I visited with my daughter-to-be for six weeks before she moved in with me. It was supposed to be a time for her to begin getting used to the idea of moving to a new family. I’m actually fairly sure there was no preparing her for the huge change that was to come. I, on the other hand, desperately needed those six weeks to wrap my mind around the fact that I was becoming somebody’s mother.
On an afternoon like any other afternoon I picked the little one up at her foster home. She was dressed in a pink tee shirt with the Powder Puff Girls logo splashed across the front in cheap, glittery plastic, peeling at the edges. Her denim shorts, a size too big, had some kind of sparkles embedded in the fabric, making them stiff and scratchy. They hung down below her chubby belly, which peeked brown below the keyhole tie at the bottom of her shirt. Her white flowered underwear stuck up out of the back.
“I buy her clothes a size or two bigger so she can wear them for awhile,” her foster mother had told me.
On her feet she wore Dollar Store flip-flops.
I was pretty lost about what it meant to be taking care of another human being. But two things I grabbed hold of immediately—I could at least help her get healthier by making sure she got more exercise and less dessert. And I would dispense with too cheap, too big, too girly clothing in favor of something a little sturdier and a little less pink. That day I mentally resolved to buy her strap-on sandals, and soon, so she would stop tripping over her feet on our walks to the park. It was hard enough for her to walk a half a mile.
I had learned to cajole her on these walks with promises of what was to come. On our way to the park, she could look forward to a big swimming pool with a slide and a real diving board and a ride on the carousel. On our way home again, the promise of a popsicle usually helped propel her forward. But not on our way home that day.
“No! I’m tired! I don’t wanna walk any more!” She half stomped one flip-flopped foot; her eyes were crinkled up and her lower lip trembled.
“Honey, you have to walk home. I don’t have the car here. Come on, there are popsicles in the freezer.”
She shuffled along, flip-flops dragging along the ground, four steps behind me, muttering. I turned around every so often and urged her forward. The prospect of a five-year-old temper tantrum had my diaphram twisted up in dread. I had no idea how to handle raging fits in the middle of the sidewalk.
I heard the scuff, the thud, and the delayed wail. She had tripped on those stupid shoes and hit the sidewalk. I turned and ran the four steps to her. “It’s okay, sweetie, let me see.”
“Look!” she wailed. She had a raw and dirty scrape on the palm of her hand.
“Come on, we’re almost home. We’ll bandage you right up.”
I looked at my watch. Her foster mom was due to pick her up in a half hour, which meant she would be there in twenty minutes. I kept my arm around her, feeling much more confident now that we had averted a temper tantrum and were on to first aid. I knew how to do first aid.
Once home, I took her into the bathroom and pulled peroxide, Neosporin and Band-aids out of the medicine cabinet.
“What IS that?” she said, looking with fear at the brown peroxide bottle.
“It’s just peroxide. It will clean out your scrape. It won’t hurt. We’ll clean it up and put a Band-aid on it.” I mentally cursed myself for not getting any bandages with cartoon characters on them yet. I was pretty sure that good mothers made sure to have Mickey Mouse or Cinderella Band-aids for when their kids got hurt.
“I don’t want that!”
“C’mon, sweetie, we have to clean your cut.”
“No! No!”
My nerves were moving from frayed to shredded. I began to feel frantic. Her foster mother would be here soon. I had to bandage her cut. That’s what mothers did.
“No!”
I took her hand and pulled it over the sink, unscrewing the peroxide bottle awkwardly with my other hand.
“NOOOOO!” She started to cry.
“We have to take care of your hand.” I tried to moderate my voice to mask the heat of the rage I felt building up in my solar plexus. My words sounded icy.
I pushed ahead, following a set-in-stone, unresponsive path. I poured the peroxide over her scrape as she screeched, feeling the tingle and small sting of the peroxide.
“All done, honey. Look it’s bubbling because there’s dirt in there.” She kept crying. I dispensed with the antibiotic cream. “Let’s put a Band-Aid on.”
She clutched her hand under her arm, shaking her head no.
“We have to put a Band-Aid on to keep it clean.” I grabbed her hand and stuck a bandage on as she struggled. The doorbell, right outside the bathroom door, clattered. Even stuffing a sock inside that thing couldn’t keep me from jumping out of my skin when it went off. Today I jumped a little higher than usual.
She ran to the door and flung herself at her foster mother. I followed.
“What’s wrong princess?”
She kept crying. “She fell and scraped her hand,” I said. “I was just putting a Band-Aid on it.”
“Oh. Well, princess, I don’t think you have to have such a fit.”
I handed over her bag, not even attempting a goodbye hug. I didn’t much feel like hugging anyway. I willed them back out my front door. They headed for the car, my almost-daughter still clinging to the only mother she had ever known.
I couldn’t even put a band-aid on a kid’s scrape without a crisis. What on earth was I doing, anyway?
Photo credit, Spoils
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