A Stocking for Sarah -- The Beginning of a Family Tradition

This morning, I was inspired to sit down and write this story to share with other families considering foster adoption. It's about the ups and downs of our experience and why, despite the pain, I would and will do it all over again...

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A Stocking for Sarah:
The Beginning of a Foster Adoption Family Tradition

by Jenny Thomas

If history is any indication, all of the children who join our family will come as a complete surprise to us! My husband and I adopted our oldest daughter, Anna, through the Czech equivalent of domestic adoption while we were living and working in Prague, Czech Republic. We met Anna on Matt’s birthday at the orphanage where she had lived for the first year-and-a-half of her life. She was nothing like the child I had expected to adopt, and we certainly didn’t expect to meet our daughter on our casual “tour of the orphanage” that day! But the moment we saw Anna, we knew instantly that we belonged together. It took two months of agonizing waiting, visiting, and trying to convince frustrated Czech social workers that we really did want this ragamuffin little toddler with a “syndrome” (a genetic disorder called Turner’s Syndrome) rather that the healthy infant girl they had recently found for us, but we eventually brought home our little “gypsy girl” on September 15, 2006.

After four life-changing years living overseas, we moved back “home” to Southern California and began to think again about expanding our family. Some good friends at church had had a great experience with U.S. foster adoption, so we signed up, completed piles of paperwork, went through training, and began preparing ourselves and our home to welcome one or two new little family members.

Given that our daughter was 4 years old and extremely social (unlike her introverted parents), we told our social worker that we were interested in a toddler or sibling pair up to or around Anna’s age. Needless to say, we were taken off guard when he called the following week saying there was a newborn baby girl in need of an emergency placement. Were we interested? It took a bit of mental reorientation and a frantic Target shopping trip, but six hours later, we were leaving the hospital with a beautiful, tiny, African American stranger with a full head of curly black hair.

The process of falling in love with baby “Sarah”* was so powerful and rapid that it almost scared me. I had assumed that the fact that we were open to toddlers would certainly mean they would place older children with us. In all honesty, before we got the call, I was not even sure that I wanted a tiny baby at that point in my life. Anna had been 18 months old, so the “newborn thing” was completely foreign to me. My expectations about what it might be like, especially since I would have to continue working full time, were as full of images of chronic exhaustion and the monotony of constant feeding, diaper changing, and laundry as they were of sweet baby coos and cuddling in rocking chairs.

Boy, was I wrong!

From the first moment, I loved EVERYTHING about being a mom to Sarah. Caring for her in the midst of her fragile dependency brought the deepest kind of satisfaction I have ever experienced. My days took on a sort of “monastic” rhythm, centered around the patterns of her daily needs. I woke to her hungry whimpers, calmed myself before work gazing at her contented full-belly morning smile, celebrated my return home with our joyful “play time” reunion, and wound down for bed watching tv with her raspy breathing harmonizing with my own on the couch.

After the first glorious month, our family began to experience first-hand the ups and downs that we had been warned about in the foster adoption process. Sarah’s birthmom was working hard to turn her life around and be reunified with her daughter. In the beginning, this looked unlikely, but it quickly became clear that reunification was a very real possibility. We tried to take it a day at a time, focusing on loving Sarah while “holding loosely.” Living in that grey area between being parents and long-term babysitters was very difficult for me, particularly because I felt such an intense connection to this little girl. As weekly visits with her birthmom became longer and more frequent, I tried to savor every moment that I had, knowing that the time might be very limited.

In early November, Sarah’s social worker called and told us that they were planning to move her to another family who lived closer to her birthmother. We were devastated, but began preparing mentally and emotionally for the transition. Each day, we waited for the phone call saying that they were coming to get her. But it didn’t come. Several days later, we learned that plans had changed and, if we were open to it, they would like Sarah to stay with us indefinitely. We were flooded with a huge sense of relief and elation! This meant she would be with us for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and perhaps longer… maybe even forever.

