Fictive

"Little puppet made of pine, awake. The gift of life is thine."
-The Blue Fairy, Pinocchio

For the longest time, there hasn't really been a proper, legal name for what Adam and I are in relation to the kids. We're still caught in limbo. A little more than foster parents, a little less than "real" ones, "Adoptive Resource" was the name given to us the first time we popped up on the DFS paperwork radar. As in, "You're not exactly fosters, but they're not going anywhere else, so we'll call you a resource. Not parents yet, but a resource, anyway. Keep pining, little wooden heads."

Being a licensed foster parent in Nevada gets you a nifty benefit that would have made Geppetto stand up and take notice. $680 per month, per child. $775 a month if the kids are teens.

However, Adam and I are not licensed foster parents, so we get jack...a/k/a alla da work and nunna da check.

In order to get licensed foster parent status and that vitally important subsidy (which believe me, would have been nice all these months shlepping the kids from one end of the occupational therapy universe to the other), prospective foster parents have to complete 10 weeks of training classes taught by our well-meaning but pokey-slow friends at the Department of Family Services.

But when Adam and I entered the fray in April of last year, we were told by our adoption recruiter (after we had already fallen fully in love with J1 and J2), we should not take the ten weeks of classes that would give us full foster parent status and entitle us to financial assistance. In fact, he told us, it was imperitive that J1 and J2 be moved into a forever family now, so if we delayed the process while we took ten weeks of classes, we would likely lose them forever.

So, as they say...tough beans.

It was an easy choice, really. As useful as a monthly stipend would have been - Adam and I are a one-income family, and not a large one at that - when it came down to having kids with financial aid, or just having kids, it was no contest. We were advised to take no classes and get no subsidy, and in return we got two wonderful children. Dollars or not, I wouldn't change a thing. The urgency of the kids' situation and the setup of what I've gruntingly come to regard as "The System" were, as always, ill-suited to help us, but I still wouldn't trade it for a monthly assistance check. J1 and J2 are worth every hard-earned penny we scramble for. Other people may do this for the money, but for us, broke or not, these kids are their own reward.

Fast forward seven, eight months. Even though our adoption is still far from finalized (who knows what paperwork lurks in the hearts of men), we've at least had the kids in our home long enough to be classified as something new and up a notch (I think). Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce, we are now classified as "fictive kin."

Fictive. Sweet.

Give us a hand, U.S. Legal-dot-com.

"Fictive Kin is a term used to refer to individuals that are unrelated by either birth or marriage, but have an emotionally significant relationship with another individual that would take on the characteristics of a family relationship."

Wow. "The characteristics of a family relationship?"

How generous.

After 250 days of dual special needs, 98 therapy sessions, 29 doctor visits and a partridge in a pear tree, nice of them to cut us such flattering slack. I'll remember that the next time I'm comforting J1 through a 104 fever or washing J2's poopy underdrawers between his week's three therapy appointments. I'm not quite real yet, but woo hoo, at least I'm fictive. Nothing says "ego boost" like the legal terminology of the adoption process. Stamp the words "faux de dad" on my head, load me up with iron pyrite, and everything's coming up roses.

The good news, however, is that "fictive kin" finally allows us to become licensed foster parents, and (hopefully, please God, make it so), be entitled to at least part of that mysterious, long-withheld financial subsidy. That would go a long way in improving everyone's care and comfort and taking some of the stress off those "ends-meet" items that regularly rock the household budget. You should see this boy go through school pants.

Because we've lived with J1 and J2 long enough now to be considered kin, fictive though we stiill may be, we're now allowed to take the County's "kinship classes," which are the same classes family members would take to get licensed if they were beginning to raise the child of a relative. Example...your sister goes off on a nine-week tooter and leaves baby Bobby peeing in his crib, you toss your name in the ring as next of kin, take the classes, get your license, and you're provided with assistance to raise him.

So, Adam and I are now officially fictive kin, and when our classes are over at the end of February -- meaty, three-hour sessions that engulf our Monday nights -- we'll finally be licensed foster parents. Well, licensed for J1 and J2, anyway. We still wouldn't be licensed for any other kids, any more than you'd be licensed for anyone other than your sister's baby Bobby, may he pee in peace. For that, you'd need the other 10 weeks of classes. You know. The ones they told us not to take in the first place.

Yeah. I know. It makes my head spin too.

