Jeremy Ensley
ENG 101-W03
Essay Rough Draft
Foster Care
Having children has always been my biggest dream. I always imagined my future family in a very specific way; a beautiful wife, and children who were the spitting image of us. I grew up in a very traditional home and looked forward to passing on my family history to my own children. I never gave a passing thought to sharing my life with children who do not share my DNA. Little did I know life rarely turns out the way you imagine it will.
My journey through foster care and adoption starts about three years ago when I met my wife Ashley. It took no longer than our first conversation to realize her passion for neglected and abused children. It was not just that she cared and wanted to help, she had a plan to do so. She wanted to be a mom to these children; to give them hope and a future they could never have otherwise. Not many people dream about raising a child for three years and then handing them back over to parents who didn’t care enough to take proper care of them in the first place, but Ashley wanted to make a difference; even if it meant breaking her own heart over and over to give these children a mother who cared. As beautiful as I thought her dream was, I wasn’t sure that I shared that dream. When I met my wife I still had a lot of growing up to do. My days consisted of training hard during the day and drinking hard at night. I was, admittedly, an alcoholic. There were few nights during the week that I did not drink myself into oblivion. I was consumed with the typical single Infantryman life style. Our motto was “train hard party harder” and I lived it to the fullest, treating every day like my last and not caring if it was. When the prospect of a child was put in front of me, it scared the living hell out of me. Who was I to be a father when I wasn’t sure I wasn’t still a child myself? How could I possibly fix a broken child? How was I, who didn’t look past my next beer, going to plan a future for a little child? The more Ashley pushed the idea of foster care and adoption, the more resentful I became.
During my tour in Iraq, I grew a lot as a man. I began to prioritize my life and what was really important to me, and that was starting a family. My wife and I began to discuss family and the possibility of children. Adoption was brought up more frequently, but to be perfectly honest I was not sure that I could ever love an adopted child as much as my own flesh and blood. I was resistant, but she was insistent. I still had one more year left in the Army and I was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington after my deployment ended. The last thing I wanted to do was move home and be thrust straight into father-hood. As much as I wanted a family, this was not the way I wanted it.
But of course, my very stubborn wife started the licensing process to become a foster parent in February of 2009. She was only twenty-three years old and I thought she had to be crazy to be doing this. During her time spent in the licensing classes, she learned some staggering statistics and passed her knowledge on to me: At the time of her training, there were over 950 children in state custody in Greene County alone. That is well over twice the number of licensed foster parents in the area, and only about two-thirds of licensed homes are actively accepting placements at any time. That means if they are unable to place a child who comes in state care, that child is sent to a group home or “emergency care”. Ashley visited a group home to see what it was like, and it broke her heart. She said it was utter chaos, children everywhere crying and confused. Beds were lined up wall to wall and every single one of them was occupied. The number of staff and volunteers didn’t come close to meeting the need of the children in their care. Some children spend their entire childhood in places like this.
As sobering as these numbers were, I still wasn’t convinced that I was the one to make a difference to these kids. There had to be someone more qualified and financially stable. Quite frankly, I wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of raising a child that wasn’t mine. I really didn’t think I had it in me to do so and I just didn’t want to. But my wife was firm in her resolve to “save the world, one child at a time” and in May of 2011 she received her licensing qualifications to be a foster parent. Her joy and excitement was palpable and I tried my hardest to share in her elation over accomplishing a lifelong dream. Inside however, I was really struggling. I was months away from finishing my five year commitment to the Army and all I wanted was to come home and start the next chapter of my life with the woman I love. I wasn’t ready to be a dad.
In June of 2011, she received her first placement, a little three month old angel named Zoey; she weighed seven pounds and was severely malnourished. Ashley was ecstatic to be getting a placement and I was still in Washington swallowing my doubts. She sent me picture after picture of this brown haired miracle and yet my heart was still unmoved. It wasn’t until I came home for a three day trip that my heart began to open to the possibility of fatherhood.
In July of 2011, I was in town for my brother’s wedding and I got to meet Zoey for the first time. She was a beautiful, tiny baby girl with more hair than I’ve ever seen on any child. At four months old, she only weighed eight and a half pounds. She couldn’t hold her head up or roll over, and she had trouble taking her bottles due to the neglect she endured during her first three months. Her cry was so weak and quiet, but her smile was strong and beautiful. And from the first moment she took my finger and wrapped it tight in her little hands, my heart was gone.
As incredible as the three days that I got to spend with Zoey were, I wasn’t convinced that I was cut out for playing “dad” to a baby whom I didn’t even know would be there when I moved home permanently. A month later, when I moved back to Springfield for good everything changed. With every smile, this little girl captured my heart. It felt like she had never belonged to anyone else. It didn’t matter anymore that she did not carry my genes. She carried my heart in her tiny little fingers.
Over the past five months, my heart and mind have been opened to the plight of the children in our own town who have nobody to love them. I have seen firsthand the damage that a parent can do to their own child. It is mind blowing how one mother’s selfishness can forever change the life of her child. My wife and I have witnessed the trauma of little girls who suffered severe emotional, mental and physical abuse. The results were astounding. When a four year old lives in a constant state of “fight or flight” panic, the psychological effects are too much for most to handle. We have seen parents care more about getting high then getting custody of their kids, who care more about winning the “competition” between them and the foster parents than they do about actually getting better for their young children. It is heartbreaking.
Foster care is definitely not for everyone and the closer we move to adopting our little miracle, the more we are ready to be done with it. It is hard, it is gritty and it is emotional. You have to look these parents in the eye, parents who have abused, abandoned and neglected their children in the worst of ways, and pretend that you don’t think they are the scum of the earth. You have to hand off your child for their weekly visits; the child you have nursed back to health, raised and watched grow into the amazing, special little person that they are. The child that you have helped to get past their developmental issues from the severe neglect, the child that doctors said “had given up on her life and was two days from death” and is now a vibrant, energetic, bubbly source of joy. It is heart wrenching and very hard for any person to do. But on the other hand, it is singularly the most rewarding experience of my life and I would do it over again one thousand times if it meant getting to spend one day with my angel.
It’s very easy to have a lot of pre-conceived ideals about what family is, how family should look, or who should be in your family; but what I’ve learned is that family is love, family is acceptance, and family is more than blood and DNA. Sometimes the idea of two loving parents, a brother, sister and a dog behind a perfect little white picket fence is not what you are going to get. Family is a choice. You choose to love and accept your family the way they are. And maybe you can’t fix all their problems or save them from pain or heartache. But you sure as hell try to, because family is a bond that supersedes all else. It took a little girl with brown hair and a smile of gold to teach me what family really means. Her name is Zoey, and she is my daughter.
