scheduling

A quick post here, I hope, but I want to talk about Rowan stuff before I talk about myself in another post.

I don’t actually have to ask for time off work during our busy season to watch Rowan testify because the trial has been moved to fall. Specifically, it’s been moved to the week of his birthday. Because nothing says awesome like turning 16 and having to testify against your family, right?? Poor guy! I don’t know whether he knows that yet; I found out from his worker when I emailed to let her know he’d asked me to attend. I’m glad he’s with seasoned foster parents who will know to expect extra tension around that time, though.

Also, though I didn’t make this explicit in my last post, when I talked about toddlers saying no as a sort of generic comment on how he might be feeling about authority and autonomy. He took it in a direction I hadn’t expected, though. He said that when he told us he didn’t want to be adopted, it wasn’t really about us. He just didn’t want to be told what was going to happen to him for the rest of his life. He was angry at the system, not at us, but the only outlet he had for that anger was to reject us. I already knew this, to some extent, or at least knew that the issue wasn’t that he disliked us or felt uncomfortable in our home. But again, I was impressed with how much insight he has into his own thoughts and behaviors, even though like any teenager (human?) he still makes some thoughtless or counterproductive decisions.

I have no idea whether this means he’s thinking about adoption. I’m not going to ask, not going to pressure him in any way. I do think he recognizes that if his worker were to follow through on her threat to have him put back into residential he could say, “But Thorn and Lee will adopt me and I want that!” but then he’d have to follow through on his own threat. So yes, I’m living with the thought that we may well end up parenting two white 16-year-olds if we end up keeping our home open. And that would be weird, yes, but we’ll do what we can.

I haven’t heard more about Russ. His worker (the one who called us) sent his file to our worker here. She emailed me to make sure we’re actually interested in pursuing something and I said that at this point we were, but I haven’t heard any more from her. It’s certainly as promising as things have gotten for us, but there’s plenty of time for things to not work out, too.

And there is plenty of time. Initially, Lee had wanted to quit trying to adopt in July if we hadn’t had any kind of placement so that she could relax and enjoy her summer. When it took us ages to get a copy of our new homestudy, I was able to bargain her back to October and plan ways for her to enjoy her time off whether or not we had a child with us. That’s why she’s overseas right now having fantastic fun and I’m holding down the fort here.

Since then, I’ve talked her into saying that if we’re keeping it through October we might as well just keep going and then let our homestudy expire in January if we don’t have any current or imminent placements. In reality, if we don’t get any placement we’ll probably still go through with updating our study and say that we’re only open as a resource for Rowan if he needs it. We’ve committed that to him, and keeping our house minimally open is easier than having to open it again if he has a need down the road, which would presumably be an emergency-type situation. So anyway, yes, things are moving slowly, as usual. But they do still seem to be moving.

use your words

Rowan and I talked last night. I let him know Lee had arrived safely at her destination (which reminds me that I’d promised her I’d call Leah since she didn’t want to; have to do that when I get home tonight!) and he was glad about that. And then we talked about him.

He sees being in foster care as a punishment. If his parents were the ones doing things wrong, why is he being punished by having all his freedom taken away? The reason this is on his mind right now is that apparently his social worker told him and his foster family that if he runs away one more time she wants him put back in a residential treatment center until he turns 18. Now, this is what he heard and may or may not be what she said, but because he’s 15 he’s full of righteous indignation about why he doesn’t have rights and why it’s unfair that now that he’s “safe” he has less freedom than he did with his parents.

We talked about his diagnoses, how someone at the RTC told him that every boy there had Oppositional Defiant Disorder and he started to argue that he didn’t but then realized that this would only make him seem more oppositional. It turns out that he is supposed to see a PTSD specialist soon. I tried to explain EMDR to him and put it in terms of retraining the body to deal with the aftereffects of trauma, sort of akin to the physical therapy I’m doing. (I’m not really a believer in mind-body dualism but it can be a useful way to talk about things sometimes.) His take is that he’s had therapy the entire time he was in the RTC and if therapy worked, obviously he’d be fine by now. Which is, of course, not how therapy works, but I can see why it would be annoying to him.

