As I was running a week before my 15k, I was doing some agility drills at the end of my run when I fell and hit my head on the sidewalk. When I was asked if I regretted doing the run in the rain, I said no. I did finish the run, and now I know I can’t do agility drills at the end of my run in the rain. I tried and failed, but in doing so I gain knowledge of my limitations and an area on which I need to work. If one succeeds at everything one tries, then I suspect the odds are one’s best efforts have never been made. For what it’s worth, after my runs in the rain and in sunshine, I did complete the 15k run. Chalk one up as a stretch goal reached despite a couple of falls, scrapes and bruises picked up along the way.
Now it’s easy to ask what on earth this has to with a post on fairness. The answer comes in terms of what is expected of a foster parent. A foster parent has to raise a kid like they were born into their family. A foster parent has to bite their tongue when a parent doesn’t show for a visit. A foster parent even has to bite their tongue when a parent is 2 hours late for a surgery being blessedly held waiting on their consent. They even have to recognize a parent showing up late may in fact be one of those people pushing at their limits to be there for the child.
It’s hard to let a kid go into surgery in the unfamiliar arms of mom and to go through post op in those same arms. It’s not fair to the kid to go through the added trauma in addition to the fear of being in a strange building. It’s not fair to the foster parent who has taken care of the child who requires no small amount of loving care to then see the child call out for them and not answer. Doing so only makes the kid cry for the foster parent’s hold. It’s not fair for the mom to hear her child cry for another’s arms.
Still, so long as the hope is to reunite the family, the bonding through surviving the scary together should be between the child and mom. It’s not fair. However, we can only hope through the continuous stretch to reach new limits with the patience to forgive failures and allow for another chance, maybe there is hope for the less unfair outcome of a family reunited.
Overall, I think this is or should be the goal of every foster family, to provide an opportunity for a less unfair outcome. Doing so ensures enduring some heart wrenching moments, but of everyone in the story, the foster parent is the only one who got to choose their role. I know I always hope the opportunity is one grasped, and sometimes it is. Living to provide those moments seems a goal worth stretching to reach both by the parent and the foster parent…even with emotional falls, scrapes and bruises.
