To Joy
By Karla M. Steffens-Moran
Early this morning, as I was finishing up the last of the breakfast dishes, my son Zak’s best friend Seamus came to the door, face flushed, unzipped coat wide open despite the morning frost, panting, and asked in a rush of breath if Zak could come out and see “this animal down the street. I think, it was just hit.” He spoke with a measured balance of fear and excitement in his voice. “I thought…well, I wanted to…maybe, well, it’s worth seeing,” he said. Just then Zak came down the stairs and after a brief exchange, he and his best friend walked out the door and up the street to bear witness.
Late last night my daughter Grace peeked her head around the door of the study with a “Mom, Jenna just called me; Kaiden’s Dad is…dead.” She sat down next to me. “They think it was a heart attack. Can you believe it?” she asked, as she stared out at nothing. I shook my head not quite understanding. How was it possible that someone so vibrant, so good-humored, so filled with life and love could be gone in a moment? “No,” I said. “I cannot; I can not believe it.” Just days before he’d been cheering at his son’s track meet.
Yesterday I looked at the doctor and shared my newly discovered family history at my annual well-woman check: “Breast Cancer,” I said, “My little sister. Here,” I added “on the left,” and touched my index finger near to my heart.
And tonight I’m thinking, to whom do you open your heart while you still have a chance? The heart that at any moment may just as easily burst in joy as in pain, in delight as in anguish. The same heart that beats one moment and the next explodes or simply stops. To whom do you share your truest feelings, the same way that they do on those television shows that we all like to live vicariously through rather than risk feeling it, sharing it, opening our oh-so-fragile hearts to others?
I would like to know where the writer is for my life, the one who will draw up the kooky best friend character, the leggy redhead or unconventional blonde girlfriend who will be there through thick or thin like those girls in Sex in the City? It’s so much harder in real life to dare to open oneself up, to force an answer to the question: how are you? Beyond a simple, “fine, and you?”
Because the truth is, I feel sometimes that I’m failing as much as succeeding—whether it be at mothering or teaching or directing or befriending or loving or cleaning or organizing or creating. And there are the days when I think: where are the writers? Where is the plot line that explains it all? And then I think, it’s the ending that ties it all up.
And so I go back to the only thing I know, the here and now—versus the end. I go back to the best friend who rushes excited through the door, or the daughter who peeks her head around the door of the study, or sometimes to the person who inspires me
Steffens-Moran/To Joy/2
to be open, be involved, be connected—like Kaiden’s dad, Ivan. I must let them in; I must open the door to what they want to show me.
Because real life is often times out there as much as it’s in here, and it’s short and I must go and see it, today, in this moment, not later. Because unlike the television shows that must go on, life will not. Sometimes life will surprise you and it will be over and nothing will be tied up, and you will be left wondering, why didn’t I?
“The funeral is Wednesday,” my daughter tells me. “The whole choir is going to be there, to sing.” I imagine the long line of cars snaking their way through the early spring greens of the cemetery, and I imagine the hands of loved ones as their fingertips gently trace the top of the casket, and I imagine the whispered good-byes and God-Speeds to this man--husband, father, son, brother, cousin, neighbor, friend, fellow farmer. He was too young to die, we’ll all agree, too young to go home to the earth he should be tilling. Those of us who knew him only in passing have only the slightest idea of who he was. And yet we grieve for him, and for his family; we ache for their loss, and they should know, how Ivan mattered to all of us--friends, neighbors, and yes, near-strangers.
His life, like a precious heirloom, shattered in a moment--and despite having no way to put it back together, to make it whole and right again, we try. We will come together--family, friends, colleagues, near strangers--and offer up our own single piece, like single sentences that mean nothing until they are strung together to tell the story of this man’s life.
In one piece, we see a man with a large and ready laugh, a ruddy complexion, with hands thick and rough—like my grandfather’s and father’s who were also farmers—always ready to help, a shock of thick dark hair; a passion to be present to cheer and support at the track meets and volleyball games, to serve family, friends, school, community, the land—to do the right thing, above all, obligated to be hard-working and honorable.
In another piece, we see a man kneel down in a field, take a scoop of rich, freshly tilled soil into the palm of his thick, calloused hand, look up into a cloudless sky, and thank God for all that he has in his life: his beautiful wife, his three wonderful children, the fine family, friends and neighbors he has always been able to count on—and yes, for the promise and bounty of the land.
And he makes a wish that his children, that everyone, can someday know this feeling he holds in his palm, in his heart, this kind of connection to something, someone, to know its promise. And then he stands, ready to plant, again.
“You gotta check this out,” says Seamus to Zak, as they head through the door and up the street. “It’s AMAZING!” And I know that he means to point out this animal that has just passed, the beauty of it, the tragedy of it, to witness, willingly.
Steffens-Moran/To Joy/3/Final
And watching them walk through the door and away up the street, my heart wants to break because I know what is up ahead. I imagine that the farmer would smile and nod his approval. It’s all a part of it, he’d say. Don’t look away. Each moment matters; each piece is a part of the story.