So he was talking about his supposedly oppositional behaviors and how he doesn’t understand why if he’s not a bad kid there are only these two homes in the state that will accept him. (I told him that his worker may not be right about that, but that it’s always hard to find placements for teens and he may need to be in a boy-only family as that’s how a lot of people do it. But still, I’m shocked that she told him that and that she expects him to be able to improve his behavior based on a somewhat distant threat.) It’s hard for me to balance not wanting to undermine or second-guess his social worker in front of him with not wanting to get too enmeshed with him so that he thinks I agree with everything he thinks and does. I don’t know; I’m sure I’m overthinking things, since I always do.

I do know that at some point I came up with an analogy that worked for him. I said that in my experience, when you’re in an abusive situation or you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault, you’ve lost your ability to say “no” and have that mean anything. I said that maybe it feels that way when you’ve been in a residential placement as long as he has, when someone else seems to be making all the decisions. And so when you get free of that, you get that word back and you’re able to use it again. The trouble is that it’s easy to be like a toddler who’s just learned to say “no!” and will say no to Cheerios just to have the power of saying that even if she wants the Cheerios. He cracked up and immediately said, “Yup, I’m totally saying no to Cheerios all the time!”

And I asked whether he wants me in court during his testimony and he said yes. I’m glad I picked up on that, glad I asked. Now I just have to make my boss understand that I’ll have to be out of work that day, because this is more important to me than just about anything else in the world. I told him I can’t guarantee it, but I’ll do all I can to make it happen. I know it will hurt me to have to hear him say what he has to say, but it’s another chance for him to reclaim that voice of his, and I want to see that.

resilient, I’m telling ya

I just took Lee to the airport during my lunch break. She’s headed out of the country for 10 days to do the same English immersion program we did together two years ago, back when my blog was new and what we had to look forward to at the end of our trip was the start of our adoptive/foster parenting training classes. She’s thrilled to be going, and I’m really not sad to be left behind. I had an amazing trip last time and would love to go back, but I don’t have the money for it this year and I’m not at a time of year when I can take off work. This way, she’s gone and we don’t have to pay for a pet sitter, plus I get quiet nights to spend reading and working in the garden with no one clomping around the house or taking up the whole couch or leaving the tv on for no reason.

Anyhow, since she hadn’t gotten to talk to Rowan on Monday, she gave him a quick call last night to say goodbye. They had a funny conversation, gently and warmly teasing each other. He said he was feeling pretty good. She asked if he wanted her to bring him anything and he said she could bring a postcard. (She’d been expecting him to ask for something fancier! He will probably get some other trinket or t-shirt, and she’ll mail him a postcard while she’s over there.) Then he asked about whether he’d fit in her suitcase and they talked about what it takes to get a passport. He was charming and funny, sweet and solicitous, thoughtful about his future. It was him, just the same way his hopeless feelings and overwhelming stress the night before were also him.

I hope I didn’t make it sound like I think Rowan’s foster family is doing an inadequate job. I do believe the reason they’re (apparently) the only other foster family who will accept him is that they know what they’re doing with teens who have some of his backgrounds and tendencies. It obviously isn’t phasing them that he’s a runner and once a month or so (so far) he gets overwhelmed and runs. They’re not being as proactive as we’d be in working with him on his literacy problems, but they’re keeping him busy and encouraging him to learn a trade. There are pluses to their rural address where Google Maps won’t even let me zoom in from satellite view and there are minuses, just as our suburban small town is better for some kids than for others. I think they’re doing their best. The part that upsets me so much is how much of the state’s best practices aren’t filtering down to Rowan, how I can see that he’s not getting even some of the minimums he’s supposed to be guaranteed in foster care.

Lee asked him if he wanted to continue the conversation he’d had with me and he asked if I’d call tonight, which I will. We’re not going to keep talking to him nightly, but I do want to ask if he wants me in court and then start doing what I can to make sure I can miss work if that’s what he wants/needs.

Lee’s first plane has left the ground now and I just emailed her Rowan’s address so that when she gets where she’s going she can make contact with him. Whatever the three of us have isn’t a family in a traditional sense, but we’re weaving our connections more tightly all the time and I appreciate that. As I look forward to 10 days away from both Rowan and Lee but with both of them in my thoughts, I think that’s becoming more clear than ever. It may not be what I’d have chosen originally, but it’s better than so many alternatives.

my heart’s breaking for Rowan

Oh, what a cheesy subject line, but I can’t think of any way to say this without cliches. I got to talk to Rowan last night and I remain so impressed with him, but also so deeply sad.