Anyway, kinship classes are where we've been having our date nights these past few Mondays, and I have to tell you as someone who's cynical as they come when DFS says "hey, this'll be good for you," we are actually enjoying these classes immensely. The two teachers remind us a little of the Sweeney Sisters from Saturday Night Live (read, "Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley" and all the bantering bells and whistles that go with it), but it turns out they're enormously kind and very effective at delivering a mountain of curriculum packed into monster Monday nights, and they still manage to keep everyone awake, alert, fresh, and heard.

Mostly, it's just good to sit in a room with other kin, fictive and birth-related, who are going through some of the same issues we've gone through. Some of them just starting out. Some of them are as worn and jaded with the system as we've become. And many, quite frankly, make our experiences look like a walk in the park. But we're all together, crammed in a classroom that's way too small but full of hope, because we love our kids, because someone, somewhere went horribly wrong, and we all stepped in to pick up the pieces. That's a network you can't find elsewhere for all the money in the world, and kudos to DFS for offering it.

It's good to learn about the way children grieve. To know our kids aren't alone. It's good to learn about defiance, and adjustment, and the myriad of problems and character traits foster kids share. The issues I thought, through my own exhaustion, must be exclusive to J1 and J2, turn out to ring universal throughout that classroom. And that's enormously relieving.

It's good, mostly, to feel like we're not the only ones going through this. That we all have ups and downs. Great parenting moments and monumental jack-assery. There's no real way to call it training, because God knows that baptism-by fire is already well-underway for I-mean-everybody in that room, but it's good to be in a class with same-place peers and sympethetic ears, if only once a week, three hours a night. Strength in numbers. You are not alone. Sing it with me, brothers. Sing it with me, sisters.

So, there's your update for January. Dad and Daddy, fictive kin, reporting for duty.

Pinocchio: I can move!
(Covers his mouth in astonishment)
Pinocchio: I can talk!
(Gets up)
Pinocchio: I can walk!
(Stumbles and falls)
The Blue Fairy: Yes, Pinocchio, I`ve given you life.
Pinocchio: Why?
The Blue Fairy: Because tonight, Gepetto wished for a real boy.
Pinocchio: Am I a real boy?
The Blue Fairy: No, Pinocchio. To make Gepetto's wish come true will be entirely up to you.
Pinocchio: Up to me?
The Blue Fairy: Prove yourself brave, truthful and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy.
Pinocchio: A real boy!
Jiminy Cricket: That won't be easy.

Jiminy Cricket, you've got that right.

When Dale Sang Hebrew

Dear Justice and Justin,

I'm watching video clips from our wedding last November, and without a doubt, my first favorite scene is where the two of you come bursting through the doors on your scooters, riding, spinning and circling around the aisles to "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Pinocchio. The music swells, harps and flutes, and people actually gasp and laugh when the two of you come flying in wearing your dress and your tuxedo, your scooters decorated with leaves and flowers and great big bows. Nobody expected such a fun and amazing entrance and the two of you stole the show.

My second favorite video clip is one I can't even see, really. It's the one where my friend Dale, who I've known for a million years, picks up the cantor's guitar, sits on the front of the stage and sings "Erev Shel Shoshanim," or "Evening of Roses," a traditional Hebrew wedding song he learned just for us. Frustratingly out of view of the camera but crystal clear in voice nonetheless, Dale sits down, plays softly and sings...his gentle voice filling the sanctuary.

Erev shel shoshanim
Nitzeh na el habustan
Mor besamim ulevona
Leraglecha miftan.

You guys remember Dale. You met him in Wisconsin when we visited in the summer. He showed you magic tricks and you climbed all over him in the Village Inn pool, and Justin, when we went to his house, he let you taste your first Big Mac. Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is you can always count on Dale for a Big Mac if you need one.

The song he's singing in our wedding clip means this:

Evening of roses.
Let's go out to the grove.
Myrrh, perfumes, and incense
Are a threshold at your feet.

Daddy and I put an interesting, new, not-so-new threshold at your feet when you came to live with us last year. You see, we're Jewish...and you were too...but you probably don't remember. You were born Jewish, to a Jewish birth mom, and for a little while you lived with your grandma, who is Orthodox Jewish...but you were very little then, so you probably didn't remember too much about what it is or what it means.

By the time we found you, the two of you had been living with Mormon foster parents for three years, more used to a church than a synagogue, more used to Christmas than Hanukkah, and certainly unaware of the other holidays you celebrated with us this year like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah.

