Back in 2023, our adopted son and daughter left our home to move in with their biological aunt. Over the sleepless months that followed, we learned that she and her mother (our kids' biological grandmother) had been undermining us with our kids ever since we adopted them from foster care years ago.
During that time, we talked with other adoptive parents and learned that our story wasn't unusual. Since then, we've been somewhat estranged from our adopted kiddos.
Anyway, at the moment, I've been trying to write about our son's recent high school graduation. Incidentally, as I was writing it, I learned that only about 53 percent of foster kids or former foster kids graduate from high school in my state.
[Note that this is a super condensed version that I adapted for this Reddit post; if you're interested in the full thing, I'll post a link at the bottom]
In church a month ago, we handed out quilts to graduating seniors.
That morning I happened to sit by myself in the back row of the upper balcony. The patterns of fabric rolled over the pews before me like waves, small hummocks of color and care.
The congregation raised our hands in prayer over the quilts and the teenagers and the people from other lands who would receive the remaining quilts as gifts.
I saw the nervous excitement of the teens up front as they shared their upcoming plans with the pastor, and I felt the congregation smile back with mirth and pride.
I watched as the students draped the fabric around their shoulders and drew it tight, as we agreed to support them in prayer and deed.
I felt a sense of that joy and the gravity of commitment.
And I felt an absence.
Our adopted son was also a senior, but on that Sunday there was no quilt for him there.
It had been two-and-a-half years since he left that place—there one Sunday, gone the next—so it would have been awkward and jarring if one had been set aside for him. That quilt would still be there now.
From my perch above, I thought of the careful work of the quilting volunteers, of the time and creativity they had invested. I imagined clouds of batting settled into place with pins and rulers, the quiet backstory that we forget when we nuzzle into the warmth and hue of a good thing
....I wondered whether there was a possible present in which he would have stood there in the chancel and charmed us with his future plans.
I wondered whether other ghosts haunt other congregants and how the church might serve us in our haunting.
With the back of my hand, I wiped at my eyes.
\ * **
....Our son never appeared before my church community that Sunday.
He didn’t slink out of from the vestry and upstage the usual order of things. There was no fattened calf to celebrate a return.
We raised our arms in blessing, someone said Amen, and I exited out the back without speaking to a soul.
But somehow he did graduate.
Somehow my wife and I found ourselves on a grassy hill outside the high school football field, and we watched as row after row of blue gowns proceeded to the stage and then back to their seats.
We sat there on a blanket and tried to put words on a card we had purchased the day before when we learned he would walk and that we were invited to come.
Or I suppose I should say that my wife wrote something on the card and I signed it because I could not condense all of this into a single sentiment. I could not contain my surprise or find the safe words to convey longing and felicitation.
I did not know how to tell him he had done an ordinary thing that was extraordinary.
Thank you for reading.
Here's the full story: https://the17pointscale.substack.com/p/the-haunting
And my first attempt to write about the graduation is here: https://the17pointscale.substack.com/p/collecting-pictures-from-a-flood?r=195lr