I know this. Because that’s what my piece revealed to me--a whispered truth as simple, constant, and pressing as wind across an Iowa field: be present, bear witness. So tomorrow I will walk up the street and pay respect to the farmer who modeled in his too short but abundant life, to love life, to love and protect the land, to open our fragile hearts to others, to take it all in and then try our best to give back.
So, let’s do it…you and I…whatever it is we are most afraid of doing, of trying, of opening ourselves up to; let’s dare. While I have the chance, let me leave the dishes and go out and look at what is here, let my hand open and let loose of the to-do list. Here in the yard, here in the sun or the rain, let me look up into the sky, let me remember a time when stars could be diamonds and mud could be pie, when all that was needed for magic could be found here at the fingertips, here in the heart, here in the freshly tilled soil, rich with all of its possibility and promise. Let the planting begin.
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
This is a Love Letter
This is a love letter. It is early October here in Iowa; it’s just before dusk on an Indian summer autumn day, and the sky is a charged Halloween orange and scarlet red. I am driving west on Highway 30 just east of Mechanicsville where the train runs parallel to the road and where--when you’re lucky--you get to race a train that’s heading in the same direction. I am driving behind an old Studebaker, painted with a flat steel gray paint. Dappled sunlight filters through the rows of now dried cornstalks in the fields to the south and west. In the distance, I see a lone farmer clearing his field, a plume of chipped debris spraying straight up and then falling like a light rain back onto the field in his wake. Despite the size of the massive machine he operates, it is still dwarfed by the surrounding landscape--the brilliant sky and surrounding fields.
I am reminded of the picture of my great grandfather that hangs in my family’s home. My great grandfather was a farmer, as was my grandfather and my father. When I was growing up, the picture hung on the wall outside my father and mother’s room, just below a brass crucifix adorned with my grandmother’s rosary. In the photo, the lone silhouette of a male figure is seen--from a great distance. It is dusk, and the farmer is leaning his full weight into the plow pulled by a single Clydesdale. The man, my great grandfather, is dwarfed by the massive field and sky. His task, in proportion to his size, appears unbelievably daunting. Still, he works tirelessly, presumably long past dark.
I never met my great grandfather. He died when my father was a young man. However, I did know my grandfather, although he too died when I was just a little girl. I remember mostly his hands: large, strong, callused and dirty (no matter how hard or often he scrubbed them), and that he smelled like evergreen and mudpies. He was a truck farmer, fruit and vegetables. I asked my dad why they called them ‘truck farmers.’ He explained by describing how he and his father would wake before dawn on Saturday mornings and fill the back of their truck with freshly picked produce. Then they would drive into the city to the open markets, where they’d sell from the back of the old truck till sunset, and then drive back home.
Years after taking those early morning drives to market, my father continued the tradition, farming his own “back forty”--more as a pastime than for a living-- until the year before he died. He proudly cited the fact that he was the last official card-carrying farmer registered in Cook County, Illinois. He farmed the same land that his father and his grandfather farmed long before it became prime North Shore real estate. My father would often joke when we’d drive around my hometown of Wilmette that “the people that thought they were really something had no idea how much manure their fancy houses were built upon.” He helped me to understand through his love of planting--peas and beans, blackberries and eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini--the beauty of the land, the beauty of the farmer.
Before he died he sold his property to a Montessori school so that his “back forty” might be preserved for kids to wander through--maybe even for a garden.
So, this is a love letter to my great grandfather and grandfather and to my father. It’s also a love letter to all the local truck farmers here in Mount Vernon and Lisbon, named Krouse and Miller, Pavelka and Kroul, Knight and Walberg, Burkle and Thornton and Ciha and dozens of unnamed others. It’s also to the bakers like Sue and Ann and Carey and Pat and the two sisters who take the time to bake from scratch with only the freshest of ingredients. So, to all of you farmers, noted or not, praised or not, visible or not, thank you for the beans and broccoli, eggplant, sweet potatoes, butternut squash and sweet red onions.
Thank you for your tireless work behind your own plows. Thank you for loving the land and bringing us good and healthy and real food, for tending to the land, caring for the soil, and for reminding me of what my father taught me: the land that sustains us should never be taken for granted or squandered. The land is sacred. So is the farmer.
I am reminded of the picture of my great grandfather that hangs in my family’s home. My great grandfather was a farmer, as was my grandfather and my father. When I was growing up, the picture hung on the wall outside my father and mother’s room, just below a brass crucifix adorned with my grandmother’s rosary. In the photo, the lone silhouette of a male figure is seen--from a great distance. It is dusk, and the farmer is leaning his full weight into the plow pulled by a single Clydesdale. The man, my great grandfather, is dwarfed by the massive field and sky. His task, in proportion to his size, appears unbelievably daunting. Still, he works tirelessly, presumably long past dark.
I never met my great grandfather. He died when my father was a young man. However, I did know my grandfather, although he too died when I was just a little girl. I remember mostly his hands: large, strong, callused and dirty (no matter how hard or often he scrubbed them), and that he smelled like evergreen and mudpies. He was a truck farmer, fruit and vegetables. I asked my dad why they called them ‘truck farmers.’ He explained by describing how he and his father would wake before dawn on Saturday mornings and fill the back of their truck with freshly picked produce. Then they would drive into the city to the open markets, where they’d sell from the back of the old truck till sunset, and then drive back home.
