All The Things I Want To Know
We are just a few weeks shy of our TPR hearing which is basically a trial to determine if bio mom's rights will be terminated in our case. We are pretty confident they will as she has not completed any of her case plan in the 17 months little man has been in care, so it should be a pretty “open and shut case” as they say. That doesn’t change the amount of nerves and anxiety I've got swimming around all of it. There have been a lot of really big emotions the last few weeks. It's weird once you realize reunification isn't going to be possible, TPR is the thing you hope for. It puts us one step closer to being his forever family but it also means a lot of other things.
At the forefront of my mind this week is that after TPR happens we will most likely no longer have communication with her. Probably one of the most challenging parts of being a foster parent has been visitation. Little man has 1 hour of visitation once a week with his bio mom. It doesn't sound like a lot by any means and in the beginning, I felt bad for her that it was all the time she got but she never asked for more when she could have. She would show up late, leave early or not show altogether. I couldn't wrap my head around not wanting the full hour with your kid. (That's a post for another day. I journaled a lot about that in the beginning and will eventually get around to sharing it.) But even now over a year later, she rarely shows for visitation and if she does, it's very brief. But no matter what her track record is we have to put the time aside in our schedule for it, week after week. Again, it's just an hour so not really a big deal but it's a challenge for me. And as he has gotten older and visitations switched to virtual because of covid, it's become even more challenging. Picture entertaining a 17-month-old while on a zoom call with someone he doesn't know but is trying to interact with him on the other end. It's not fun at all. So as TPR approaches, in my head, I am counting down the weeks where we will no longer have visitation with her.
Visitation is the only communication we have with her and that has got me thinking. Thinking about all the things I want to know before I no longer have the option to ask. I want to know where his name came from. Assuming we adopt, we plan to keep his name. But I know kids get curious as they grow up and want to know where their name came from. Does it have significant meaning or just something she liked? I want to know so I can tell him one day when he asks. I want to know her medical history, I want to know which foods she doesn't like. I want to know if she has a picture of herself while she was pregnant and a picture of him from the day he was born. I want to know all the things that I should be asking that I can't even think about. I know there will be things down the road I wish I knew and now is the time to find out or I might not get the chance. But I don't even know what those things are.
Thankfully we have a relationship with his biological grandma, which I think will remain if we adopt, so I know there is a resource for family history. Through my interactions with her, I know his ever so slightly webbed toes are genetic. She has them and so does his mom. I know his blue eyes are probably from his grandfather. I know a little bit about their family, about his aunts, his one cousin. But that's it.
And maybe it won't matter to him. Maybe he will never have the desire to want to know more than that. But what if he does? I want to make sure I have the answers to all the questions. I never want him to feel like information is missing from who he is because he was adopted. Maybe it's silly. We are the only family he has ever known so maybe he won't care. Maybe just maybe if we do it right, raise him with full and honest transparency of his past without making it define who he is, just maybe none of it will matter...and some questions will just go unanswered. But in the present moment I can't stop thinking about asking for the answers to all the questions I don't have.