As I was pulling in to the pediatrician’s office parking lot this afternoon, haranguing Sky one more time about forgetting her graded papers folder and her assignment folder — Momma if you are reading this don’t say anything about the apple and the tree –I was greeted with an ambulance, TWO police cars, and some very obviously distraught people in the parking lot. While herding my gaggle out of the Suburban and through the front doors, I heard snippets of sentences that held words like OCS, very sick, case worker, and plan. I could feel my blood pressure medicine magically evaporating out of my kidneys (or wherever it vanishes from when you most need it).
Fortunately, my children were blissfully shouting over each other to divulge their great accomplishments of the day and elbowing each other to be the one standing closest to the baby in my arms. They asked once or twice about the ambulance, but a quick scan of the parking lot revealed no tell-tale white station wagon with a state seal on the side. That would have caught their attention right off and forever doomed any chance of their remaining ignorant of the drama du jour.
I learned quickly what was up once inside the waiting area. Apparently a mother had come in obviously high with a very sick or possibly injured baby. The doctor had notified the police and called an ambulance. I’m thinking the baby must have been leaving in the ambulance as we arrived, but the mother was still at the pediatrician’s office waiting for OCS to come and take her statement. The police had come, then left for a while, and then came back. I guess they were taking the mother into custody after OCS finished their part of the initial investigation.
Maybe it says something for how off-kilter five years of fostering has made me, but I have to say that the whole experience today left me with more positive feelings than negative. Let me explain…
For one thing, this mother obviously knew she was high when she brought the baby in. And she brought the baby in. She didn’t sit in her trailer watching her baby suffering and thinking about how she just couldn’t get her help because then she’d get busted. She brought her to the doctors knowing that it would likely end in humiliation for her. If nothing else, this little child can know that her mother loved her enough to face shame for her.
Secondly, my pediatrician’s office handled the situation and the family with dignity and compassion. I didn’t hear the nurses whispering. I didn’t see anyone casting meaningful glares down the hallway as the mother shuffled sniffling between the parking lot outside where the police were questioning her and the small examining room where the child protection investigator was ensconced.
Thirdly, there was a peculiar absence of real drama. Apart from the mutterings of several of the other mommies in the waiting room who had actually witnessed the scene when the mother and baby had arrived and when the pediatrician contacted the police, there was nothing to indicate that something was very amiss (excepting the notable number of our city’s finest standing at the edges of the parking lot).
No shouting, no loud sobbing, no flung chairs nor slammed doors. The mother had done what she felt compelled to do whether right or wrong and the doctor had responded with integrity and genuine concern. Even the mother in her fogged state seemed to see the inevitability of the state’s presence in her life. She even seemed relieved.
I noticed my children, groaning and squirming in their chairs after an hour and a half of waiting for what was supposed to be a 20 minute in-and-out appointment. I thought about the fact that they did not seem to perceive the thousand tiny clues of danger and chaos that drifted around them. Clues that they once would have keened to like blood hounds, their noses seasoned by years of their own neglect and trauma. I was grateful that despite our almost constant struggle against the relentless tidal wave of their memories, that at least we had travelled far enough down this road that we couldn’t be sucked into terror by the site of a too thin woman shuddering and scratching her arms in a tell-tale gesture. And for this I stood and silently thanked the Lord.
As much as I wanted to respect what was left of her privacy, I couldn’t help but watch the mother as she left. Her sparrow like shoulders formed a question mark as she walked away from the office building for the last time towards the police car still parked out front.
newcovenantfamily
Thank you for seeing what most of us would not.