Years after taking those early morning drives to market, my father continued the tradition, farming his own “back forty”--more as a pastime than for a living-- until the year before he died. He proudly cited the fact that he was the last official card-carrying farmer registered in Cook County, Illinois. He farmed the same land that his father and his grandfather farmed long before it became prime North Shore real estate. My father would often joke when we’d drive around my hometown of Wilmette that “the people that thought they were really something had no idea how much manure their fancy houses were built upon.” He helped me to understand through his love of planting--peas and beans, blackberries and eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini--the beauty of the land, the beauty of the farmer.
Before he died he sold his property to a Montessori school so that his “back forty” might be preserved for kids to wander through--maybe even for a garden.
So, this is a love letter to my great grandfather and grandfather and to my father. It’s also a love letter to all the local truck farmers here in Mount Vernon and Lisbon, named Krouse and Miller, Pavelka and Kroul, Knight and Walberg, Burkle and Thornton and Ciha and dozens of unnamed others. It’s also to the bakers like Sue and Ann and Carey and Pat and the two sisters who take the time to bake from scratch with only the freshest of ingredients. So, to all of you farmers, noted or not, praised or not, visible or not, thank you for the beans and broccoli, eggplant, sweet potatoes, butternut squash and sweet red onions.
Thank you for your tireless work behind your own plows. Thank you for loving the land and bringing us good and healthy and real food, for tending to the land, caring for the soil, and for reminding me of what my father taught me: the land that sustains us should never be taken for granted or squandered. The land is sacred. So is the farmer.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thank you Veterans!
There were no parades today; at least there weren't any in my town. Nor am I able to recollect any such parades when I was growing up. It's November 11th and there's nothing planned that's out of the ordinary. I've just gotten my three children off to school. I've cleaned up the breakfast dishes and put the boxes of cereal back up into the cabinet. I've cleaned some mold off the back porch (that I'd seen when I went to go and retrieve hats and gloves for my three--as the temperatures are plummeting this morning. It's time to go and get dressed, drop my youngest son's bass off at the school and head to work. Typical day for me and for thousands of others just like me. Except for the veteran. While I don't know for a fact how the veterans feel--of any war; however, I imagine this day, Veteran's Day is not just another day for veterans and their families. Come to think of it, it shouldn't be for any of us. And yet it is.
I'm not certain really what to do about that fact. I know what to do on Memorial Day. There are parades and pancake breakfasts and solemn silent salutes punctuated by the sound of rifles firing, once, twice, three times. Fire. Fire. Fire. There are gatherings of people large and small, public and private to mark the day that some of our nation's finest have fallen, never to return home. There's backyard barbeques with hot dogs and hamburgers, cole slaw and lemonade, there's laughter that balances those silent moments of reflection. That's Memorial Day.
So, what about Veteran's Day? Why is it that I, that we, have a tendency to forget with a "Oh, yeah, it's…what is it called.? Oh, yeah, it's Veteran's Day." Perhaps it's because no one has told us what to do, how to honor them. There are no parades, no cards, no somber, no significant slogans. Just veterans. I wonder what it's like for the veteran. There have been a few movies made over the years. The one that made the greatest impact on me, the one that still breaks my heart when I think about it: The Best Years of Our Lives. The ImbD plot synopsis describes it :
The story concentrates on the social re-adjustment of three World War II servicemen, each from a different station of society. Al Stephenson returns to an influential banking position, but finds it hard to reconcile his loyalties to ex-servicemen with new commercial realities. Fred Derry is an ordinary working man who finds it difficult to hold down a job or pick up the threads of his marriage. Having had both hands burnt off during the war, Homer Parrish is unsure that his fiancée's feelings are still those of love and not those of pity. Each of the veterans faces a crisis upon his arrival, and each crisis is a microcosm of the experiences of many American warriors who found an alien world awaiting them when they came marching home. (IMbD, Written by alfiehitchie)
Certainly there have been other films, The Deer Hunter, Born on the 4th of July, All Quiet on the Western Front even Forrest Gump. All of these films--all of them--depict the lives of men and women broken by the wars in which they fought. They show us how they've had to fight to regain some sense of what we refer to as normal--they've had to fight to reclaim the glory of a typical day. The one I was having today--until I realized that I needed to at the least appreciate it differently, not take it for granted. Because somebody--actually many somebodies helped to make this "typical morning" possible. They're called veterans. Today, I honor them. I thank them. Tomorrow I pledge to not forget.
I'm not certain really what to do about that fact. I know what to do on Memorial Day. There are parades and pancake breakfasts and solemn silent salutes punctuated by the sound of rifles firing, once, twice, three times. Fire. Fire. Fire. There are gatherings of people large and small, public and private to mark the day that some of our nation's finest have fallen, never to return home. There's backyard barbeques with hot dogs and hamburgers, cole slaw and lemonade, there's laughter that balances those silent moments of reflection. That's Memorial Day.
