have been the ultimate sin – but people thought that we
were. Some of my friends – male and female – openly disapproved based simply on
the color of his skin.
But I was my
parent’s child. And the fact that
others criticized us made me even more determined to follow my heart and make
my own decisions without regard to the world’s view of my life.
During this same
time period, I met the man who was to become my first husband. We met at a conference in Washington,
D.C. and then I had an internship there.
We dated for about a year long-distance. Me in North Carolina.
Him in Michigan. He was older than me and already in law school. He swept me off my feet – or so I
thought. It was difficult to tell
from a distance. We got engaged anyway.
I moved to
Michigan and applied for law schools in the area. He planned to run for political office. Long story short, I had a serious
automobile accident with a drunk driver 3 weeks before our wedding. Based on
what happened during this crisis, I can look back and know that I had all the
signs that this marriage couldn’t succeed. It became apparent to me that he was an alcoholic and we
didn’t share the same values, goals and dreams. But I was only 20-years-old and I didn’t know how to stop a
big wedding, nor was I sure that I was supposed to.
Suffice it to say
that it was a bad decision for both of us. Our first anniversary was spent trying to decide whether we
should stay married another year.
Ultimately, we were divorced when he told me that he didn’t love me and
never had. He had married me
because he thought it would help his political career. I
didn’t.
I was in my
second year of law school when we finally divorced. It was an emotional struggle for me. I never thought I would marry and
divorce. It was my first true
failure in life.
Ultimately, I
kept pushing through – graduating from law school in the top 20% of my class
and writing on to Law Review.
Writing turned out to be my strength. It gave me many opportunities even my good grades
didn’t. Including a Clerkship with
Justice Oscar W. Adams, the first African-American State Supreme Court Justice
in the United States. After an
initial selection process, he chose his Clerk based on a writing
competition. He later told me I won
it hands down and I spent the next year researching and writing opinions for
the Alabama Supreme Court and learning from a man who was a key figure in the
evolution of race relations in Alabama. Race and writing became two strong’s themes in my
life.
The clerkship and
writing skills led to a job in a large law firm with a great starting salary
and countless working hours. I was
technically a trial attorney, but strongly preferred to write Appellate
Briefs. I handled much of the
firm’s appellate work for the three years I worked at there.
Later, my
research and writing skills were the key to my ability to practice law and
raise children at the same time.
You can write in the middle of the night!
Since law school,
I’ve added a few more degrees and credentials – including a Masters in
Education and training in Mediation and Christian Peacemaking - just because I
love learning and love teaching what I know.
But all my
degrees are not the source of my self-worth and are fairly meaningless – except
to me – because they show me how God was present through every step – even when
it seemed I was following a completely different passion. And all those degrees and relationships
and experiences have come in handy over the years as I advocate for the
children that I love and help kids both academically and emotionally.
... and that part of the story coincidentally falls today - on our 23rd Wedding Anniversary. Part 3 - the marriage - will follow so look for it!
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