Meet the Parents

My wife and I fostered eighteen babies in six years. We met a lot of fathers and mothers. Some of them were polite. Others regarded us as the baby thieves who stole their children. All of them were interesting. Here are some “snapshots” of a few of them.

Neesa’s Parents

Their names were Mario and Lizzie, and we took care of their baby daughter, Neesa. Mario was a proud, dedicated gangbanger. A guy owed him money and couldn’t pay, so to clear up the debt he lent Mario the use of his girlfriend, Lizzie, for the weekend. Lizzie decided she wanted to stay with Mario, and who could blame her after such a charming whirlwind romance.

By the age of 22 Lizzie had already had six babies. Neesa made seven, and her belly was swelling with number eight. The social worker told us two secrets: All her children were taken away because of drugs and that crack and crystal meth increase fertility.

Mario was powerfully built, and his arms and shoulders were decorated with fantastic skin art. Lizzie didn’t say much, but seemed awfully happy, almost always smiling and kind of humming to herself. Lizzie didn’t hold the baby very often. She always acted a little high and would smile and occasionally glance over at Neesa, looking amused and a little curious, like she was about to giggle.

Holding the infant created an instant change in Mario’s personality. He showed a heavy sense of sadness and remorse. Something cracked in his tough veneer, and when you looked through the splintered surface, you could see into his essential humanity. Lizzie was a mystery. I wished we could have separated her from the drugs for a while and had a glimpse of what she was like on the inside.

Alice’s Mother

Mary brought a preemie named Alice home from the hospital. Jaundice was one of baby Alice’s problems. She had a strong yellow coloring. Her skin tone was baggy jeans-loose and her muscles were tiny, not giving much extra shape to the bones. The eyes seemed more sunken than was usually the case, and I was stunned by her elongated, somewhat distorted, El Greco style face. She seemed more like a doll than a baby, and if it wasn’t for her chest moving up and down with her breathing I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

I was curious about the mother. I asked, “What did Alice’s mom have to say?” I asked. “Was she upset? Worried?”

Mary shook her head and muttered, “When I came in the room, the Mom said, ‘Oh, you’re finally here.’ I asked her if she wanted to hold the baby before I left. She shook her head no and said she was going outside for a cigarette.”

“Then what happened?”

“She never came back.”

Dean’s Mother

When baby Dean arrived his butt was scrubbed red and raw. He came to us three days old, and we found out later his mother had never changed him in the hospital. She had been so squeamish that she just let him lay there in it.

We drove thirty miles for our visits with his mother, Sally. Since she lived so far away she got one four-hour visit a week instead of two visits. I loved the halfway house. There were lots of women, cleaning up, washing clothes and taking care of babies. I could people-watch all day at a place like that. I wanted to talk to everybody and had great questions for them like, “What’s worse--a mental institution or jail?” They had some stories to tell.

Sally had an older daughter but had never changed a boy. She squealed, “I can’t do it. What if he pees on me?” Mary, like a successful hostage negotiator, walked her through the steps. I watched, silent and fascinated. By the end of the session, clenched-teeth Sally could do it on her own.

Ronnie’s Parents

The social worker called and said, “His parents would leave him for six hours at a time to go get drugs.”

She arrived minutes later, holding a cute, wide-eyed, ten-month old baby boy with a Mohawk.

“Lots of people had keys to the place and could just walk in anytime,” the intake worker said. She described the stench in the house, but there was no need—Ronnie had the same sharp, wake-the-dead, garbage dump odor. We opened the windows, sponged the baby off and dumped all his clothes in the washer. I wanted to borrow some incense from the stoners across the street, but my wife, Mary, wouldn’t let me.

Ronnie was a head banger. When he was mad or frustrated or didn’t get his way, he would put his head down on the floor and start slamming.

The biological mom and dad saw nothing wrong with leaving him for six hours. After all, their pit bulls were left in the apartment to watch him, and people could walk in and out of the house.

Sheena’s Mother

The birth mother and her boyfriend were charged with torture, a special category of torture that could result in death or serious injury. When the judge asked the mother if she learned anything, she said she wouldn’t take care of anybody else’s kids since that’s what she was doing when she was arrested. She didn’t learn anything about treating kids better; she learned how to avoid getting caught.

Brianna, Alex’s Mom

Mary and I fostered a beautiful newborn boy named Alex. Our first visit with his mother, Brianna, would be at a doctor’s office. While Mary was in the ladies room I was sitting, holding the baby and fidgeting, waiting for the mom I hadn’t seen and who hadn’t seen her baby in about two weeks. A Hispanic woman with long, wavy hair walked through the door. She stopped when she saw the boy. She approached, unable to speak, glancing down sideways at him and began sobbing.

“Are you Brianna?” I asked. She nodded her head rapidly, and I handed her the baby.

For a long time she could not speak. There is a certain cry that a mother makes when she has not seen her child in a while. It’s more like a muffled shriek that comes from the heart.

I came home from work one day, and Alex was gone.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He went to live with his Mom,” Mary said.

“What! That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?”

“Mom’s living in a half-way house,” I said.

“Yes,” answered Mary slowly, knowing I wouldn’t get it unless she spelled it out. “But she was in trouble over her boyfriend’s drugs. She tested clean after her arrest. She’s getting help in the halfway house, and after she gets out she’s going to live with relatives.”

“There’s no way that will work,” I almost said, but some strange nagging voice in the back of my head stopped me. I had a good feeling about Brianna. I still remembered the way Brianna cried as soon as she saw her baby boy. I had a hard time disliking her. Maybe it would work, I thought without much hope.

I have to learn to be cynical about my cynicism. Brianna was a success story. Mary ran into Brianna and Alex on more than one occasion. The young lady kept her baby and was back in school. Mary said they looked really happy.

Once near the ocean, I saw trees on the edge of a cliff, their roots sticking out and hanging down, trying to cling to soil that was no longer there. And yet, they managed to survive.

The world is not such a terrible place after all.