So, what about Veteran's Day? Why is it that I, that we, have a tendency to forget with a "Oh, yeah, it's…what is it called.? Oh, yeah, it's Veteran's Day." Perhaps it's because no one has told us what to do, how to honor them. There are no parades, no cards, no somber, no significant slogans. Just veterans. I wonder what it's like for the veteran. There have been a few movies made over the years. The one that made the greatest impact on me, the one that still breaks my heart when I think about it: The Best Years of Our Lives. The ImbD plot synopsis describes it :
The story concentrates on the social re-adjustment of three World War II servicemen, each from a different station of society. Al Stephenson returns to an influential banking position, but finds it hard to reconcile his loyalties to ex-servicemen with new commercial realities. Fred Derry is an ordinary working man who finds it difficult to hold down a job or pick up the threads of his marriage. Having had both hands burnt off during the war, Homer Parrish is unsure that his fiancée's feelings are still those of love and not those of pity. Each of the veterans faces a crisis upon his arrival, and each crisis is a microcosm of the experiences of many American warriors who found an alien world awaiting them when they came marching home. (IMbD, Written by alfiehitchie)
Certainly there have been other films, The Deer Hunter, Born on the 4th of July, All Quiet on the Western Front even Forrest Gump. All of these films--all of them--depict the lives of men and women broken by the wars in which they fought. They show us how they've had to fight to regain some sense of what we refer to as normal--they've had to fight to reclaim the glory of a typical day. The one I was having today--until I realized that I needed to at the least appreciate it differently, not take it for granted. Because somebody--actually many somebodies helped to make this "typical morning" possible. They're called veterans. Today, I honor them. I thank them. Tomorrow I pledge to not forget.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
No Room at the Inn: Arkansas Adoption Ban
No Room at the Inn Appr: 2700 words
by Karla M. Steffens-Moran
Many of us in the past week have been talking about the election. Some are relieved it’s over; some are still riding high on the energy it inspired in the nation. Some feel themselves victors; others feel an acute loss. Some of us feel it was a victory and a loss.
I sat across from my dear friend at the Skillet Café in town this past Wednesday over plates of steaming hot eggs and pancakes, our fingers wrapped around enormous mugs of hot, black coffee, talking excitedly about the true winners and losers in this year’s Presidential Race. We both agreed: the only true losers this time around were the children in foster care waiting to be adopted, waiting for a place to call home.
We’re talking about Arkansas here, the most recent state in our nation to ban legal adoption of children by unmarried couples. The initiative was introduced by the Family Council Action Committee (a self-described “grassroots organization involved in ensuring the confirmation of conservative judicial nominees, protecting the Arkansas Marriage Amendment, and dealing with issues such as the expansion of gambling”). The measure was meant to circumvent The Supreme Court’s overturning of the Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board’s policy in 1999 that banned gay people from serving as foster parents.
In its unanimous ruling, the court agreed that “the driving force behind adoption of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather based upon the board’s views of morality and its bias against homosexuals.”
So, while Social Conservative blogs decry it “a huge victory!” the courts and advocates of human service agencies all agree that the ban is a genuine blow to the needs of children. How anyone could vote to deny any child a warm, loving, nurturing home is clearly beyond indecent. To do so and claim that it is a “victory in the name of what Jesus would do” is insulting. To claim this loss for children as “a victory for social conservatives everywhere” is cruel and inhuman--and yes, appallingly ignorant.
There is no victory in denying a child a home--for any reason, let alone basing it on some bigoted belief that only married heterosexuals can properly parent. Indeed, there is little evidence to support that “fact.” We need only look at the number of broken (i.e. divorced) heterosexual homes (as well as in-tact married heterosexual homes from which neglected and abused children have been forcibly taken by the state) to prove the point that “we married heterosexuals” have little right to claim superiority in our parenting skills. On the other hand, there is a genuine lack of evidence to suggest that single and/or homosexuals have failed to successfully parent children. Indeed, they are as likely (or more) to provide a loving and supportive home. There is no evidence. There is only bigotry.
I challenge anyone who holds this as his/her core criteria for denying a child a home to do one of several things: 1.) go and look a child in the eye who has been in the foster care system, waiting for nothing more than a permanent and safe home for years and dare to ask what s/he wants; 2.) serve on a foster care review board for even six months; 3.) talk to those wanting to adopt--heterosexual or homosexuals, married or not--waiting to adopt. Dare to do this. I challenge you.
If you do, I promise you it will change you; it will break your heart; it will, at the very least, give you pause to question your beliefs. Certainly, each of us is entitled to believe what we choose. However, those beliefs--no matter how passionately held they are--give us the zero right to deny others their Constitutional rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Our opinions should not invade the rights of others to build families--in particular, if they are opinions based in ignorance. As I have suggested to students in my classes: it’s easy to have an opinion. The challenge is to have a well-informed one. It’s harder to be closed-minded with eyes wide open. The idea that to be heterosexual gives us some secret wisdom to parent is absurd. I’m a married heterosexual and am convinced of only one thing: there should be some test, some rulebook, something that would take some of the guesswork out of this thing we call parenting. The only thing I know for certain is that successful parenting begins and ends with being there. What children need is for us to be there for them. And we heterosexuals don’t have any stronghold--ANY advantage--in that one over anyone by virtue of our marital status and/or sexual orientation.
