But then with a single phone call my whole world was turned upside down.
For years Pam had drifted in and out of contact, and these days she lived in an Atlantic City rooming house with no phone, so I rarely got to talk to her. But recently when I learned Pam’s illness was getting worse I called her social worker and gave her my number—just in case.
“Pam can’t care for Scarlett anymore, and we need to put her in foster care,” the woman told me now. “Can you take her?” she asked. Gripping the phone, my brain reeled dizzily with a dozen reasons why I couldn’t possibly.
I was single and living in a one-bedroom apartment. I didn’t have medical insurance, or even a full-time job. What do I know about raising a three-year-old? I asked myself. But no matter how many reasons my brain listed why I couldn’t do this, my heart disagreed.
Pam is my sister, and her little girl needed a loving home. Maybe this was God’s way of answeringmy prayers. Maybe he never gave me children because he was saving me just for this.
“I’ll do it,” I said, knowing those few simple words would change my life forever.
There were many arrangements to be made, and Scarlett was placed with a temporary foster mom in New Jersey while I filled out reams of paperwork and applied for my foster-home license. I convinced one of my bosses to hire me full-time, and then I went house hunting.
When Scarlet’s caseworker sent me her picture I carried it everywhere. But as the magic day grew near I began to panic. What does a three-year-old eat? What should her bedtime be? What do I do with her when I need to take a shower?
One day riding with colleagues to a conference I sat in the backseat poring through a parenting book searching for answers. “You’re going to do fine, Barbara,” my friend Steve told me. “And not because of anything you read in that book, but because you care enough to read it.”
Steve’s words gave me confidence. But my heart was pounding a few days later when Scarlett’s caseworker and I pulled up in front of her foster home. “Hi, I’m your Aunt Barbara,” I introduced myself to a gorgeous little girl who was still blinking away sleep from her nap. I stooped and nervously held out my arms . . . and the moment Scarlett hugged me back I could feel the family bond and somehow, I knew we’d be okay.
Scarlett and I were embarking on a wonderful adventure together, but at first the ride wasn’t very smooth. I wasn’t prepared for the time and energy it takes to care for a toddler. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day.
How do other single moms manage? I wondered, dropping into bed exhausted and overwhelmed.
Scarlett had just turned four, but she was developmentally delayed. At day care when she wanted another child’s toy she scratched and bit. And there were times I couldn’t understand a word she said. “Ma-che?” she asked one night again and again, growing visibly frustrated until finally I got it: She wants macaroni and cheese.
Another night Scarlett refused to leave our cat Zoomer alone. “Let go!” I ordered, snatching away the cat. Scarlett shrieked and stamped her feet, until finally I told her, “Into your room for a time out.” But as Scarlett slammed the door behind her I was riddled with doubt.
“How should I have handled it?” I asked a friend from church.
“Exactly the way you did,” she told me. “You have good instincts—learn to trust them,” she said, and it was the best advice anyone could have given me.
I enrolled Scarlett in speech therapy, and the next time I didn’t understand something she said I asked questions until I did. I also told her there would be no more biting or scratching at day care. “If you misbehave we won’t go to any of your play dates on Saturday, and on Sunday you’ll have to sit with me in church instead of joining the play group,” I explained. It was tough, but I held my ground, and after a few weeks Scarlett’s behavior slowly improved.
Scarlett and I have been together four years now, and every day I still wake up looking forward to the adventures, joy, laughter and even the challenges of being a mom. Like racing from the university to pick up Scarlett at school so she can do her homework in my office until the end of my next class when it’s time for her gymnastics. Or sitting up half the night sewing a Pocahontas costume for a school play, or teaching her to ride a two-wheeler in the park.
“Look, Mommy!” Scarlett cried excitedly the first time she kept her balance and pedaled away. Watching my little girl disappear over the rise I felt like a mama bird watching her fledgling take wing to conquer the blue, blue sky.
Scarlett and I are bound as close as any mother and child can be. But every Monday night we call “Mommy Pam” to tell her about school and ballet classes and singing in the church musical. Scarlett feels lucky because she has two mommies to love her, but I’m the lucky one. Scarlett has taught me the true meaning of love: changing your life for someone else, and not because you have to, because you want to.
Barbara Wojciechowski
as told to Heather Black
Originally appeared in Woman’s World
You’ll Never Be the Same
When I announced my pregnancy to a good friend, herself the mother of two, the first thing she said was “Congratulations.” The second? “You’ll never be the same again.”
It was to become a familiar refrain during my pregnancy, words I would hear again and again as my body ballooned. Everyone from my mother to the supermarket clerk seemed to take delight in telling me how much every aspect of my existence was about to shift. Even my doctor got in on the act; she waltzed into the delivery room and grinned as I lay moaning on the bed. “Well!” she said. “Your life is about to change forever!”
It was all good-natured banter, of course. The kind of thing people with children delight in saying to those about to join the club. But for me the comments sounded as much like a warning as a promise, and an ominous warning at that. It seemed what people were really saying was that I was about to change, that my core being would alter in some mysterious and fundamental way. And that was a little scary.
