Angst and Frustration

Things have been stressful lately, both in my personal like and at work. I feel like most of the time I’m just living from crisis to crisis and trying to keep my head above water as best I can. My latest dilemma is regarding the fender bender we had a week ago Saturday. Our Saturday was going well. Too well perhaps. We got a lot of the things accomplished that I wanted to get done and we even had Love Bug and Chica Marie's older sister with us and still managed to take the old TV's and computers to the county recycling, change my name with the bank, pick up some dry cleaning and have lunch all before getting ready for the pool. We set out, all 6 of us, me, Primero, Esperanza, Chica Marie, her older sister, and baby Love Bug. We were mere blocks from our home when we smashed into a lady who didn't properly stop at a posted stop sign. And that's where our good day ended. In the ensuing madness the pool was a forgotten dream. The lady I hit said she did nothing wrong and blamed me on being distracted by "all the kids." (And the children were all on their best behavior when this happened, I might add – no one was screaming or fighting or running around, they stood calmly under a shade tree waiting for me, the cop, and the other driver to sort things out) To which I retorted that she drove through a stop sign and “all those kids” were foster kids. In calling the foster care agency I was told to take them to the ER to get checked out. Um, how? My car sustained heavy damage to the front with one headlight torn off and the bumper hanging on by an edge. We limped the few blocks home and I called the insurance companies while waiting for my uncle to take us all to the ER in his van and the foster family for the little one's sister to arrive and take her to the ER since I wasn't her foster mother. Unfortunately, she was in respite because her foster mother was on vacation in another state visiting her daughter. What a mess!! And, as if the accident itself wasn’t stressful enough, the woman's insurance company is calling it “shared responsibility” and only willing to cover 70% of the damages stating it was partially my fault, since I'm somehow supposed to know which cars are driven by people unwilling to follow posted traffic signs......

Before tragedy befell us with the fender bender, I was sitting with the girls while they ate lunch. Chica Marie’s sister smiled at me and said, “You know I’m saving my money.” I told her that was a very good thing and asked what she was saving it for, expecting to hear something along the lines of a pony, doll, phone or some other thing. “To buy you a house,” was her response. I thought she was joking around with me so I replied, “I already have a house” and swept my hands out to point to the walls and ceiling around us. “No, to buy you a bigger house so we can all live together.” Oh. Ooooohhhhh. Ouch! It’s a sad thing to hear from a young child who is living with her 6^th foster family. She likes to come to visit us and she likes being with her sister, but I think it is more than that. I think she desires the stability she sees her younger siblings having and the sense of family we have as well. The time she had been visiting us before this she began calling me mommy at the pool and clung to me just like her sister who is half her age. I don’t know if the county has revisited the grandmother’s offer to take her in now that the visits have been suspended. I hope they do. But in the meantime, I’ve taken it upon myself to be sure that the older sister gets to see her siblings as often as I can manage. I wish the other foster family would take it a little more seriously, but they are a self-admitted temporary home for her and so maybe they don’t feel like putting forth the effort, which I think is pretty crappy.

We found out from Primero’s adoption case worker that at best, his adoption will happen in November, but it could be as late as the end of the year. I’m so frustrated about it I almost feel like throwing in the towel and saying forget it! Not that I don’t want to adopt him, but at this point he will be 16 when he is adopted and why? Why has it taken so long for this to happen? TPR occurred in March so what has taken so long for the finalization to occur? Our date line in the sand is continually changing and it just isn’t fair to keep him/us in limbo this long. Just another frustration!

I am trying to help Esperanza get her birth certificate and other pertinent ID so she can get a driver’s license and a job. Thus far it has been impossible. We tried to order her birth certificate online but the credit card would need to be in her name. If we mail it in she would need to provide government issued ID, which she does not have. And this is our first step in getting her other credentials, like her Social Security card, license, etc. It’s a mess! I wish I knew how to go about getting her this information because she so needs it to become an independent adult!

Esperanza

I feel like so much has happened in the past two weeks that I don’t know if I will remember it all to relay it here. Primero had court last Tuesday. During my lunch break at work, right before I was getting ready to leave to pick him up, he called me to tell me his mom blocked him on Facebook. Apparently, she had commented on his sister’s post and when Primero couldn’t see it on his own page, it dawned on him it was because he was blocked. This upset him immensely. She later contacted him, after his sister told her it was terrible to have cut him off like she did and they are once again friends on Facebook. We went to court where Primero signed the paperwork consenting to the adoption and choosing his new name. He decided to go with his mother’s last name and my maiden name, which I had just changed with the Social Security office the day before. Yes, I have officially reclaimed my maiden name and divested myself of my married name. Hallelujah! Court was pointless, as I knew it would be, they talked about his play and joked about his character, Gingy the Gingerbread man. We waited longer to get to court than we were in court. We did see Hermano while we waited and he seemed to be doing ok. He claimed he would have been able to leave the facility where he was staying but he was playing football and so he stayed. His plans are to get his high school diploma or GED and then go to North Carolina to attend a college there. We shall see if he actually follows through on this plan.

We all survived the hustle and bustle of Primero’s play, which they perform three nights. He did a great job as did the rest of the cast. He almost broke up with his girlfriend at the cast party, but since he waited until the end of the night, I had shown up and he didn’t want to do it in front of me (even though I was sitting in the car and couldn’t hear a thing). I really truly hope they do break up soon because I don’t like this girl at all. She has done too much for me to even want to try to like her anymore.

Primero did not complete the schoolwork required over the summer to pass onto 9^th grade and so he will most likely be held back. I find this devastating news and I tried so hard to get him to do his schoolwork, but he was grossly unmotivated and therefore he will reap the consequences of his inaction. It’s so hard and I wish I could afford to hire a private tutor for him. I really think I need to look into that because he needs to get through high school and I feel unable to help him as much as I should. I did create a contract for him to sign spelling out what was expected of him and what the consequences were for not following through. I hope it works, but don’t know that it will. School is just not important to him, no matter how often I try to tell him it is.

Primero’s county case worker and his new CHOR case worker were over for a visit last night. The county worker just needed to give me a hefty stack of paperwork, which contained all the information in Primero’s file and she needed to review the compensation with me for him following adoption. Hopefully we will be getting a finalization date soon, she said right now they are booking for the beginning of September. She had also mentioned a few things about the other kids’ case that their mother has apparently found a job and she did have one clean urine test after several that were not clean. The case worker was mentioning that the grandmother had asked to be considered for the older sister again, and since visits have been suspended, it might actually happen this time. I tried to contact the sister’s foster mom about a visit this past weekend and she never responded. I sent her another message and she told me the sister is in respite and gave me the number to that foster mother, so I will contact her and see what’s what.

So Primero’s older sister is around more and I feel the need to give her a name here, since I’m sure I will be talking about her more often. I think I will call her Esperanza. It means Hope in Spanish and I feel like that is fitting for her. She is like a little flower bud closed tight to the cruel world, afraid to open and show her beauty because she has been hurt one too many times by people she loved and trusted. She and I have had some long conversations about her past and it is heartbreaking how often she had been rejected and treated poorly. I told her I don’t expect her to trust me that I’m sure I’ve told her the same things she had heard before from other adults, but that I hope to prove to her that I’m trustworthy through my actions. She deserves to be wanted and treated kindly and she really is a great young lady with so much potential – I hope to help her realize it.