The Letter That Marks the End of an Era

In today's mail:

May 27, 2009

Subject: Foster Family Home license #[removed]

Dear Ms. [FosterEema] and Ms. [FosterAbba],

This letter is to confirm that you no longer wish to remain licensed as a Foster Family Home as of today's date and may no longer accept new placements. Thank you for your service to the children and families of [our] County.

Sincerely,

[Licensing Worker]

Yesterday, in response to It's Not Over Until the Fat Lady E-mails, Blondie commented:

Congratulations! I'm sure it's a relief after all this time.

If I was to be entirely honest about my feelings, I wouldn't say that relief is really what I'm feeling. Mostly, I feel sort of a vague sense of emptiness, perhaps bordering on disappointment.

I feel like I shouldn't be staring at a letter confirming that my foster care license has been terminated. For me, this is just the final symbol of a profoundly broken system. Although I do feel glad that we won't have any more visits from social workers, and we won't have to hassle departmental baloney, I'm sorry that there won't be any more children in our home.

There won't be any new children with new adventures, new stories to tell and new things to be outraged about. Our story no longer is about foster care. Going forward, it will just be about FosterEema, FosterAbba and Danielle, trying to make our way through the world.

I'm not sure how I expected things to end, really. I knew that someday we would be finished with foster care and that we've move on to something else. There's a part of me that feels sad knowing that there are probably other kids out there that we would have been uniquely equipped to help (Deaf children, GLBT youth, etc.) who will never come to our home.

Of course the real truth is that there really isn't room for another kid. Danielle has expanded to fill all the available space in her room, and over the almost three years that she's lived with us, it's become her room. I don't think asking her to bunk with a roommate/sister would go over very well, because it would entail sharing her turf. She'd have to shrink the amount of space her stuff occupies, and I think it would be a challenge.

If we had a bigger house, the truth is we wouldn't continue at this point. The financial and emotional costs of encountering Nasty Number Seven have soured us on the foster care system in our county, and it really is time to be done.

But I don't feel happy about it. I feel just a little wistful and sad.