After four months of disappointment, frustration, and heartbreak following our classes, we still had not been able to get an actual sit-down with a foster care worker, so face-to-face time became our singular goal.
During the course of yet another conversation about the process, my sister, Betty, offered a much-needed changeup.
“You need to be unconventional,” she said. “These workers are mostly women, right?”
“Yes.”
“What do women like?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Freud, what do they like?”
“It’s really so simple, Kari. They like sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“Okay, this is what you do. Go buy some donuts or cookies and crash DHHS. Tell them you want to meet with a caseworker.”
“What?”
“These women work in little offices or cubicles,” she explained. “They have stressful, crappy, low-paying jobs and they want sugar.”
“They’ll think I’m a flake,” I countered.
“They’ll think you have sugar!”
“Are we seriously entertaining this idea?”
“We are.”
“Let’s say you’re right,” I said. “Won’t they see through this charade?”
“Kari, they want sugar, okay?”
“Okay, what should we get?”
“Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins,” she advised. “The fifty-count box.”
“Shouldn’t it be something fancier?”
“Why put on airs?”
I decided not to overthink it. I called Ward and said we were crashing DHHS after work with some kind of sugary treat. I knew he was as beaten down as I was when he simply said, “Right. See ya later,” before hanging up the phone.
As we were waiting in line at Dunkin’ Donuts, Ward asked if we should get coffee, too.
“Betty didn’t say anything about coffee. Let’s not improvise.”
With a box of Munchkins in hand, we stood in front of the DHHS building and reviewed our strategy. I squeezed Ward’s hand and told him to follow my lead.
The reception area was in a small atrium. There was no mistaking the place for anything but an administrative building, yet there were attempts to be welcoming—the quilts hanging on one wall were made of squares that were reproductions of children’s drawings. In the waiting area, twenty people sat on plastic chairs. A few people slept or had their heads down while others read the paper. No one smiled, let alone laughed; it was quiet for a room full of people. I started getting cold feet.
I turned toward the woman sitting behind the reception desk. She smiled and waved as we approached. She reminded me a little bit of Glenda the Good Witch. I took that as a sign the Munchkins were a good choice.
She cocked her head and a mane of blond curls spilled over her shoulder, “Can I help you?”
I put the box of Munchkins on her desk and just went for it.
“Yeah, I hope so. We can’t get anyone to return our calls about getting a foster care worker. We have been through your training and we want to adopt a kid. We think we’d be pretty good parents—of course we have a lot to learn. But, the point is we need help. There are Munchkins in here—it’s an assortment box—you get six to make the call, and the rest goes to whoever comes down to talk to us.”
She smiled and then laughed. “You’re serious, right?”
“Yeah, we are,” I assured her.
Still laughing, she picked up the phone. Ward and I looked at each other and knew we were in. After she hung up, she told us someone would be down. She also asked if we would consider adopting her.
The woman who came down was Linda, the most awesome foster care worker, ever. She complimented us on our novel ways, and in the months that followed, she gave us some great advice, held our hands through this Byzantine system, and found us Thorin.
That first meeting with Linda was in September. On November 15th, I had a dream. I heard a voice say to me, “We found your son.” I knew we had to hold tight. After we got Thorin, I would discover in his DHHS notes that the state’s original plan of reunification had changed to termination of parental rights after his mother stopped visiting him. Their decision happened within a week of my dream.
On January 5th, Linda left that voicemail and put us on the road to Thorin. Three weeks after that, she sent me an email. The subject heading was empty, so I wasn’t prepared when I opened it and saw the photo of Thorin. The text read “Here’s a preview!”
“Oh,” I whispered, “oh, look at you. You’re absolutely beautiful.”
I forwarded the email to Ward. While I waited to hear back from him I stared at Thorin and went through a half of box of tissues. I was struck by how much Thorin looked like Ward’s brother, Andy: both had red hair and green eyes. It was the first thing Ward commented on when he called me a few minutes later.
“He looks like Andy!”
When I talked to Linda later that day I gushed, “Thorin is beautiful! And, he looks like Ward’s brother!”
“Does he have Down syndrome, too?”
“No, he has red hair and green eyes.”
Very emphatically Linda replied, “Kari, Thorin has blond hair and blue eyes.”
“Not in this photo.”
“Let me look, hang on a sec.” After a pause she said, “You’re right; it must be the lighting, but trust me, he has blond hair and blue eyes.”
Hearing blond hair and blue eyes made me catch my breath. I was jolted into a forgotten memory. I cut the call short. On the first night Ward and I slept together, I had a dream. Like a film clip playing in front of me, I saw Ward holding a boy who was less than a year old. The boy had blond hair and blue eyes, and I knew he was our son. I didn’t say anything the next morning. After a single night of passion, I assumed Ward would likely think I was Glenn