But I have to say, you've done marvelously and adapted wonderfully to a world of new customs and experiences. Whether it was helping us build a sukkah in our backyard in September, laughing and hanging fruit, or sitting with the rest of the kids on the synagogue floor, watching wide-eyed while the grown-ups unrolled and rerolled the beautiful, giant Torah scroll in October, you've been with us every step of the way. I don't know if that's the resiliency of childhood or the fact that a Jewish light has always remained in your souls, but we're proud of you for how easily and quickly you embraced what is essentially, in your eyes now, a brand new culture and religion.

Just like Dale, who never sang Hebrew in his life before our wedding, you were beautiful and warm and open to trying all these words and all these customs that may have sounded strange and unfamiliar:

Layla yored le'at
Veru'ach shoshan noshvah
Havah elchash lecha shir balat
Zemer shel ahava

The night falls slowly
A breeze of roses blows
Let me whisper a song to you quietly
A song of love.

Daddy and I chuckled to ourselves before we asked Dale to sing that song at our wedding. We knew we wanted him to sing, but we wondered what. We love the song "You're My Home" by Billy Joel, and we almost had him sing that one, but at the last minute, we decided that would sound pretty as a duet by two girls, our friends Kate and Elizabeth.

"I know," I giggled to Daddy. "Let's make Dale do 'Erev Shel Shoshanim.'"

"In Hebrew?" Daddy giggled back.

We thought we were being pretty smart because Dale's a great guitar player and a great singer, and in his life, he's probably learned dozens of songs for dozens, maybe hundreds of weddings. He gets asked to sing for stuff like that all the time. But Daddy and I were feeling pretty proud of ourselves because Dale's not Jewish, and we're pretty sure nobody's asked him to sing in Hebrew before. You'll discover this too when you have lifelong friends. Sometimes the very best fun is trying to get them to do something they've never had to do before just to see if you can make them freak out a little. Believe me, the fun of that never goes away.

So, Daddy and I were feeling pretty darn proud of ourselves, asking Dale to sing in Hebrew for our wedding, but when we asked him to do it, it didn't even phase him.

"Sure," he said. "I'd be honored."

Daddy and I just sort of looked at each other, dumbstruck.

We sent him the lyrics and a You Tube clip. And without any coaching from us, he learned it perfectly on his own.

At the last minute, a half-hour before the wedding, Daddy even changed some of the words on him, because Dale had learned the regular male-to-female version of the wedding song, and Hebrew has some different verb changes if it's male-to-male. But it didn't slow him down one bit.

We stood out in the hallway before the wedding party walked in, and a hush fell over all of us when he started singing it. Perfectly. Flawlessly.

Daddy looked at me and said, "That's Dale!"

"I know!" I said. And I couldn't believe it either. And I smiled. And I wiped a tear from my eye that he learned this, and he did this for us, so beautifully, so gracefully.

My children, someday I hope you two have a friend like that.

Listen to the video clip and he's still singing it flawlessly, right down to the last verse:

Shachar homa yonah
Roshcha maleh t'lalim
Picha el haboker shoshana
Ektefenu li.

"At dawn, a dove is cooing," he's singing. "Your hair is filled with dew. Your lips to the morning are like a rose. I'll pick it for myself."

It's a very pretty wedding song, and someday, I can't help but dream, maybe he'll sing it at your weddings, too.

It's been a beautiful thing, Justice and Justin, watching you re-find your Jewish heritage this year. Just yesterday in the car, I was playing one of your childrens CD's, and the Hebrew song, Hinei Ma Tov came on. You were deep in concentration, Justin, doing your word search book, but I heard your high little voice singing along and I smiled.

Justice, when we leave the house and we're running late, Daddy always smiles when he hears you say, "Achshav, achshav!" ("Right now, right now!") because you already know what that means.

At Shabbat services on Friday night, in your Sunday school classes over the weekends, and in the course of your school day at the Adelson Educational Campus, where Justice, your Hebrew teacher told us you're one of the best students in her class, we're so proud of both of you and the effortless way you've rediscovered and re-embraced who you've always been...Jewish children, strong and proud.

Some days I watch all this with a father's incredulousness, because it feels like God Himself is singing a love song just for you.

Layla yored le'at
Veru'ach shoshan noshvah
Havah elchash lecha shir balat
Zemer shel ahava

The night falls slowly
A breeze of roses blows
Let Me whisper a song to you quietly
A song of love.

