Part of the Package

Some adopted children come with hefty fees. Like, second mortgage kind of fees. Other adopted children come with emotional baggage. Some come with biological parents attached, with the open-adoption understandings that seem so treacherous to navigate.

Andy came with a foster mother. Elsie was not the kind of person we would have ever encountered except through her role as a foster mom. She had limited mobility, lived far away from our own neighborhood, and really had nothing in common with us at all. She was a retired nurse with six adult kids and many grandchildren. She could be quite brusque.

We could have cut ties with her, but that would have been damaging to Andy, and to her, and just pathetic and ridiculous of us. She was the only person he had ever lived with, having been placed with her at six weeks old, after a hospitalization and then a medical placement for a dangerous illness as a newborn. He still really needed her. She needed him. She offered to provide day care for him after I went back to work- serendipitously, although she lived almost 20 miles from our house, she was only about 5 miles from my job.

Thank god for Elsie. It didn't take too long for me to become dependent on her, to find her dry humor could undo me, to become alert to her extremely sensitive heart hiding behind the businesslike manner. She laughed when I fretted, made snap decisions when my inexperience made me hesitate, cooked us apple pies, sewed for the children, was the only babysitter we ever had, and worked her way into our lives until she really was an every day presence.

She could be intimidating, demanding and blunt- all very important qualities for someone contracting for Human Services, by the way- but was utterly, utterly devoted to the tiny, sickly, damaged little babies that she rescued. She took them one at a time, and basically held them on her enormous bosom until they fattened up. She had two before Andy, and took two more after Andy, and kept them each for around two years. When the legal process led to their permanent placements with new parents, her grief was devastating, but her practicality and selflessness in preparing her toddlers for their separation was truly humbling. In a few months, she was prepared to start up again. When our Baby Rose came, she burst into tears, demanded to "hold that baby", and immediately embraced her as one of her own.

As I said at her memorial service, Elsie changed the world, one baby at a time.

Sometimes I think I'll never stop missing her.