Because if that was true, then explain this to me. Why in this past year alone have nearly 800,000 children (most if not all of whom come from married heterosexual households) in this great nation of ours been served by the foster care system? Explain to me what happened with those 800,000 children?
I know! Let’s have every one who voted to ban homosexuals and/or the unmarried from adopting children adopt a child waiting for a home. Better yet, let’s include anyone who would vote to do so in any state at any time--and require that each of those voters provide safe shelter to a child waiting for a permanent home. Let’s go ahead and start with those voters from Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, and Florida who have banned single and/or gay parenthood (we can add any voters who would vote to do so later as needed). I imagine that the number of voters in those early states alone would provide tens of thousands of homes to children waiting for permanent placement. Add to that the sixteen states with similar initiatives underway nationwide and their potential voters, and I think we just might have this placement problem licked.
Funny thing is--and clearly there’s not much that one might consider genuinely humorous here--after searching the web sites of countless such organizations, including the Family Action Council Committee responsible for the 2008 Arkansas ban--there is nothing on those sites inviting its membership to adopt any of these children. And while I do know a handful that practice what they preach, it appears that far too many of these advocates of “healthy family values” are disproportionately busy with their agenda of “being against,” to actually provide a solution, or in this case, a home.
Seventeen years ago, I served the foster care system in Baltimore, Maryland as a member of its Foster Care Review Board. I can attest that the only reason many of these children are returned to their biological parents is because there’s “no room at the inn”; there are not enough homes available for temporary, let alone permanent, placement. There are not enough willing to parent “somebody else’s problem.” So there we sat, around the large conference tables, listening to caseworkers lay out the pros and cons, flipping through the files trying to find some shred of evidence to support the hope that “reuniting” them with their biological parents was not in total vain.
Every month we would review these cases and be devastated. Children forced to eat out of garbage cans, abandoned for days or weeks at a time, starved for attention and time and nutrients; toddlers forced to fend for themselves while caring for younger siblings. These children were ravaged first by parents--of all ages, races, religions and socioeconomic levels--and second by an overburdened system of workers that could only do so much with their limited resources. Children starved, beaten, burned with irons, cigarettes, cut with bottles, sexually mutilated and then abandoned. And these were the survivors. Tough, resilient, courageous children in need of one thing: a safe home.
But there weren’t enough families willing to adopt out of the system. And so back these children went. We had no choice. That’s what we tried to convince ourselves as we closed the case files and headed home for the day. My friend and I would drive home, silently, filled with a sorrow that haunts me to this day, for having sent these kids back to near certain neglect and abuse.
First, do no harm. That should be the criteria before anyone casts a vote on the safety and salvation of a child. Second, know the facts. Third, do something to help the situation before eliminating those willing to do so. Only after all of those boxes have been checked should we allow ourselves to cast any vote on behalf of what we believe is best for another human being--in particular, a child.
As of January 2008 of this year, according to the data collected by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration of Children and Families, there were 130,000 children waiting to be adopted. Of those, 84,000 had already had parental rights terminated--translation: had been in the system for on average two years--and were waiting for permanent placement, waiting for someone to make room for them in their lives and homes. This figure does not take into account the nearly 800,000 in 2007 actually served by the foster care system. Who am I you may wonder to speak on behalf of these children waiting to be adopted? Am I an authority? No--and yes.
Yes, because I am adopted. Notice that even though I am a grown woman that I say I am adopted versus I was adopted. This is a distinction to note because truth is, unlike foster care, being adopted is not temporary. Even those of us adopted at an early age know from our core what it means to long for inclusion in a family that will be there for us, who will not abandon us.
And let’s face it, such families are not born, they’re created. Families are not accidents; they’re choices we make. It is a choice to be there for others: through better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, to stay versus leave, to be there. And in the case of those children waiting to be adopted, their wait has just been extended because the pool of prospective parents has been crippled by the bigotry of individuals who believe they know what is best. Those ‘holier than thou’ in the states of Arkansas and Utah, Florida and Mississippi. who believe they know who is better equipped to be a parent: “married couples that consist of a man and a woman.” And while the voters in these states play God in de-vining what makes for a “healthy family,” the children wait.
“Since FY 2003, the estimated number of waiting children has been approximately 130,000 on the last day of each year. The estimated number of waiting children whose parental rights had already been terminated as of the last day of the year has been increasing (from 74,000 in FY 2004, to 78,000 in FY 2005, and to 80,000 in FY 2005). The estimated number reached 84,000 in FY 2007, the highest number since AFCARS data have been reported.” Some have stood up to answer the call of these children. They fight to protect these children just as others work to deny them rights. And the battle rages on.
A circuit court judge in Florida ruled the state's 31-year-old
ban on adoptions by openly gay men and women is unconstitutional.
Monroe County Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. issued the ruling
in the case of a gay Key West foster parent who seeks to adopt the
special needs teenage boy he has been taking care of, the Miami
Herald reported Wednesday.Audlin declared the adoption to be in
the boy's "best interest" and said the Florida law forbidding
gay people from adopting children is unconstitutional. A home
study by a Florida social worker "highly" recommended the foster
father and his partner be allowed to adopt the boy, saying they
provided a "loving and nurturing home.” (Miami Herald, 2008)
My friend and his partner have done that very thing. They’ve provided a home to three young children--siblings who have been in the system for years since nearly birth. I am proud to know and call this family--created from love and from commitment to being there for one another--my friends. Their home began with the opening of their hearts as many such homes wish to do. They are counting on us to open our eyes, our minds, our ears, and yes, our hearts to the truth that family is constructed in many ways. Home is where the heart is open and the mind is open and the door is open.