May you continue to be loved, just like that, always. May all of us, your family and friends, have the ability to guide you in the journey. And just like Dale, when he first sang Hebrew, may it always be something that's new to you, and wonderful and special.

Y'simcha Elohim k'Efrayimm v'chiM'naseh.
May God make you like Ephraim and Menasseh.

Y'simeich Elohim k'Sarah, k'Rivkah, k'Rachel v'Leah.
May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

Y'varech'cha Adonai v'yism'recha.
Ya-eir Adonai panav eilecha vichunecka.
Yisa Adonia panav eilecha v'yaseim l'cha shalom.

May God bless you and keep you.
May God's light shine upon you and may God be gracious unto you.
May you feel God's Presence within you always, and may you find peace.

Amen.

Safe from Max, Safe from Storms

There's a funny scene in the new Billy Crystal movie Parental Guidance. Billy plays Artie "Fartie" Decker, minor league baseball announcer and reluctant, usually-distant grandpa, watching his grandson Turner play Little League for the first time. Turner pitches three in a row, strikes out the school bully, and Billy's character is overjoyed.

"He's outa there!" he shouts gleefully, buttons bursting off his chest.

"No," says the somewhat apologetic umpire. "In this league, we let the kids keep hitting until they get on base."

"But that's dumb," Billy's character says incredulously. "That's not baseball. Listen to the song. It's 'one, two, three strikes you're out,' not 'one, two, three strikes, keep going."

"Sorry," the umpire says, himself embarassed by the silliness of it. "We don't want any of the kids to feel like losers."

"But baseball has losers," Billy says. "Otherwise, how would the game ever end?"

"In this league, every game ends in a tie," shrugs the embarassed ump.

The collective "oy veys" of the on-screen characters and the movie theater audience were palpable. It's all too true, after all. We live in this touchy-feely, psycho-babble world where kids no longer play games to win or (God forbid) lose, but where they're all perfectly equal in spite of variations in skill, athleticism or luck, everyone cooperates, and coming in second is so damaging to tender young psyches, it's downright abusive to put your six-year-old in a contest where, horror of horrors, he might actually lose.

So, in the true spirit of defensive parenthood, which means I'll mock you for doing it while Adam and I do it all the time, I have to admit, I'm a hopeless hands-up hypocrite. Adam and I are guilty of this crazy, ridiculous, insane "nobody loses" goal for our children, every day, in spades.

J1 and J2 have lost an awful lot in their lives. They've lost parents, they've lost the parents that came after those parents, and then the parents that came after them.

They've lost homes, they've lost foster siblings, they've lost schools and classmates and churches and the very clothes that used to hang in their closets. At not one, but several times in their life through no fault of their own, they lost total control of their lives and their future, and along with that, a lot of their self-assuredness and dignity.

And I think when you've lost all that and couple it with the natural childhood adreniline rush of coming in first, you have a monster problem on your hands. Our kids have lost so many real things in their life, when they sit down to play Candyland, trivial as it seems, if one of them gets almost to the end of the board, then gets bumped back to the peanut or the gingerbread man, we've got one mother of a meltdown on our hands. After all, that must be a whole lot what their life keeps feeling like.

Justice and Justin don't like to lose. Especially not to each other.

That's not to say we don't try. It would be a ridiculous life, and we would be ridiculous parents, if we never taught the two of them that the world, like it or not, comes with winners and losers. We faithfully play all sorts of board games and card games in our house, and both of them win and both of them lose, and sometimes we have fun, but more often than not, it's a repeated disaster. But that's okay. Practice rarely makes perfect in any trite sense of the cliche, but my hope is, after losing to each other a hundred more times, the sting may be lessened. Or at least the tantrums that come with it. They might get used to losing a game once in a while and learn, after experiencing it enough, their world really won't end and life can still be good. Please God, may it be so.

Currently, our two favorite non-competitive games are a Dr. Seuss game Aunt Heidi gave us when the kids moved in. It's called "I Can Do That," and it's wonderful. Nobody wins, nobody loses, we just take turns drawing cards, putting them together and doing silly challenges like "Crab walk to the refrigerator with the plate on your stomach before the timer runs out."

Side note. Even on my best day, you do not want to see me crab walk. And certainly not with a plate on my stomach.

The other game is "Max," a game introduced to us last week by the childrens' therapist, Miss Hannah.

Our kids have a lot of "Misses" in their life. There's Miss Mary, their case worker, Miss Staci, her boss, Miss Tabitha, their old therapist, Miss Hannah, their new therapist. Swing a dead cat around the Department of Family Services and I guarantee you'll whack a miss.