Everything I’m saying is as he reports it. He did ask his foster parents if they wanted to talk to me, but apparently they don’t. (Should I push that? I really don’t know.) His worker did visit him and he doesn’t feel like anything was resolved. Soon after, he sold his cellphone to another kid and ran away again, though this time he thought better of it and returned within an hour. He sounds sort of depressed to me, though he was being incredibly forthcoming when we talked.

He misses his family, which I knew. I reminded him that this was okay and that it was normal, which he says he knows. But he’ll be testifying at the criminal case against his parents in a few weeks (and he gave me the date, which I only realized in retrospect may well mean he wants me to be there; I’ll ask next time I talk to him) and family members showed up to watch him the last time he was present in court, which he didn’t expect and hadn’t been told was even possible. He’s still sticking to the truth, but he’s upset by this, upset by the extent to which he’s been shoved out of the family for being honest about the dysfunction. He’s had no contact with family members, but his brother Forrest (who denies any knowledge and won’t be testifying, though there’s plenty of physical evidence that shows he was aware of what happened to various people in the home including himself) has and they’re telling Forrest that the family wants to have him back but doesn’t want Rowan. He did have one weekend visit with his brother after leaving the RTC, but they haven’t seen each other since. Although there are other boys in the house, he clearly feels very much alone.

I realize that the triangulation of the brothers by their family members is probably a situation where the child who’s caught with her hand in the cookie jar blames mom for catching her and is upset at the unfairness. Rowan’s honesty is part of what legally broke the family apart and he knows that, though I believe that even if neither brother had acknowledged the problems there would still have been sufficient evidence to terminate parental rights. They’re blaming him because that’s easier than accepting blame themselves, and I think he realizes that at least somewhat. These are still people he loves even though they hurt him, and it hurts him terribly to be rejected and scared once again.

And he’s got a psychiatrist who’s prescribing his ADHD medications (though I’m not personally convinced he has ADHD and wonder if it’s really PTSD, not that I’m a doctor) but no one counseling him effectively. He gets along with his foster family but says he doesn’t feel he can talk to them about how he’s feeling. He’s feeling, again, that he’s doing everything he’s supposed to do and yet there’s absolutely no payoff for him. He’s living in a rural area doing masonry work in the hot sun. He’s not doing any summer school, formal or informal. He’s not getting the support he needs.

When Lee and I talked a week ago about what it would take to have Rowan live with us again — basically, that he’d be actively involved in therapy and working on how to deal with stress and specifically the stresses triggered by living in our area — we assumed that if he stayed where he was he’d be making progress, which is something we were able to see while he was at the RTC. Now, though, I’m not too sure what’s going on except that he’s in a holding pattern and he’s unhappy, he’s scared, and he’s willing to talk about that if there’s someone who can talk with him.

I’m so glad and so honored that Rowan will talk to me, even though it makes me so sad to hear what he has to say. He was only in our house a week or so total, but not a day goes by when I don’t think about him and he’s very much a part of my life. I hadn’t realized how much we’re a part of his, though, how much our tenacity in keeping in touch actually did matter.

I told him that Angela, his former worker, said hi, as she always does. His response was fairly typical for him. “No offense, ma’am, but she’s just like all the other ones. She does her job but then she doesn’t stay.” And that’s true. I know she got permission to keep in contact with him and she hasn’t, didn’t even say goodbye. She just emailed his counselor at the RTC to explain that she’d be leaving her job as of a certain date in that same week. And now even that fantastic counselor is out of his life, as far as I can tell. He’s on his own again.

I didn’t have long to talk to him, but I said what you’d probably expect me to say. I pointed out that he never really got to be a kid and how unfair I think that is. I congratulated him on the things he’s doing well, talked a little again about what strategies he can use when he’s tempted to run but didn’t say anything negative about his running and instead focused on his coming back to his foster home. Mostly I just listened and asked questions. “How does that make you feel?” “You know that’s a normal response, right?” “Does she often express her anger and frustration by lashing out at other people?” “Do you have anyone you can talk to about that?”

