Turning Away Love with Love

"Tee hee hee."

"C'mon."

I pictured the two boys, wrestling with blankets, one laughing like sunlight peeping through the blinds, the other demanding with that curled lower lip determination. The footsteps came next. Pad, pad, pad.

"C'mon."

I rubbed my eyes, shifting toward Bob, moving his arm off my waist, straining to see the clock. What time was it anyway? Why were they up so bloody early? Yet, I couldn't help smiling at the cuteness of those laughs.

Then they arrived, mysteriously, magically, right beside my pillow. I never would have intruded so far into my parent's room. Somehow I always thought to tap and say "Mom, mom?" until I got an answer.

"You gonna get up? We're hungry?" OJ's two big brown eyes were so much like his dad's, the baby brother I had rocked as a child, and so very like my dad with his squarish and placid face.

"Yeah, hungry." Kyle's blue eyes with light sparkling showed a twist of mischief.

I swallowed at the tug on my heart. All my questions and doubts flooded over me and I no longer saw the boys, but got up, grabbing for my robe. "Okay, I'm coming. Shoo, I'll be there in a minute." I couldn't help thinking, "didn't their parents feed them?" and "Isn't three too young to be in charge of a toddler?" and "did their parents never wake up?" and "does he have to make sure the young ones get fed?"

I slipped out of bed, flipping my hands toward the door. My fiancé Bob rolled over with a groan, not about to get up while they were in the room.

They sat at the table and I set them bowls of cereal and poured on milk and made hot chocolate because no matter what I asked if they wanted it for breakfast the answer was yeah. But what they ate was bananas, the youngest gobbling down one bigger than his head with a grin.

It was a glorious day. We dressed. My mom had promised the boys were troubles and always fighting so Bob and I implemented the plan we would always follow with nephews. We set about to wear them down. First thing out was the walk to the park, a trip I made twice daily or more since I had to have a hysterectomy due to problems with endometriosis. It was only twenty minutes there and back, but promised a swing and a slide and with the sun blazing and the boys giggling it became pure joy.

The cats scattered as we left, the boys scurrying after calling "here kitty kitty" and guilt twinged inside me at what I wished I could do to their lives. For awhile we forgot the impending doom; we played chase and pushed the kids on the swings.

When we got back it was nearly time for lunch and we all piled into the Subaru. The eldest boy said "don't forget the light bulbs."

I raised my eyebrow thinking, "huh?" He repeated it several times along with the news his dad said they were out. At the store, Bob said "how about if I just run in?" and I thought that a good plan with these two rowdies. I let the Kyle crawl over the seat into the driver's seat. OJ had already co-oped my lap, he snapped on and off the door locks and raised and lowered the window.

But Kyle, well, let's just say he must have my grand dad's mechanical skills. He adjusted the mirror. He then tried every knob on the driver's console, while the elder decided it was time to pull my hair. The radio was okay, the horn garnered some odd looks but it when he got the keys and prepared to drive the car, I had to jump out of the car and send the two to the back seat once more. By the time everyone was resettled with seatbelts on Bob returned sans light bulbs.

I giggled out the story of the budding racer to Bob while he drove home.

For lunch we had grilled hotdogs since they are a sure bet with kids two and three years old.

Reality bit again when OJ decided to play build a fire. The two boys pulled the sticks from the apple tree prunings and place them in a ring, talking all along about "got to build a fire."

At least their dad cared enough to keep them warm, I thought. Even if the sweet blue eyed boy was burned in the bathtub. Even if their mother walked out and the father went after her, calling my mom to get the kids. Even if the youngest living with the other grandma had been found on the living room floor in an unchanged diaper and spent the next six weeks in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and lungs damaged by meth. At least they were safe. Weren't they?

I wanted them all together, to raise them, to make it easier for their parents to recover, to hug and protect them so much it made my hands shake. Maybe it could still come true. What a fantasy dream.

The unsaid must have got to Bob, too, and he kicked the sticks away from his grill and told the boys to go play. I jumped out of my pink beach chair and set to work bringing all the fixings out.

The boys moved into my chair while I cleaned up. The afternoon game became flip the pillow combined with hide and seek while I cut roses off the trellis and set them into vases along with curled willow branches and mock orange. What a sunny, laughing peaceful day.

All too soon my sister arrived with a knock on the door. The kids raced to the door while I dragged my feet. Already the dusk turned my living room grim.

"Hi" I said and so did she but we spoke like strangers.

"Kyle, baby, come to mommy." She picked him up and set him on her knee and started the sweet talk. "I'm your mommy now. You're going to come with me." The eldest came over to be hugged but she shoved him aside saying "Go away, you're not coming with us." Her voice had that cold edge to it she'd learned to use every time she dumped the guy she'd dated because he didn't offer to marry her and let her have babies.

I wanted to scream at her, don't be so unkind, but I choked on it. I don't know what hurt the most. The shock and horror on the eldest boy's face. The way the younger kept turning to look at his brother. The artificial way my sister talked. Or the knowledge I was allowing this to happen because she wanted a baby so bad. We'd talked many times about how adopting a baby might be the trick that ended her eight years of unprotected sex without pregnancy. I ran from the room feeling like my apple tree, strong until one day lightning bit through, tearing it to shreds, wind shrieking through it, but entirely numb, it still thinks it's alive.

That's how I know what strength in a partner means. I whispered, "How could my mom do this to me?" Then wrapped my arms around Bob's neck and lay there, tears flooding my face, and let the sobs shake me through the ground, all the golden light of the kitchen trying to warm my heart.

My sister yelled "bye" and walked out the door. I started mopping at my face to go back to hug the eldest boy, but by then my mom arrived.

"How was your day," my mom called in her cheery let's make everything rainbows and light voice.

I peeked into the darkened room, swallowed the lump in my throat and said "Fine," while making sure my voice didn't quaver, didn't reveal my tears.

OJ yelled," Grandma! Grandma, I want to go with you," in the plaintive way he'd said for the past year or so every time he visited, the voice that won him the choice of his new home. Then he held up his arms and mumbled "What about Kyle?"

"OJ, come on, we're leaving now," Mom grabbed his hand, then yelled "bye" and walked out to her still running car.

Why did I let this happen? Was I a wimp? No. I had no choice. Love isn't always just about giving love to a child, sometimes its allowing others to give the love and stepping back. And the law chooses. CPS identifies the person with the children when a desertion is called in as the one with the authority to make the decisions. They want homes, immediately. And with children this age, you tear them apart only once like this, they deserve a stable home.

Bob said, "It's okay, we'll be the support system," while I tried to believe it would all work out.

#

This story is for OJ, who I promised I would answer any questions he had when he turned eighteen. I always imagined he would ask, why? And that question I still am unsure how to answer. What he may not know is that there wasn't a single person in the entire extended family who didn't want to be his mom, even his addict mother who tried again these past two years.

I speak for my family, I think, to say that we are all very thankful that they have reached their teens and survived, even the two boys lost to foster care. I'm proud of my sister for stepping up to raise one child and finding herself nine months later mom to four kids instead of one, and of my other sister who raised the youngest and of my parents who raised OJ and his sister.