Meg, my eight-year-old, is saying some very wise things lately. Last night we came across a baby’s T-shirt that I was saving because Regina’s foster mother had sent it with her. Meg wanted to know what clothes I’d saved from her own days in Korea. I mentioned the snowsuit that covered her pink outfit. This reminded Meg of the story she’s heard us tell of how her foster mother, after a moving prayer in which Meg was transferred into my arms, snatched her back again and covered her more warmly.
“You know, Mom,” Meg said now, “I think she was jealous of you when she took me back saying I wasn’t warm enough, because you were getting the baby.”
“I think you’re right,” I told her. I couldn’t believe that she had somehow intuited or hit upon this, while I had just assumed it was the Korean cultural norm of keeping babies extremely bundled up. I had actually felt very badly about that moment over the years. I wondered if Meg’s foster mother thought the child she’d nurtured for ten months was going to a complete idiot—someone who would callously strap the poor baby into a car seat that looked to her like an instrument of torture.
“It would be like you giving up me or Regina or Patrick,” Meg said.
The thought of that sent a stab through my heart. Of course I’d wondered at the pain I imagine their birthmothers felt as well as their foster mothers, but still, it is too painful to dwell on the “what-ifs” of having to relinquish my kids.
I mentioned that although it was terribly hard for the foster mothers and I really admired them, one difference was that they knew all along that they were taking care of the babies only while they were waiting for their adoptive families.
Meg nodded that she understood. “But still,” she said. “It’s like you would be crying in heaven.”
Meg has a learning difference which sometimes causes her to say things in a way I can’t quite understand. I’m not exactly sure whether she meant that the foster mother would grieve as if the child had died, or would still be grieving her whole life even when she herself got to heaven, or what.
Meg also has a spiritual difference which sometimes causes her to say things in a way I can’t quite understand. Her prayers have always been marvelous to listen to. As she made this statement now, her eyes radiating a calm but serious peacefulness, an awareness of sorrow and joy. She made her statement patiently, as if she were explaining something a bit painful to me and reassuring me that it was okay. Wow. Dare I hope that she has gotten a bit of that kind manner from me? I would be so honored if she did.
I know some of that kind manner comes from her loving foster mother. I imagine the shine in her eyes comes from her birth mother, her first mother. I have always felt in my heart that my daughters will meet their birthmother some day. We plan to travel to Korea when both girls are older.
Perhaps I will meet Meg’s birth mother and foster mother someday. I hope so. Or perhaps our meeting will be delayed until we all reach heaven. Either way, I envision the three of us, Meg’s three mothers, embracing and being very proud of this young lady.
Then there will indeed be tears of joy, as well as pain, in heaven.
Please see these related blogs:
Hating the Carseat and Other Cultural Differences