That’s what we each need a family, a home, a place to return to that is safe and loving and nurturing, with parents who are there for us. Let us all stand united in this, men, women, straights, gays, adopted and adopter, married and single--to defeat any measure that is meant to exclude, deny, diminish the rights of any of our citizens.
The irony of course is that while the House unanimously passes legislation to encourage that children not be left waiting until they “age-out” of the system (which sadly nearly 25,000 youth do each year without ever enjoying what most of us enjoy--a permanent home), coalitions of ignorant soulless individuals work against their efforts. This ensures only one thing: a child is left waiting. Actually 130,000 children are left waiting.
Of course there are organizations devoted to working on behalf of the kids. One such organization: Kids Are Waiting: Fix Foster Care Now is described as “a national, nonpartisan campaign dedicated to promoting foster care reform. Led by The Pew Charitable Trusts, an ever-growing number of local, state and national partners are working together so that our most vulnerable children don't spend their childhood waiting in foster care for the families they deserve.” www.kidsarewaiting.org. However, while we applaud the efforts of these organizations, we need not wait for such a ban initiative to show up on our next election ballot. And let’s be clear, someone is working on drafting one for our state because they think they know best. They don’t.
So, let’s instead be proactive. Let’s each of us go one step further than simply saying: that’s not right. Let’s at the least write to our Congressmen and our Senators, write to our current President, George W. Bush, write to our new president-elect, Barack Obama on his new website that is asking us to speak up. Or contact Jennifer Slife and Jennifer Gericke to see about serving on a Foster Care Review Board here in Linn County by calling: 319-362-0829 or write jennifer.gericke@dia.iowa.gov or jennifer.slife@dia.iowa.gov to get involved. Perhaps it will serve to open a door to what is truly needed, what is truly at stake. While the election is over and the votes are already cast, as president-elect Obama has suggested: the work has just begun. It’s not enough anymore to simply cast our votes and wash our hands of it.
Let’s instead put those idle hands to work on creating something positive. Let’s make it our responsibility. As one of my own three beautiful children pointed out to me on Election morning: “The thing is, Mom, it’s not about being against something; it’s about asking yourself what you’re for.” Change happens when we choose it…and follow up by working for it.
Last night I sat at the theatre watching my own daughter onstage. My two friends sat--all three of their kids in tow in order to introduce them to the delight of going to the theatre-- (two weeks ago it was cheering on the high school football team). Two of the three kids were curled up in their daddies’ laps, heads resting against their broad shoulders. The third was sitting forward laughing at all the antics onstage. The play was almost over. The oldest, a daughter looked up to her dad and asked in a hushed whisper: “Are we going home soon, Daddy?” My friend looked down the row to his partner and they shared that knowing glance: “It’s late. We need to get them to bed soon.” My friend hugged his new daughter to him and whispered back to her assuringly: “Yes, sweetie, we’ll be going home soon.” She smiled. Her wait is over.
One hundred and thirty thousand are still waiting.
by Karla M. Steffens-Moran
Many of us in the past week have been talking about the election. Some are relieved it’s over; some are still riding high on the energy it inspired in the nation. Some feel themselves victors; others feel an acute loss. Some of us feel it was a victory and a loss.
I sat across from my dear friend at the Skillet Café in town this past Wednesday over plates of steaming hot eggs and pancakes, our fingers wrapped around enormous mugs of hot, black coffee, talking excitedly about the true winners and losers in this year’s Presidential Race. We both agreed: the only true losers this time around were the children in foster care waiting to be adopted, waiting for a place to call home.
We’re talking about Arkansas here, the most recent state in our nation to ban legal adoption of children by unmarried couples. The initiative was introduced by the Family Council Action Committee (a self-described “grassroots organization involved in ensuring the confirmation of conservative judicial nominees, protecting the Arkansas Marriage Amendment, and dealing with issues such as the expansion of gambling”). The measure was meant to circumvent The Supreme Court’s overturning of the Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board’s policy in 1999 that banned gay people from serving as foster parents.
In its unanimous ruling, the court agreed that “the driving force behind adoption of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather based upon the board’s views of morality and its bias against homosexuals.”
So, while Social Conservative blogs decry it “a huge victory!” the courts and advocates of human service agencies all agree that the ban is a genuine blow to the needs of children. How anyone could vote to deny any child a warm, loving, nurturing home is clearly beyond indecent. To do so and claim that it is a “victory in the name of what Jesus would do” is insulting. To claim this loss for children as “a victory for social conservatives everywhere” is cruel and inhuman--and yes, appallingly ignorant.