As Christmas approached, I dug out my dusty sewing box (I’m no sewing expert!) to make a stocking for baby Sarah. In the past, I had hand-made stockings for each member of our family -- daddy, mommy, and Anna – in corresponding colors. I picked out a quilted paisley fabric in complimentary tones and stayed up till 3 in the morning sewing. The next day, I sat for over an hour holding Sarah and staring with great satisfaction at our four little stockings hanging over the fire place. Yes, this was right and good. Daddy’s red and green and mommy’s patchwork quilt on one side; Anna’s bright red with partridges and Sarah’s paisley quilt on the other. Colorful, unique, and cobbled-together, but somehow balanced and harmonious – just like our little family.

The holidays seemed to linger this year. I supposed part of that had to do with the fact that we were too busy to take down our Christmas decorations for weeks and weeks after the New Year! Around the time that I finally felt ready to take them down, we received a surprising and saddening phone call. Sarah’s birthmom was doing extremely well (for which we were genuinely thankful), but this meant that the social workers wanted them to begin spending the whole weekend together in preparation for being fully reunified in a few weeks. We had known that reunification was a strong possibility, but the suddenness of the decision caught us completely off guard. Over the short remaining time, grief began to seep into our home and our hearts. It felt like hearing that someone you love has days to live. Every little moment and interaction took on a heaviness of being “the last”… last visit to the doctor, last diaper purchase, last bath, last night with us.

The news of Sarah’s imminent departure left me frozen in my efforts to “undecorated” the house. February rolled around, and her little stocking still stared at me from the mantle, reminding me daily that she probably wouldn’t be here the following year to joyfully explore its contents. For whatever reason, the stocking became the most painful and poignant symbol of our loss. I agonized for two weeks over what to do with it. Should I send it with her? If I were her mom, I would want to choose my own, not use the one selected by a “stranger”. Could I possibly give this special stocking to a future child? I actually felt a little bit nauseous at the thought. “No! This is HER stocking.”

Then one morning, I woke up knowing exactly what I wanted to do. It would remain Sarah’s stocking, but it would stay with our family. I shared my idea with my husband: “We can put it up each year in memory of her. Instead of filling it with presents, we can have each member of our family write a letter to her and collect them all inside, year after year. That way, we can share our thoughts and prayers and memories with her as a way to honor her special place in our family and bless her symbolically, even though she won’t be with us physically.” This solution just felt right.

A few days later, I gave my baby girl a bath, massaged her one last time with her favorite lavender lotion, bundled her up and took the tearful drive to reunite her forever with her birthmom. My husband and I held each other and cried in the rain before getting back into the car… without her.

Walking away from the baby whom I had cared for loved for nearly five months was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The waves of sadness, frustration, disappointment, and longing still wash over me daily. But there is peace, too. I feel peace when I think of the stable, nurturing beginning that she had with our family and the courageous, loving birthmom who has given everything she has to be able to parent her precious child. In all sincerity, this is a happy ending… what should have happened. But I still miss my girl.

Yesterday, my husband got out the Christmas bins. It was finally time. As I looked at Sarah’s stocking, I was surprised to find the pain and “frozen” feeling it used to evoke replaced by a warm wave of peace and gratitude. I felt no anger or despair as I pulled it down and placed it gently into the bin with the rest of our stockings and Christmas decorations. Here was this little memory of Sarah, at home where it belonged with the other symbols of our family’s most special traditions. She is a part of us, and no one can ever take that away. We are a part of her, whether or not she will have any conscious memory of her time with us.

This experience marked the beginning of what will become a new family tradition for us. I plan to make a stocking for each new child and put them all out each year, whether they will be filled with presents or precious letters. What a joy to have a hearth full of colorful stockings and a heart full of precious children! Despite the surprises, the losses, and the pain, I can’t imagine a more beautiful way to build a family. I am thankful to each of my children and to all of those who will come, who enrich our lives with their uniqueness and fill our home with their memories.
Our family plans to continue in our foster adoption journey, despite the potential heartbreaks that may come. The miracle of sewing a frayed little scrap of fabric in to our family quilt is worth the pain and the risk of that little patch being removed and sewn back into the bolt of fabric from which it was cut.

* “Sarah” is not her legal name, though it is the name we would have given her had we been able to adopt her.