As I stated in an earlier post, my sister and I lived with foster parents for the next nine years. For me, it was from the age of not quite two until I was almost eleven. There is no way I can recap those nine years in one post, so I’ll do it a bit at a time.
I have this picture in my head of being a toddler trying to fold myself into a corner, to get as far away from my mom as physically possible. Not exactly the picture I’d want for any toddler. I can’t lay claim to this as a first person memory. It is more a representation of something my father relayed to me that he had witnessed when mom was visiting us. This visual reminds me of a picture I took of my son, while he was, sort of, in a corner of the living room, but he is happy to be caught on film. This always makes me smile and helps me pull away from my own experience.
I am told that I was slow developmentally, often the case with preemies. I was four pounds, two months premature and spent two months in an incubator. Perhaps this accounts for some of my difficulties later on, there is no way to be sure. Certainly I was a emotionally disturbed child based on my limited experience of the world by the time I was two.
My father proudly told me once that if it weren’t for him, my sister and I would have been separated from each other, had the prospective foster family had their way. The foster parents only wanted my sister. She was a cute, little baby and I was almost or about two, not nearly as cute and cuddly as a baby. My dad will tell you that he told them that if they didn’t take me they wouldn’t have either of us. I was about thirty when he told me this. While I can see why he is proud to say he kept us together, I’m sure you’ll pick up on the fact that being taken in by a family that is only doing so to get the baby is somewhat unsettling. Especially for the toddler, me!