Miss Hannah, comes to our house once a week on Monday nights and God bless her for trying, she often brings a game along. Usually these are met with their mild cooperation or their utter boredom. Depends on the game.

I'll be the first to admit, I totally don't get our children's therapy. I'm like Billy Crystal at the ballgame, scratching my head and looking like a befuddled grandpa. I have no illusion I was born in a much different era, because honestly, two hours a week where we play goofy games and draw goofy pictures makes no useful sense to me at all. We do our routine at the kitchen table, the kids go to bed and the therapist goes home. And what have we accomplished?

None of it ever seems to address the problems of the week, or even remotely tie into the issues in our lives, but since I'm not an expert and I'm the first to admit my own general cluelessness, I drink the Kool-Aid and hope for the best. When therapy night rolls around, I suck up my second guessing, throw common sense to the wind and go completely on faith that whatever "M.S., L.M.F.T." means after Miss Hannah's name, she has a clue what she's doing, and in the long run, might help us learn to love and trust each other more.

Anyhoo, last Monday she brought us "Max," a game so fun, after she left, I hopped on Amazon and ordered us our own family copy. It was marvelous! It's a simple little, homemade-looking game from a toymaker in Ontario, in which a black cat named Max chases a bird, a chipmunk and a mouse around the game board. Players don't compete against each other, but cooperate in turns, helping the animals make it safely to the tree and occasionally calling Max back to the porch with a snack...cheese, milk or catnip.

We had so much fun, all of us, laughing and rolling the dice and sitting on the edge of our chairs, for a minute, we forgot were were in therapy. We were just a family having fun. Miss Hannah, picking up on the rare, new naturalness she was seeing in our living room, put the game away and got out the crayons.

"I want you to draw me a picture," she said, first to Justin, then later in her second session with Justice.

"Draw me a boat."

Justin's looked like pirate ship. Justice's looked like a cruise ship to the Bahamas. Smart girl.

"Now draw me a storm," she said. They both drew clouds. They both drew rain. They both drew lightning. Justin drew a shark swimming menacingly through the crashing waves.

"Now draw your family on board the ship," she said. And she waited while they did.

"Now I want you to think about this for a little while," Miss Hannah said. "I want you each to answer three questions for me. What are you doing on the boat? What is the storm about? And how do you get out of the storm?"

They both went away and considered this for a few moments. We met back momentarily to compare answers.

Justice answered first.

"We're on vacation. The storm is about thunder. And if we want to be safe, we go down below the deck where we're out of the rain."

Justin was even more direct.

What are we doing on the boat?

"We're trying to stay dry."

What is the storm about?

"The shark bit our ship, and we almost sank."

How did we get out of the storm?

"We swam the other way, so the shark couldn't get us."

Now I'm not one to grasp at Freudian straws. I'm sure that Justin didn't mean the storm was his life. And I'm sure he didn't mean Adam and I were his saviors from its sharks, though Lord knows he's certainly had some. Things like that are too easily made symbolic, especially when kids are involved. They make our adult light bulbs go off, we want to cheer inside for the honorable mention their new life seems to be bringing them, but they're really not accurate. They're just pictures. And rescue like that is not yet within the realm of the abstract articulation of a six and seven-year-old child.

What I did notice, however - and here's what made Adam and I feel really good - was not what they said, but the fact that the kids drew us as a family, and we were finally the only ones in the picture. One, two, three, four. It was the first time in seven months both kids drew us - just the four of us - as a self-contained family unit of our own. Usually their drawings have imaginary moms, or foster sisters from their previous lifetime. Pets, aunts, fantasies, anyone but us.

This time, they drew just the four of us. Dad, Daddy, Justice and Justin, on deck, weathering the storm.

And you can bet I'll keep those drawings in the memory box, date on the back, until the end of time.

"In this league," says the somewhat apologetic umpire, "we let the kids keep hitting until they get on base."

"But that's dumb," Billy's character says incredulously. "That's not baseball. Listen to the song. It's 'one, two, three strikes you're out,' not 'one, two, three strikes, keep going."

Only, sometimes it isn't dumb, I guess. Sometimes it makes infinitely more sense to say "one, two, three strikes, keep going." Sometimes when you do, you eventually hit that unexpected home run.

Oh well. That's how it happened in therapy anyway.

Safe from Max and safe from the storms.

Crazy and sweet, but last Monday night, everybody won.