The answer to that last question kept being no, no, no. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to, but last night he kept talking to me. I do believe he’s resilient, he’s exceptional. It broke my heart when I was up until the early hours of the morning on Christmas so he could talk about his abuse in detail when he needed to, but I was there. I suggested we pick a regular time we can have telephone calls so he knows he can rely on me now, too. (And he likes talking to Lee, but they don’t have these same kinds of conversations about emotions or not in the same way, which seems to be fine with both of them.) One of his foster brothers asked who he was talking to and he said, “Oh, she used to be my foster mother.” That’s not how the state sees it, but it’s how it felt to me. I guess it warms my heart at least to know that he agrees.

about those potentially gay teens

I’ve been thinking a fair amount about how much I share on this blog about kids’ identities and personalities. It may be that someday I’ll regret what I’ve said, like if Russ does indeed come to live with us.

One thing, though, that I feel okay with is saying that in general when a social worker has thought we’d be a good match for a particular kid, it’s because she has some inkling that the kid in question might be something other than straight. In some cases, we know that the young person is clear about having some LGBT identity. In Russ’s case, he has never disclosed any queer interests to anyone, but many of the professionals involved in his case think he’s questioning whether he’s straight.

In part, I don’t mind talking about this because I think it’s noteworthy. The old received wisdom used to be that gays trying to adopt were steered toward more “difficult” kids with higher levels of special needs, saving the “easy” ones for straight married couples. This hasn’t been our experience, and we only know of one instance where we were turned down for a child because we’re a lesbian couple, though out of the hundreds of requests we’ve made and never heard anything back there are probably more. I do think it’s pretty clear that workers like that it’s fine with us if a child in our care turns out to be queer and fine if he or she doesn’t. There are going to be plenty of role models of various identities (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and straight on a weekly basis, even beyond the variety in race and ethnicity) for any child who lives with us, and I think that’s a good thing regardless of the child’s eventual identities and affiliations.

But also, we’re mostly looking at teens and I think it’s part of what it means to be a teen to be figuring out who you find attractive and why. So saying that a certain teen is exploring his sexual identity is not in fact saying anything particularly revealing. Other bloggers may not talk about this, but I do think it’s real. We’ve been having a lot of conversation lately with my middle brother Mark’s best friend, also our neighbor, about his coming-out process, which happened fairly recently and not until after he’d finished college. So these kinds of things are on my mind a lot lately, probably a lot always. I’m interested in how people get to think about themselves the way they do think about themselves, and any child I parent will be up for extra scrutiny in that regard, whether I post about it or not.

Also, the kids we’re dealing with are not entirely like kids who’ve been in our home forever. Some people can write about their teens in a way that keeps up a high privacy level, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to talk about medications the same way I’ve talked about Rowan’s running away and LeeLee’s storytelling. These quirks are part of the coping strategies they’ve built for themselves over the years in response to the particular parts of their lives that were unlike living in a healthy, intact home. But there are ways to write about this respectfully, with care and kindness. TTBoot does this very well, as does the remarkable Lulu McCabe. I hope to be like them.

So anyway, I don’t feel bad about saying these kids might be gay and that this is one reason they could be a good fit for us. Newsflash: yours might just be too! And that’s okay, however it works out. Well, within reason it’s okay.

Last time Lee and Rowan talked, Rowan told her he has something like four girlfriends and none of them know about the others. She said something mild about being careful and honest and respectful, I think, and definitely not what she’d wanted to say, which was something more like, “Giiiiiiiiirl, I’ve seen you watch Beyonce videos and you are NOT the kind of boy who has girlfriends!” If he were in our house, he’d know that he couldn’t bring around multiple girls and have us pretend to them that he didn’t have other girlfriends. (That’s a dynamic that was at play between Lee’s biodad and his parents — her adoptive parents — and what she saw as his habitual disrespect for women throughout her childhood caused her pain. Plus, we’re just all about informed consent in this household!) It doesn’t matter who he wants to date, just that he’s being healthy and mindful about it to the best of his abilities.

So anyway, Russ may not ever question his sexuality in a way that involves talking to us (or other adults in his life, since we’re still hypothetical parents) about it and that’s fine. We finally got to see a photo of him today and agree he’s adorable and are still feeling excited and positive. So now we wait for more information and more bureaucracy and in fact right now I head off to physical therapy to strengthen my back muscles and stave off chronic pain. We have plenty to focus on here as is.

“Congratulations,” she said

We’ve been playing phone tag with a worker from Eddie’s region of his state. She read our homestudy back when Eddie or some other boy who needed to stay in-state had us as an inapplicable option and was taken with us. She got in touch with our Adopt America Network worker, Ali, and asked about us and whether we’re still available. And then she started thinking about who could be a match for us.

