(This hermit crab essay below was published in Story Circle Network’s 2023 members’ anthology. You can purchase the anthology, Mothers and Mentors: The Art of Nurturing on Amazon. It’s a great gift for Mother’s Day or special celebration events.)
Family Planning
There is more than one way to be a parent. When my husband, Lynn, completed his Ph.D. we were thirty-seven and thirty-two. Lynn planned to retire at fifty-five, so we decided against having babies. Instead, we opted to become foster parents through a local agency, which only placed teens.
Conception
The foster care agency encouraged lunch and then a weekend visit with our first placement. At the restaurant Julie (a pseudonym, Julie, to provide her confidentiality) walked to our table confidently with her case worker and shook hands, as if nothing was wrong in her life. She chatted about playing saxophone in the band, her classes as a high school junior, and her Advanced Placement classes, preparing her for college, which was a given. Her youth pastor, band director, school counselor, each shared similar assessments to the agency: she’s a good kid, good student, and deserved another chance.
Gestation
Our home would become a new womb for Julie. She called us Lynn and Rhonda, not mom and dad. She had one of each. Estranged from her father since age five, she held a deep connection to her mother, who was on trial for a serious felony.
The first weekend after moving in, she marched in the band during half-time at the football game. The warmth I felt for Julie numbed the October chill for me. “There she is.” I pointed her out to Lynn. Already, I had learned her build and gait, regardless the camouflage of her uniform.
We gave up our second car so Julie could drive it to school, to work at Wendy’s after school, then home. After a week Lynn checked the mileage. She’d put 800 miles on the vehicle, apparently going out of county to see her mom, which they were court-ordered not to do. We permitted her the miles she needed for Monday through Sunday, plus one hundred miles to spare. Only once did she go over. An inconvenience for us to have to take her everywhere, but an embarrassment for her.
We explained her curfew, 9:00 p.m. on school nights, if we approved the outing, and 11:00 p.m. on weekends.
She stated, “I’ve never had a curfew. I don’t need one.”
“You do in our house.”
To maintain our sanity, we also instituted a 9:00 p.m. curfew on phone calls. Julie agreed, “I won’t make calls after 9:00,” but argued, “I can’t control when my friends call.” We suggested she tell her friends she wasn’t allowed to make or take calls after 9:00 p.m.
It worked.
Come December, her high school band played a Christmas concert. I told her I’d be there. Dismissive, she said, “There’s no reason to go. It’s no big deal.” Julie assumed neither of us would attend.
That night, I chose to leave a get-together with friends, for Julie’s band concert, then returned to the group. At the concert, I spotted her promptly and could tell she saw me. When I got home, Julie hid in her bedroom. Lynn said, “She’s furious with you for showing up. In her mind you’re taking her mother’s place.”
Julie continued to push back against us and our expectations. Like all parents we heard the old saw, “You’re ruining my life,” in various situations and in so many ways.
After months, we were exhausted trying to stay ahead of this wounded young girl. Julie had lived with her mother and ten men (two of which her mother had married and one who was Julie’s father). Those years without a dad had taken its toll. Once her mother went to prison, Julie could only see her periodically. When mother and daughter talked by phone, we cringed to hear Julie’s adult voice reduced to a little girl’s cadence and watch her body fold into fetal position.
The counselor Julie worked with twice a week told her to mentally put the things they talked about in a box on a top shelf in between their visits. This took an emotional load off her.
We had fourteen months before she aged out of foster care or eighteen months if she stayed through graduation. We felt pressure to influence Julie’ life constructively.
Advice from one mom gave me courage to not give up. “I have the luxury, when I’m tired, to let something slide. My boys have heard me say the same thing a thousand times. You don’t have that luxury.”
Talking to friends with teenagers, we learned where and when it was safe for high school students to go because we lived in a university town with too many opportunities.
Lynn and I fought a battle over parenting. Lynn challenged Julie’s misbehavior that she had developed to survive a previous life by lying and manipulating. I thought he was too tough. I chose to be more supportive of her, which Lynn thought was too soft-hearted.
In a defining moment, we stood in each other’s arms. She needed what each of us had to offer. We decided on tough love parenting and to leave the rest to God. Within two weeks, Julie acted like a different kid. She accepted what we asked of her without a struggle. She spent more time on the smoking porch chatting with us. She helped out around the house without us asking. We did our job and let God do his—to work a wonder.
We were in awe!
During second semester junior year in her last act of defiance, she informed and stunned us that come State Fair that summer she would move to a barn hayloft at the fairground. She would spend two weeks during 4-H events, like she had when she’d shown animals. “You weren’t old enough then; you’re not old enough now.” She sulked for a week; nonetheless, by summer she’d forgotten about the State Fair.
Active labor
Julie’s final days with us became an active labor of love. A prideful moment for Julie arrived when Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s, came to her workplace. As an adoptee, he talked to her about foster care and separation from her mom. He encouraged Julie to make it on own her with our continued help when she left. She wanted a photo of her with Thomas and us. Her smile told us how important this was.
At the beginning of her senior year, we agreed to extend her curfew to midnight on weekends. But one night she said, “Now when do I have to be home tonight?” The limits she had pushed against, she now asked for.
Before senior prom I’d planned to extend her curfew to 1:00 a.m., however, Julie said, “I’ll be home by midnight. There’s nothing I want to do after that.” What a relief, since she’d lost her virginity with a young man, she took to fall festival when she was sixteen. Lynn explained to him, “Sex with a minor could be hazardous to your future, son.” The next day he asked her for the key back to his place.
Julie aged out of foster care in January when she turned eighteen, but everyone encouraged her to stay through graduation.
Delivery
On birthdays and at Christmas times we bought her new clothes, but she was content with her worn out wardrobe that I always wanted to update.
For her graduation and party, I thought Julie should own a dress. “You can pick out any dress you want, but I have veto power.” I was stunned when she picked the most age-appropriate one. A dropped waistline dress, powder-blue background, pastel floral print, with a white inlaid yoke and sailor collar. The dress reminded me of a new baby blanket.
Passing the placenta
After graduation she moved in with friends across town and continued to work at Wendy’s, losing the sheltering womb of our home.
Prior to college we had helped her gain “independent student” status, paying her own way with grants and loans. We took her to college that fall and she returned at Thanksgiving and then Christmas. The following summer she moved back in with us, landing in a safe place. Then she returned to college four more years to pursue Marketing and Spanish degrees, traveling to Mexico her fifth year to study abroad.
She earned two degrees in five years, and a key to our house.
Today, we live in different states. She’s almost fifty and comes “home” every year. She still has a key to the house and our hearts.
–END–
If you enjoyed this story, please check out 1) my novel, Song of Herself, and 2) my coming-of-age travel memoir, At Home in the World:Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away.
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