My mother raised the five of us alone and at great cost to herself. For years she worked the graveyard shift at the post office, wrecking her sleep, so that she could be at home with us during the day. When she could no longer work, she swallowed her pride and went on welfare rather than give us up.
Every day my mother sacrificed. She fed us before she ate, dressed us first and rarely bought herself anything new. She never had a boyfriend because she was afraid of exposing her daughters to possible sexual abuse. She was a bright, intelligent woman who abandoned her own dreams to guide the five of us into adulthood. It was a grand and noble decision, one I admire deeply. But sacrificing my sense of self on the altar of motherhood was not an action I cared to emulate.
For the longest time I was unsure whether I even wanted children. For one thing, my mother had drummed it into our heads that getting pregnant would mean the end of whatever dreams we had. She meant to scare us out of getting pregnant as teenagers, of course. But for me the dread remained long after I’d graduated from college and successfully launched myself.
Besides, I liked my work, or rather, I liked the things which work afforded me. Being a journalist exposed me to interesting people and allowed me to travel. Most important my career brought me the sense of financial security. I wasn’t rich—print journalists do not get rich—but I made a good living. If there was ever anything I really wanted, I could go out and buy it. I reveled in that.
Getting married only deepened my ambivalence. My friends were marrying too, and getting pregnant one by one. After their babies were born, their husbands would disappear for a week or two, then return to the office with a few baby pictures and quickly take up their routine. But my friends, the new mothers, seemed to drop off the face of the earth. One minute they were there, discussing politics with me over drinks in some chic café, and the next minute they had disappeared into a cloud of baby powder. Poof.
Eventually my biological clock went off, and my husband and I decided it
was time. I was excited and eager about being pregnant, but there remained this nagging sense of fear. I didn’t want life, as I knew it, to change forever. I didn’t want to walk into the hospital as myself and be rolled out a few days later some foreign, slack-brained creature called a mom.
It has been fifteen months now since my daughter, Samantha, was born, and my life has most assuredly changed. I used to sleep when I wanted, go out when I wanted, enjoy leisurely dinners with my husband over candlelight—all that is history now. We haven’t used our alarm clock in so long we don’t even know if it still works. A trip to the supermarket has to be planned three days in advance. And my husband and I have learned that it is possible to be in and out of a restaurant in thirty minutes flat.
And, yes, I admit it, I have changed. Or rather, it seems that parts of me have expanded beyond imagining. At night, when I lean over my sleeping daughter and stroke her hair, I know, for the first time in my life, the true meaning of the word grace. And of the word joy.
But one of the most gratifying discoveries I’ve made in this first year of motherhood is how much of the core me remains intact. I am a mother now, true. But I’m also still a writer and tennis enthusiast. I still love dancing and french fries and standing beneath a tree in the spring when it rains. I’m still stubborn and grumpy in the morning and sometimes too quick to judge other people.
I’ve learned that me-the-person needs to make room for me-the-mom, but she doesn’t have to let her take over the house. There is room in this life for both. And that’s wonderful. Because it took a lot of years to create this all-around person. I’d sure hate to lose her now.
Kim McLarin
5
INSIGHTS
AND LESSONS
The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.
Henry Ward Beecher
Mother’s Lessons Can Last a Lifetime
God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.
Jewish Proverb
I have learned many things from my mother.
I learned where to go for comfort and sustenance as first I suckled at her breast, later climbed into her lap and now sit across the table from her with a cup of coffee.
I learned not to run into the road, not to touch the stove, not to run with scissors in my hand, never to use a BB gun lest I put my eye out, and that young ladies don’t make impolite noises in public.
I learned that “please” and “thank you” are the most important words in the language, to respect my elders, to look a person in the eye when I speak, to sit with my knees together and keep my skirt down, and that a body must be bathed on Saturday night whether it needs it or not.
I learned to fry chicken, bake a cake, make sun tea, flip pancakes, can vegetables and wash dishes—by hand. I learned that “casserole” and “crock pot” are the most important words in kitchen language if you have hopes of pursuing any interests in life away from the stove.
Growing up on a farm, I also learned how to reach under the hens to gather eggs, how to avoid the rooster and the goose, how to pull ticks out of dogs, where to find a nest of baby bunnies in the spring, how to call to the bobwhite down by the creek, and to stay away from sows and their litters.
From my mother I also learned to look for the subtle colors of the flowers in her garden, to listen to the mockingbird’s song in the morning, to enjoy the fragrance of the lilac, to spot the rainbow-rimmed moon and to play with the ladybug.
I learned, at her suggestion, that when I wasn’t able to tell her the things that troubled me, I could write them to her, pouring out my heart on the sheets of a Big Chief writing tablet.
I learned that even though I sometimes hated her in adolescent rage, she always loved me. I learned that she didn’t always have the right answer, but she always had the right intention. I learned that, even though the crop didn’t do well or the hay barn burned down or the cows got into the neighbor’s corn field, you take care of things and go on.
