a new year

We celebrated one year of knowing Mara and her graduation from speech therapy Saturday night, meaning we went out to a restaurant we really like and Mara fell asleep on my lap there after only eating her french fries and Lee and I got to chat, which was somewhat awkward in that we’d been dealing with a lot of stress over Lee’s frustration with the other kids and so on, which I don’t want to talk about yet. It was still great, though. And on the way there I sent a text to Samara, the family friend who raised Mara for the almost six months between the time she left her mother’s custody and the time she formally entered foster care, asking if she had any contact info for Mara’s dad. She didn’t, but she invited us over for the following day and said Mara’s whole family was excited about seeing her again.

So that’s how the anniversary of the day we first met Mara in her all-white foster home was celebrated with her all-black family in the housing complex where they live. Samara moved her sons and Mara’s little sibling there in part so they’d be closer to the aunt who’s raising the oldest four of the sibling group. The very oldest sister was visiting a family member on the side not related to Mara, but all the rest of the kids were there. And oh my goodness, they look just like Mara. I’ll go ahead and stop being coy about sibling genders the way I always have been for no good reason to say that the sister who’s five looks so much like Mara that I had to squint at toddler photos to be sure which is which. Mara is almost as tall as she is and in person you can definitely tell them apart, but oh my goodness does the first picture I have of Mara’s sister look just like Mara.

Mara spent the first 45 minutes or so on my lap or Lee’s as relatives traipsed through to introduce themselves and explain how they fit into the family, what memories they have of Mara. Mara’s 9-year-old sister was sitting quietly beside us and slowly Mara inched over to her until they were hugging and hugging and hugging. Mara stayed that way for a long time, maybe half an hour, by the end of which they were singing together and talking about letters, fingers interlaced. (And those two sets of fingers are exactly the same shade, something I know wasn’t lost on Mara.) Later they went out to play on the playground and watch their littlest sibling shoot marbles and play. Mara’s convinced her sister has taught her to do cartwheels (and, well, she does put her hands on her ground and her feet in the air, though that’s where the resemblance ends) and obviously has a new hero. Her sister is everything, though she was similarly taken with the quiet, handsome, gentle 8-year-old brother who held her hands and stared at her in wonder, eventually offering her both some candy and a loving kiss and hug after we’d loaded her into her car seat and were ready to go pick up Valerie and Alex from their relative’s house.

It was amazing to see all of them together, not just how physically similar they are (and since none of us are their parents, all of us caretakers can honestly marvel at what gorgeous kids we’re raising!) but how they’re all sweet, generous, clearly adoring of one another. These are good, smart kids, which is what I’d always expected because I didn’t think Mara could have become herself out of nothing. It was wonderful to be able to talk to other people who could laugh and share stories about her sibling’s pica that’s even worse than Mara’s, the way she’s always been horrified about having her hair washed but very patient about waiting while it’s styled. (They volunteered to have a relative braid her hair, and I may eventually take them up on it at some point since it would be another way for her to feel like she’s still part of her family.) They were delighted with her progress, happy that we’re going to be adopting her and that she’s in a good home where she’s thriving. Samara in particular doesn’t seem bothered we’re gay and even finessed things when Mara’s grandmother showed up, making it clear that we were her adoptive parents and (subtly) not to ask questions because we’re good people. She says she’d told the social worker when she placed Mara in care that Mara should go to a house without teen boys like hers, without adult men who scared Mara. Samara says she’s happy that Mara finally ended up in a house without grown men to be able to deal with her fear of them, and I was proud to get to tell her that Mara hasn’t had an incident like she used to this entire calendar year.

All of us adults got weepy at various times, and at bedtime I took Mara through all the pictures I’d taken during the visit so we could talk about how her brother has beautiful eyes just like hers and so on. She was asking about various cousins, who’s raising them. She’s clearly paying attention and classifying the people she met. She was so, so happy, and then she said, “Mommy, I crying!” I asked if it was because she was happy, sad, or happy and sad, and she immediately said, “Happy AND sad!” So Lee and I held her in a family hug and had a bit of a sniffly happy-and-sad moment ourselves. Mara has missed having family connections so much and my heart has hurt for her. Making this connection this way was the best possible outcome we could have imagined, and we were trying to prepare ourselves for many more negative possibilities.

We started our relationship with Mara a year ago without knowing much at all about her. Now I’ve been her mom for a quarter of her life and I know her so deeply, her breathing and why she cries and her sense of humor and the laugh that it turns out is just like her brothers. We got to spend a year bringing her into our family, and now that we start a new year in which that family will be cemented legally, we’re finally able to reopen connections to the family she comes from. Mara has wanted this and I’ve wanted it for her. I’m just so amazed and grateful and thrilled that it’s actually working out. For so many reasons, I can’t wait to find out what this next year will hold.

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