The foster parents were getting ready to retire to the United States. They built a small retirement home between two small towns, Ripley and Westfield, N.Y.
They told our father that they’d take us with them, but apparently they had to have legal custody of us to do so which meant adoption. My father was fine with them adopting us, but the foster parents wanted him to continue supporting us financially and he wasn’t so agreeable on this point. As far as he was concerned, adoption meant assuming all responsibility.
Seems like a reasonable assumption to me. Haven’t heard of an instance where the adoptive family receives a stipend from the biological parents, though I suppose it’s happened somewhere.
Well, this morphed into a discussion about money where my foster mother and my bio dad argued about whether my bio dad had paid his weekly support a week ahead or a week behind. Bio dad indicating the former and foster mom the latter, which lead to raised voices and ultimately to our relocation. Yep there and then, probably a Thursday evening as that was dad’s night to visit, we packed up and left.
How bio dad could argue this point is beyond me as, if you recall, he was paying money to the bio mom initially, before he got custody of us. How could he know if they were paid “ahead” or not as we already know that bio mom wasn’t being a responsible parent and handing over the support money to the foster parents, hence the court date to get full custody. Maybe he only counted from the point where he had full custody?
I remember being in my foster mom’s room where mom and sister were crying their faces off bemoaning our departure. At the tender age of ten and three-quarters I sensed the disparity between the action (packing us up and out) and the tearful words. Mine was an instinctive, or gut level reaction in the same way that I would change the words in a sentence to make it true. Naturally, with my ever present ambivalent feelings toward my foster mom, it’s not surprising I found the whole scene even at that age, incongruous.
My adult brain still yells “if you care so much couldn’t you overlook one week’s support payment?”
Next thing you know, we’re at my dad’s girlfriends parents’ place. We stayed with them until they got married in November of 1967. I have no sense of how long a stay it was. All I can piece together is we had to have been there at the start of the school year, so did we go to school from there. I don’t remember going to school while we were staying with our future grandparents, but it was an emotionally tumultuous time for us, so whose to say. I believe it was just a matter of weeks from the time we landed on their doorstep to the wedding, which was seriously pushed forward.
I don’t think I was in our temporary digs twenty-four hours before I had a raging fever. My body had a way of betraying me whenever I was in an emotionally charged situation, which seems was most of the time. At any rate, I remember my future grandfather sitting on the edge of the bed where I was resting, leaning over and kissing my forehead, then announcing that I definitely had a fever and further stated that “they” shouldn’t have called me George and treated me they way “they” did.
At that precise moment I fell in love and became a being with substance. I don’t have the words to describe how I felt, it was like what I expect people who are born again Christians feel when they’ve been saved! He, my future grandfather, must either be telepathic or omnipotent, which aren’t mutually exclusive I suppose. He is still my hero, warranted or not!! And, I’m told that the feeling was mutual!
Every Remembrance day I think of him and cry my heart out. He was a fighter pilot in WWII, hence the Remembrance day reference. Not that my sentimental heart isn’t tugged at other times throughout the year. If I could remember whether his birthday was Dec 2 or 4, that’d probably be a cry-fest day as well. My heart swells just thinking about him and brings tears to my eyes. I think of him often.
I don’t know when I recognized that my bio dad had communicated this information to my future grandparents. I’m pretty sure I was well into my teen years or had already left home, at 16, before it hit home that dear old bio dad was well versed in how it was for me.
A philosophical aside: here is an instance where my “christian, north american” upbringing comes to the forefront evidenced by the very language I’m using regardless of my religious or spiritual beliefs. I find it fascinating how “religion” is so inexplicably intertwined with our very being and the references we (I) use to describe things, i.e. saved, omnipotent, etc.