There is no victory in denying a child a home--for any reason, let alone basing it on some bigoted belief that only married heterosexuals can properly parent. Indeed, there is little evidence to support that “fact.” We need only look at the number of broken (i.e. divorced) heterosexual homes (as well as in-tact married heterosexual homes from which neglected and abused children have been forcibly taken by the state) to prove the point that “we married heterosexuals” have little right to claim superiority in our parenting skills. On the other hand, there is a genuine lack of evidence to suggest that single and/or homosexuals have failed to successfully parent children. Indeed, they are as likely (or more) to provide a loving and supportive home. There is no evidence. There is only bigotry.
I challenge anyone who holds this as his/her core criteria for denying a child a home to do one of several things: 1.) go and look a child in the eye who has been in the foster care system, waiting for nothing more than a permanent and safe home for years and dare to ask what s/he wants; 2.) serve on a foster care review board for even six months; 3.) talk to those wanting to adopt--heterosexual or homosexuals, married or not--waiting to adopt. Dare to do this. I challenge you.
If you do, I promise you it will change you; it will break your heart; it will, at the very least, give you pause to question your beliefs. Certainly, each of us is entitled to believe what we choose. However, those beliefs--no matter how passionately held they are--give us the zero right to deny others their Constitutional rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Our opinions should not invade the rights of others to build families--in particular, if they are opinions based in ignorance. As I have suggested to students in my classes: it’s easy to have an opinion. The challenge is to have a well-informed one. It’s harder to be closed-minded with eyes wide open. The idea that to be heterosexual gives us some secret wisdom to parent is absurd. I’m a married heterosexual and am convinced of only one thing: there should be some test, some rulebook, something that would take some of the guesswork out of this thing we call parenting. The only thing I know for certain is that successful parenting begins and ends with being there. What children need is for us to be there for them. And we heterosexuals don’t have any stronghold--ANY advantage--in that one over anyone by virtue of our marital status and/or sexual orientation.
Because if that was true, then explain this to me. Why in this past year alone have nearly 800,000 children (most if not all of whom come from married heterosexual households) in this great nation of ours been served by the foster care system? Explain to me what happened with those 800,000 children?
I know! Let’s have every one who voted to ban homosexuals and/or the unmarried from adopting children adopt a child waiting for a home. Better yet, let’s include anyone who would vote to do so in any state at any time--and require that each of those voters provide safe shelter to a child waiting for a permanent home. Let’s go ahead and start with those voters from Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, and Florida who have banned single and/or gay parenthood (we can add any voters who would vote to do so later as needed). I imagine that the number of voters in those early states alone would provide tens of thousands of homes to children waiting for permanent placement. Add to that the sixteen states with similar initiatives underway nationwide and their potential voters, and I think we just might have this placement problem licked.
Funny thing is--and clearly there’s not much that one might consider genuinely humorous here--after searching the web sites of countless such organizations, including the Family Action Council Committee responsible for the 2008 Arkansas ban--there is nothing on those sites inviting its membership to adopt any of these children. And while I do know a handful that practice what they preach, it appears that far too many of these advocates of “healthy family values” are disproportionately busy with their agenda of “being against,” to actually provide a solution, or in this case, a home.
Seventeen years ago, I served the foster care system in Baltimore, Maryland as a member of its Foster Care Review Board. I can attest that the only reason many of these children are returned to their biological parents is because there’s “no room at the inn”; there are not enough homes available for temporary, let alone permanent, placement. There are not enough willing to parent “somebody else’s problem.” So there we sat, around the large conference tables, listening to caseworkers lay out the pros and cons, flipping through the files trying to find some shred of evidence to support the hope that “reuniting” them with their biological parents was not in total vain.
Every month we would review these cases and be devastated. Children forced to eat out of garbage cans, abandoned for days or weeks at a time, starved for attention and time and nutrients; toddlers forced to fend for themselves while caring for younger siblings. These children were ravaged first by parents--of all ages, races, religions and socioeconomic levels--and second by an overburdened system of workers that could only do so much with their limited resources. Children starved, beaten, burned with irons, cigarettes, cut with bottles, sexually mutilated and then abandoned. And these were the survivors. Tough, resilient, courageous children in need of one thing: a safe home.
But there weren’t enough families willing to adopt out of the system. And so back these children went. We had no choice. That’s what we tried to convince ourselves as we closed the case files and headed home for the day. My friend and I would drive home, silently, filled with a sorrow that haunts me to this day, for having sent these kids back to near certain neglect and abuse.
First, do no harm. That should be the criteria before anyone casts a vote on the safety and salvation of a child. Second, know the facts. Third, do something to help the situation before eliminating those willing to do so. Only after all of those boxes have been checked should we allow ourselves to cast any vote on behalf of what we believe is best for another human being--in particular, a child.
As of January 2008 of this year, according to the data collected by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration of Children and Families, there were 130,000 children waiting to be adopted. Of those, 84,000 had already had parental rights terminated--translation: had been in the system for on average two years--and were waiting for permanent placement, waiting for someone to make room for them in their lives and homes. This figure does not take into account the nearly 800,000 in 2007 actually served by the foster care system. Who am I you may wonder to speak on behalf of these children waiting to be adopted? Am I an authority? No--and yes.