So there’s this boy. I’ll call him Russ for now, though I’m not entirely comfortable with that pseudonym. And he’s 16 now, I think, or 16 soon. He’s white and quite tall, and his worker thinks he looks like us, though we haven’t seen his photo yet. The part we only learned when I talked to her today is that his worker and his foster dad suspect he might be struggling with his sexual orientation. And yup, that’s where we come in.

His worker’s feeling is that it will be easy to get us through to acceptance if we’re interested and our new worker shows she’s willing to work on an out-of-state match and thinks we could handle him. His guardian ad litem likes our profile and thinks we’d be good and is looking forward to talking to us in the next few days. His Court-Appointed Special Advocate is supposedly interested too. His foster dad (in a home with eight teen boys and one dedicated foster dad, bless him!) saw the public part of our profile and was really excited about us as the kind of family this kid needs.

Russ has some reasons to want to leave his state, and he assures his worker that he’d like to be in a place that gets snow, though she’s pretty sure that once he experiences it he’ll be as pro-South as she is. He wants a family with a dog, and we’re totally cool with a kid who likes to talk dogs and pick poop out of the back yard. He’s athletic and dedicated to his education. He works hard and seems like a good kid.

I did tell his worker that there’s some chance Rowan may end up living with us at some point, though Rowan probably won’t want to be adopted. I explained that we have a certain commitment to him but that we wouldn’t jeopardize an adoptive placement for Rowan either. I mean, this is a pretty abstract point right now, but it’s something I think about and have to think about. There’s a chance Rowan will end up with us, but there’s also a good chance that we’ll stick with the supportive-but-physically-distant relationship we have now and we can’t let that stand in the way of another adoptive relationship. And if we happen to go from being our happy little interracial couple to being the lesbian moms of two white 16-year-old boys, well, we’ll try that. If it doesn’t work, though, we have to pay attention to our commitment in adoption versus the commitment we’ve given Rowan (that we’ll support him as best we can wherever we can and we’ll love him regardless) and that will matter.

So after talking to this worker for about 20 minutes, she seemed even more positive about us than she was before we began. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re pre-pregnant, sort of, but realize that nine months is the paperwork and the labor is still a mess.” And I don’t go for those pregnancy metaphors for adoption, but it sure feels good that she feels positive about us. She reminded me that we shouldn’t go through with our match with Russ if it doesn’t feel right. (If we make it through the next round — and I don’t think we’re up against anyone, though we may legally have to be — we’ll get access to the complete file, though we’ve read a lot already.) But even if we don’t end up matched with him, in many ways it feels so good that we’ve gotten to the point where people look at our file and think we’d be great parents. I mean, they read the letter I wrote and think that we’re doing things right….

Lee and I have talked about this. She’s okay with having a white teen son, or maybe even two. She sees aspects of her own story in Russ’s and looks forward to having someone around who can play sports with her. She’s a lot more positive than I expected. (Then again, I’m not always good at guessing. We got a referral for a somewhat butch biracial girl who excels in Lee’s chosen sport and doesn’t like being forced to dress and act femininely, but Lee’s immediate response was to reject when I’d thought she’d feel like this was a chance to give this girl some of the things she missed out on as a child. So what do I know?)

We don’t know where this is going, though I guess we sort of do. The chances are that we’ll get a more current psychological evaluation for Russ, then probably his full profile. He seems like someone who’s had a hard early life but wants to improve on that. He’s dealt with some of his own sadness about the loss of his mother and her various kinds of absences in his early life, but he very much wants a mom. He’s open to a single mom or dad, a straight married couple, but not a family with two dads. His worker claims that when she asked him about a two-mom home he lit up at the thought.

I do know that having a 16-year-old move crosscountry to drop into our lives won’t be easy or bump-free, but that’s not exactly what we’re here for either. But it’s possible and it might be realistic soon. And while it’s not all we expected, I find it incredibly exciting. (And today we had a neighbor boy who’s about 7 over for an hour or two; I think Lee’s now less taken with the idea of how much work it would be to have a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old in our home.) I don’t know if we’ll be the mothers Russ needs, but I’m excited for him that he’s willing to make himself vulnerable enough ask for a mother at his age. I hope he gets what he wants and needs. Maybe it will be here.

