Our daughter, S, moved in with us on March 29th, 2019. She was 13 months old. She had had the most wonderful first year with foster carers, and, whilst the process had included some major blips and incompetences in the system, at the forefront of our minds and hearts was the courage, ambition and adoration S’s foster carers had shown towards her. As they left, they were sobbing – howling, actually – and then they closed the door, and the three of us were alone and together.
The next part of the process was the strangest of things. “A state-sanctioned, mutually agreed kidnapping, followed by induced Stockholm Syndrome”, is how I described it. We kept photos of the foster family around, some of them including us, and held S as she grieved them. She had names for them, and we talked about where they were and what they were doing. As the mornings, days, weeks and months went by, S began to grieve less – or less openly, I should say. She stopped seeking out the photos. Then, perhaps four months after her arrival, she pulled the photos out. Looking at them, she now named only us. It was the most extraordinary symbol of what we understood to be a successful transference of attachment from the foster family to us. In those early days, we met family and friends in ‘bump into’ circumstances – in local parks, playgrounds, never in our home – for short periods of time at first, to ensure that S understood that we were now her primary carers, and that she would not become confused or uncertain about who she should turn to.
Also, in those early days, we were struck by the level of homophobia we experienced when out in public. From Leviticus verses being barked at us, to a police caution being issued to a man shouting “faggots, faggots” at us from his car, we were starkly aware that we were now deeply and visibly transgressive: a queer family.
We decided early on that we would only share the specific details of her origins and background with people when S becomes able to do so herself. This is in order to ensure that her story is precisely that: her story. We are part of that, but not the whole. We have maintained contact with the foster family, and, had it not been for Covid and lockdown, would have reintroduced them to S as part of her extended family. Whilst we don’t have direct contact with S’s birth family, we have just sent off our first ‘letterbox’ instalment of her life with us to date.
Part of our training led us to understand that our role in our child’s life is custodial: we enter her life at a certain point, and guide her to our best efforts and intentions. Just like the foster carers, our ambition for her is to leave us, one day. Our first step on this path comes tomorrow, when she starts nursery. It is something that many children have already done by her age – now two and a half – and for much longer periods of time – S will attend weekday mornings – and feels at once wonderful, ideal, and terribly, terribly moving. We feel that she is absolutely ready to go; must go, in fact, for us to be able to fulfil our custodial role, and are both excited and moved by the fact that the three of us have got to this moment.
And so we talked earlier, of that day when the foster carers said goodbye to her – her whom they adored, and for whom they wanted a beautiful future, convinced that they were not the people to do so directly. We are now the adoring carers who are saying farewell in some simple and temporary sense to this wonderful child. And part of that love is both absolutely hopeful and completely convinced that the broader world will love her, too. And the extraordinary thing is that, however tearful we might be about this, it is also exactly what we want for her, for now, and for ever.
“So tomorrow, when you go to nursery, we’ll take you to your teacher, K, and you will stay with her and the other children and play together.”
“You come in?”
“One of us can come in with you, and then we’ll say goodbye and then we’ll come and collect you at lunchtime.”
“Hug and a kiss?”
“Absolutely. We’ll give you a big hug and a big kiss and then see you at lunchtime.”
“Me call you?”
“No, you won’t call us, but we’ll come and collect you at lunchtime, and you’ll have to tell us all about what you’ve done that morning, because we won’t know. We’ll be at home all morning, very excited to see you again.”
ogleforth 