Yes, because I am adopted. Notice that even though I am a grown woman that I say I am adopted versus I was adopted. This is a distinction to note because truth is, unlike foster care, being adopted is not temporary. Even those of us adopted at an early age know from our core what it means to long for inclusion in a family that will be there for us, who will not abandon us.
And let’s face it, such families are not born, they’re created. Families are not accidents; they’re choices we make. It is a choice to be there for others: through better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health, to stay versus leave, to be there. And in the case of those children waiting to be adopted, their wait has just been extended because the pool of prospective parents has been crippled by the bigotry of individuals who believe they know what is best. Those ‘holier than thou’ in the states of Arkansas and Utah, Florida and Mississippi. who believe they know who is better equipped to be a parent: “married couples that consist of a man and a woman.” And while the voters in these states play God in de-vining what makes for a “healthy family,” the children wait.
“Since FY 2003, the estimated number of waiting children has been approximately 130,000 on the last day of each year. The estimated number of waiting children whose parental rights had already been terminated as of the last day of the year has been increasing (from 74,000 in FY 2004, to 78,000 in FY 2005, and to 80,000 in FY 2005). The estimated number reached 84,000 in FY 2007, the highest number since AFCARS data have been reported.” Some have stood up to answer the call of these children. They fight to protect these children just as others work to deny them rights. And the battle rages on.
A circuit court judge in Florida ruled the state's 31-year-old
ban on adoptions by openly gay men and women is unconstitutional.
Monroe County Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. issued the ruling
in the case of a gay Key West foster parent who seeks to adopt the
special needs teenage boy he has been taking care of, the Miami
Herald reported Wednesday.Audlin declared the adoption to be in
the boy's "best interest" and said the Florida law forbidding
gay people from adopting children is unconstitutional. A home
study by a Florida social worker "highly" recommended the foster
father and his partner be allowed to adopt the boy, saying they
provided a "loving and nurturing home.” (Miami Herald, 2008)
My friend and his partner have done that very thing. They’ve provided a home to three young children--siblings who have been in the system for years since nearly birth. I am proud to know and call this family--created from love and from commitment to being there for one another--my friends. Their home began with the opening of their hearts as many such homes wish to do. They are counting on us to open our eyes, our minds, our ears, and yes, our hearts to the truth that family is constructed in many ways. Home is where the heart is open and the mind is open and the door is open.
That’s what we each need a family, a home, a place to return to that is safe and loving and nurturing, with parents who are there for us. Let us all stand united in this, men, women, straights, gays, adopted and adopter, married and single--to defeat any measure that is meant to exclude, deny, diminish the rights of any of our citizens.
The irony of course is that while the House unanimously passes legislation to encourage that children not be left waiting until they “age-out” of the system (which sadly nearly 25,000 youth do each year without ever enjoying what most of us enjoy--a permanent home), coalitions of ignorant soulless individuals work against their efforts. This ensures only one thing: a child is left waiting. Actually 130,000 children are left waiting.
Of course there are organizations devoted to working on behalf of the kids. One such organization: Kids Are Waiting: Fix Foster Care Now is described as “a national, nonpartisan campaign dedicated to promoting foster care reform. Led by The Pew Charitable Trusts, an ever-growing number of local, state and national partners are working together so that our most vulnerable children don't spend their childhood waiting in foster care for the families they deserve.” www.kidsarewaiting.org. However, while we applaud the efforts of these organizations, we need not wait for such a ban initiative to show up on our next election ballot. And let’s be clear, someone is working on drafting one for our state because they think they know best. They don’t.
So, let’s instead be proactive. Let’s each of us go one step further than simply saying: that’s not right. Let’s at the least write to our Congressmen and our Senators, write to our current President, George W. Bush, write to our new president-elect, Barack Obama on his new website that is asking us to speak up. Or contact Jennifer Slife and Jennifer Gericke to see about serving on a Foster Care Review Board here in Linn County by calling: 319-362-0829 or write jennifer.gericke@dia.iowa.gov or jennifer.slife@dia.iowa.gov to get involved. Perhaps it will serve to open a door to what is truly needed, what is truly at stake. While the election is over and the votes are already cast, as president-elect Obama has suggested: the work has just begun. It’s not enough anymore to simply cast our votes and wash our hands of it.
Let’s instead put those idle hands to work on creating something positive. Let’s make it our responsibility. As one of my own three beautiful children pointed out to me on Election morning: “The thing is, Mom, it’s not about being against something; it’s about asking yourself what you’re for.” Change happens when we choose it…and follow up by working for it.
Last night I sat at the theatre watching my own daughter onstage. My two friends sat--all three of their kids in tow in order to introduce them to the delight of going to the theatre-- (two weeks ago it was cheering on the high school football team). Two of the three kids were curled up in their daddies’ laps, heads resting against their broad shoulders. The third was sitting forward laughing at all the antics onstage. The play was almost over. The oldest, a daughter looked up to her dad and asked in a hushed whisper: “Are we going home soon, Daddy?” My friend looked down the row to his partner and they shared that knowing glance: “It’s late. We need to get them to bed soon.” My friend hugged his new daughter to him and whispered back to her assuringly: “Yes, sweetie, we’ll be going home soon.” She smiled. Her wait is over.
One hundred and thirty thousand are still waiting.
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