Lee’s about to leave the country for 10 days and while she’s gone we’ll have our handyman paint the spare bedroom a/k/a child’s room. After that, the next step is a new couch. We’re working toward a new kitchen soon, too. We’re trying to keep life here normal and we’re enjoying that, but we’re hopeful about the changes coming too, whatever they may be.

what Rowan wants

I have so much to write about, still processing our visit with Lee’s birthmother Leah and now our visit with her half-sister Shasta, but I’m not there yet. I’ve been having some health troubles that are distracting me from being productive. I had big plans for my day off yesterday and instead spent the entire afternoon in bed, which I must have needed. I’ll write when I can, though, because I do want to get back in the habit of writing more often, especially when I have so much to say!

One other thing I haven’t had a chance to talk about is that we got in touch with Rowan, were able to talk to him for close to 20 minutes on the evening before we left town. He has a cell phone now and he’s able to text us and said that he wants us to call again tonight.

We had a good talk. His foster home is in a fairly rural location, which he hates, but it’s allowed him to have visits with his brother. It sounds to me like this is a family that specializes in teens (maybe just teen boys, though I’m not sure) with certain sorts of difficulties. There have been others in and out of the house while he’s been there and I get the feeling it has more of a group home atmosphere, which is less threatening for a lot of teens than more of a “family” mindset. It does sound like a good placement, though he’s not thrilled with it. The only glitch is that this is apparently the only home in the state that will accept him, or so his worker told us.

And the reason I had to talk to his worker is that once he was talking to Lee he said that he wants to come live with us, that he appreciates now what he had when he was here. Lee reiterated that we’re a resource for him, but encouraged him to work hard where he is. Ironically, after all the time we’ve spent longing to have him back, we’re not totally sure this is the right time.

I mean, I don’t want him to get the idea that he can request a move whenever he wants and get it. His worker is worried about the same thing, and says that since this home is the only other one that will take him, we have to be very careful that he doesn’t burn any bridges with them or with us. (Incidentally, he did run away almost as soon as he was placed with them and was gone almost a week, but turned himself in and has worked his way up to getting privileges like a fair amount of autonomy and a cellphone.)

Lee and I are both afraid that if Rowan comes back here, he’ll have the same stresses he had when he was visiting with us and he won’t necessarily have the skills he needs to deal with them. He’ll still be worried that people he sees on the street are judging him or know things about his past. He’ll still be temptingly close to his old friends and his family members. He’ll still be living with a lesbian couple, which means having to think and sometimes talk about queerness in a way that can feel threatening to him while he’s still confused about it.

On the other hand, we know him and his issues and we love him. We believe we can be a good placement for him, can give him the combination of structure and respect he needs to be able to do what he needs to do. We’ve committed to be a resource to him as he needs it if we’re able to do so. You know, I’ve written about all this again and again since his first Thanksgiving visit.

So where does that leave us? I guess our feeling is that he doesn’t need a home yet. If they want to make a plan where he gets through one semester successfully with this family and then transitions here, that’s fine. If they want us to stay his backup plan and maybe he comes up here for respite occasionally to do “city” things, that’s fine. But his worker should be talking to him today and I think she’s on the same page we are about this, though we’ll find out.

So at any rate, we’ll be talking to Rowan tonight and I hope it will just be more easygoing chat like it was last time, though he sent me a text last night about missing his family and not having anyone there to talk to about his emotions, so there could be some of that on the agenda too. I encouraged him to talk to his worker about that but didn’t press about whether he has a good counselor or anything like that. I’m more comfortable saying things like that over the phone than with texting them.

Oh, and the day after talking to him as we drove to see Lee’s family, our new worker called with a response to the email she’d sent out to other workers describing us and what we’re looking for. We declined placement of a 14-year-old who’s far bigger than either of us and tends to violence when he’s angry, though even in situations like that we do a lot of second-guessing. The worker also said that the first response she got about kids who might be needing adoptive homes was for a sibling set, two boys, black/white biracial, ages 7 and 3, a/k/a Lee’s dream situation. We don’t know anything about them or whether they will even end up needing an adoptive home, but I have to confess that I’m unreasonably annoyed about their existence and keep trying to make her think about teenagers and Rowan in particular. I know we’ll see how this all plays out, though. Many things are still uncertain on every front.