Big Sad Puppy Eyes

We have a kid's book at our house called "The Train to Somewhere." It's a fictional account of a real phenomenon--that of the "orphan trains" of the late 1800s. Orphanages back east would load orphans on a train and ship them out to the frontier midwest for immediate adoption by anyone at the platform who wanted a kid. Of course, many of these parents were looking for field hands, so the big boys would be picked first, followed by the cute wee ones, then the older girls. Many of these children "traded one form of misery for another" (according to the book's jacket), but others lucked out into good homes with loving parents. Either way, it was an exercise in brutality to "pick" kids this way--the kids standing in a group in their best clothes and spit-styled hair, groups of parents asking the social workers "Is this all that's left?" or muttering "Next time we'll go farther east to get a better selection." Can you imagine being the last kid left on the platform?

Kevin and I attended an "adoption event" last night down in the Queen Soap Pig-Processing City. All we knew was that we would be bowling, that there were going to be other adoptive families, and that there would be about 70 kids. The kids knew that the people with name tags who weren't social workers were potential parents. We were given a list of Do's and Don'ts prior to arrival. We were to talk to the kids about themselves, but were not to get into why they were up for adoption or tell them about what life with us would be like. We were just there to have a good time.

If we were interested in learning more about a child, there were pads of paper and pens laying around on which we could write their names. Of course, this was to be done discreetly, as were the questions to their social workers and the adoptive placement workers who were making the rounds.

This is how it worked, or not-worked-so-well: The kids were to pick a lane and get bowling. The parents were to move from lane-to-lane at designated intervals so we could interact with many kids without the kids having to disrupt their games (speed-adoption, if you will). Of course, this blew my average, but I sacrificed for the children.

We started out with Anthony (10, white), Antonio (16, black), and Dominick (15, black). It was a mismatch, kid-wise. Then we added Donta (9?, black) and took up two lanes. I had to wonder what Dominick and Antonio, who looked like a college freshman and a gangsta, respectively, thought of the prospect of being adopted by these two boring-looking white people--who were kicking their ass in bowling, by the way (boo-yah!). Fifteen minutes into the game, Sondra (an Alicia Keyes lookalike who was only 12 (?!?!), black) and Priscilla (a very "wise" 12 or 13, mixed race) showed up, and, well, not even the slight promise of a stable home can compete with that. Soon our teenagers were off, being their age-appropriate social selves, and we silently concluded that none of these big-city kids would like being one of maybe two or three black kids in a rural high school. When I asked about another 13 year old black girl later on, her social worker confirmed those suspicions.

Another 15 minutes later we were told to move to the next lane. Now we were bowling with 4 10-13 year old black girls who were having a blast and in a remarkably close game. They weren't paying too much attention to us. Anthony (in our first lane) had grown bored with bowling after 1 frame and was off to another activity. Donta stuck with the new parents for a few minutes and then drifted over to us (or to Kevin, really). The girl that I was most interested in was a little ball 'o fire named Mikia, whom I threatened with the prospect of taking her Twix away if she snuck my turn again. At one point she had eaten the Twix, stolen my turn, so I jumped up and tickled her belly for a minute to "get that Twix out of there" and she waffed and waffed, as Stevie would say.

Speaking of Stevie, we weren't allowed to bring him and wouldn't have wanted to. After we left for the evening we both admitted to having feelings of "cheating" on Stevie at times. Suffice it to say that any child we bring home will be problematic for Stevie, but we're going to put him through it. Any parent with more than one child has had to deal with sibling jealousy, and Stevie will be no different. Bringing another biological child into the equation is one thing, but choosing to bring in a child or children that have "issues" and may need a lot of attention, of knowing pretty darn well what you are bringing to the home, carries another kind of responsibility. Namely, will our selfish desire for more children screw up the one we already have?

Donta eventually drifted away, too. But let me tell you about Anthony. Anthony was one of the first kids there, and we were one of the first parents there, and one of the social workers asked us to help him get set up with shoes and a bowling ball. Kevin (dressed in his customary jeans, untucked button down work shirt, and ball cap) took Anthony's hand to size him up and squeezed his bicep to guage the poundage limit. While he was doing this, Anthony looked up at him with what can only be described as joy and wonder. Instant imprint. (Kevin JUST called, just now, just to tell me "I can't stop thinking about that kid." In Utah years ago I heard an NPR story about the foster system and they interviewed a 10-year old boy who, when asked what kind of son he would be, said "I would be a good son. A fun son!" I started bawling right there in the parking lot. We both associated Anthony with the boy in that story.)

Anyway, Anthony zipped back and forth from activity to activity (video games, face painting, balloon animals, ornament-making), but he always zipped back to us. He made sure he ate with us, opened his Christmas presents with us, played with his remote control car with us. Actually, with Kevin. (The attention lavished on him by two boys last night was an illustration of how so many of these kids need solid male figures in their lives.) I was attempting to make the rounds, checking in on the kids we had bowled with, who were now busy cherishing or lamenting their presents. I asked about several girls, but they were either already in adoptive placements that hadn't finalized (thus their presence at last night's festivities), or would not appreciate our white rural digs, at least according to our social worker.

When it was Anthony's time to go home, he gave us both hugs. We watched him as he walked away, and then he turned his head and gave us another big smile. It was like a Disney made-for-TV movie entitled "A New Family for Christmas." Instant imprint. As my social worker, Tim, told me this morning, "Some of these kids place themselves."

Which brings me to the "Big Sad Puppy Eyes" title. It wasn't like that. These kids were among siblings and friends, social workers and foster parents. They were engaged in a variety of activities, opening presents, eating pizza (all paid for by a local radio station). We adoptive parents could move amongst them darn near undetected. There were very few puppy eyes, but you did get an inkling with some kids, Anthony among them, of how much they wanted--needed--a family. The really sad thing is that all of the families that I noticed--maybe 10 or 12 (out of 26 who RSVP'd)--were white. Some of them had obviously found their own Anthonys, and they were all white, too. I wondered what the black kids thought of that. Did 16-year old Antonio, the very picture of Threatening Black Youth to mid American, middle class white people, feel like the kid on the platform who would never get picked, especially when folks were making a fuss about the little 3-year-olds with curly hair and adorably atrocious bowling skills? Did beautiful Sondra, on the cusp between flirting with Dominick and playing with Bratz dolls, think for even a minute that we had anything to offer her?

My social worker said that the state is looking into the color barriers. He told me that 2/3 of the white families who apply get an approved homestudy (the key to the adoptive door), while only 1/3 of black families do. And then there are issues surrounding trans-racial adoption and preferences among the families mostly and sometimes the kids, too. As for us, we struck out with the black kids, but Tim received a fax he will forward to us about two black brothers. If the kids are OK with no diversity, then we are, too. But I don't know of too many kids who would be OK with that.

So wish us luck, persistant reader, as we clear hurdle after ever-higher, more demanding hurdle on our quest to fill our bedroom-challenged house with kids.