An open pair of arms

The headline grabbed me right off the bat: Alberta couple blindsided after adopted girls turn out to have fetal alcohol disorder. The story was heartbreaking in the way that only stories about wounds inflicted from close proximity can be. A couple took on two foster kids but one of them quickly proved to be quite a bit more than they could handle. There were repeated assaults of her sister, there were angry words and abuse, there were doors locked from the outside and alarm systems set up, there were desperate calls to social services. There was the shrapnel of toxic rage flying around shredding everyone in the vicinity.

The story is a terrible one. But it was a few words in the headline that caught my eye. Words like blindsided, adopted, turn out, and fetal alcohol disorder. The parents were evidently not aware that the girls had FASD when they decided to foster them. And now their entire history with these girls (the elder one, in particular) was being read through the lens of this discovery. FASD was and is the cause of their heartbreak. If only they had known that they were getting damaged goods. They knew that the situation was not ideal, of course. It never is, in cases of children requiring foster care. But FASD is a game changer. If they had only known that there was this one critical factor. They would never have signed up for this, if they had only known.

I do not judge this couple. There are many lessons I have surely failed to properly learn in my 14 years as a parent, but the one that I have learned is that there are few easy roads on this journey. Every child is delightful and challenging in his/her own way, and every parent copes the best way they know how. Sometimes we fail spectacularly and the pain and misunderstanding just bleeds through all that our days contain. Sometimes, against all odds, we get it right—or at least right enough—and we all live to fight another day. It’s so easy to cast stones at other kids, other parents—to sit in silent judgment over their inadequate methods, their laziness, their insolence, their disrespect and selfishness. But often we have no idea what’s going on under the surface, behind closed doors, where skeletons lurk, where the sadness and confusion just soak through everything.