My mother is sixty-seven now. She recently was diagnosed with cancer, underwent surgery and is receiving chemotherapy treatments.
And this is what I’m still learning from her: You can’t always choose what experiences you’ll face in life, but you can choose how you’ll face them. That faith is stronger than fear, that the love of family and friends is powerful, that each day is a gift and that the fortunate daughter never stops learning from her mother.
Vicki Marsh Kabat
Entertaining Angels
An ounce of Mother is worth a ton of school.
Spanish Proverb
It was fifty years ago, on a hot summer day, in the Deep South. We lived on a dirt road, on a sand lot. We were what was known as “dirt poor.” I had been playing outside all morning in the sand.
Suddenly, I heard a sharp clanking sound behind me, and as I looked over my shoulder my eyes were drawn to a strange sight. Across the dirt road were two rows of men, dressed in black-and-white striped, baggy uniforms. Their faces were covered with dust and sweat. They looked so weary, and they were chained together with huge, black iron chains. Hanging from the end of each chained row was a big, black iron ball.
They were, as polite people said in those days, a “Chain Gang,” guarded by two heavily armed white guards. I stared at the prisoners as they settled uncomfortably down in the dirt, under the shade of some straggly trees. One of the guards walked toward me. Nodding as he passed, he went up to our front door and knocked. My mother appeared at the door, and I heard the guard ask if he could have permission to get water from the pump in the backyard so that “his men” could have a drink. My mother agreed, but I saw a look of concern on her face as she called me inside.
I stared through the window as each prisoner was unchained from the line, to hobble over to the pump and drink his fill from a small tin cup while a guard watched vigilantly. It wasn’t long before they were all chained back up again, with prisoners and guards retreating into the shade away from an unrelenting sun. I heard my mother call me into the kitchen, and I entered to see her bustling around with tins of tuna fish, mayonnaise, our last loaf of bread and two big pitchers of lemonade. In what seemed a blink of an eye, she had made a tray of sandwiches using all the tuna we were to have had for that night’s supper.
My mother was smiling as she handed me one of the pitchers of lemonade. Then, lifting the tray in one hand and holding a pitcher in her other hand, she marched me to the door, deftly opening it with her foot, and trotted me across the street. She approached the guards, “We had some leftovers from lunch,” she said, “and I was wondering if we could share with you and your men.” Calling me to her side, she went from guard to guard, then from prisoner to prisoner, filling each tin cup with lemonade, and giving each man a sandwich.
It was very quiet, except for a “Thank you, ma’am,” and the clanking of the chains. Very soon we were at the end of the line, my mother’s eyes softly scanning each face. The last prisoner was a big man, his dark skin pouring with sweat and streaked with dust. Suddenly, his face broke into a wonderful smile as he looked up into my mother’s eyes, and he said, “Ma’am, I’ve wondered all my life if I’d ever see an angel, and now I have! Thank you!”
Again, my mother’s smile took in the whole group.
“You’re all welcome!” she said. “God bless you.” Then we walked across to the house, with empty tray and pitchers, and back inside.
Soon, the men moved on, and I never saw them again. The only explanation my mother ever gave me for that strange and wonderful day, that I remember, was to always entertain strangers, “for by doing so, you may entertain angels without knowing.”
Then, with a mysterious smile, she went about the rest of the day. I don’t remember what we ate for supper that night. I just know an angel served it.
Jaye Lewis
Trying Times and Dirty Dishes
The best thing to spend on children is your time.
Joseph Addison
I cleared the table and stacked th
e breakfast dishes on top of the dinner dishes left in the sink from last night’s feast of macaroni and cheese with carrot sticks. I braced myself for the cold, clumpy feeling of the dishwater then plunged my hand deep into the sink, searching for the plug.
“Yuk! Why didn’t I do these last night?” I asked of who knows who. The only people around to hear me were my six-, five-, three- and two-year-olds and my six-week-old baby.
It wasn’t just the dishes. The dryer had gone out that morning and sheets were drying over every available chair and table, to the great delight of my sons who were playing fort-town all over the house. I would have hung the sheets outside but it was ten degrees below zero.
The living room was exploded with toys, and the way things were going, it would be lunchtime before any of us were even close to being dressed. The flu that had run through the family had finally caught me after six nights of little to no sleep caring for each of my children’s needs and comfort. It caught me the same day my husband, recovered and healthy, flew out of town on a business trip.
The hot water bubbled up in the soap-filled dishpan, and it encouraged me a little. “I’ll have these done in no time. . . .” But before I could finish my pep talk, my newborn began to cry.
I changed the baby’s diaper, stepped over the basket of clean clothes that had already sunk into wrinkled neglect, pulled the sheet off the couch along with the full collection of my sons’ horses and corral, and settled in to nurse my baby.
Idyllic moment? Hardly. As soon as I sat, books were tumbled into my lap. If Mom was sitting she might as well read to us, was the common thought. So balancing the four toddlers, protecting the baby from their commotion while trying to turn pages with no hands, I began to read.
I read over the phone ringing and over the TV set clicking on and off at full volume because one of them was sitting on the elusive remote control.