Born into poverty, drugs, and violence in the inner city of Detroit, Kay’s life was unmanageable before she even had a voice. Her mother could never stay clean, nor could our drunkard father. Before she was three, she had been turned over to her first foster home; it would be the first of many.
In 2003, her mother regained custody of her after a period of sobriety. It lasted a year. Kay was entrusted to me in May 2004. She was seven, I was thirty-two. It was the beginning of a journey that changed us forever.
Raising foster children is like patching holes in drywall blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back; you never know how many holes there are or where they are until you run across one and have to figure out how to fill it. I remember thinking to myself, Shouldn't she know this? Oh yeah, maybe she missed that...
We managed to scrape by on food stamps, welfare, reserve pay and the GI Bill while I attended school full time at Michigan State University. Kay attended school in East Lansing; second grade with a kindergarten education, if that. My favorite memories of Kay are from our life in Michigan; watching the "Nug Luts" (Kay's accidental nickname for the Lansing Lugnuts Class A baseball team), Halloween birthday parties, and hanging out in Grand Haven.
We made our way to Washington, D.C., in 2006, by way of the job market with a short stopover in Cleveland. Kay jumped into school with both feet and thanks to Fairfax County Public Schools caught up educationally. She used to drive me crazy with her attentiveness to her school work. Not once did I have to ask her to do homework; I had to pry her away and force her to go outside to play. That was the measure of her resolve.
Kay moved back to Ohio to be with her newly sober mother in 2008. It was short-lived. Within a few months, Kay was in foster care home number four, then five. The great miracle is that every family Kay was entrusted to was wonderful, loving, heart-centered and far safer than her own parents. Then, in 2011, just before her freshman year of high school, the courts ordered Kay to live with our less-than-sober father whom we refer to as “SD” aka “the sperm donor.”
This was yet another new beginning for Kay. Against all odds, against every statistical likelihood that she too would follow in the footsteps of her parents, Kay refused to give into what seemed to be her destiny. In spite of every card being stacked against her, she continued to excel in school, started playing tennis, and joined yearbook staff. She got her driver’s license when she turned sixteen and immediately secured a job at Subway, something she had wanted to do since she was eight years old. She learned to manage her money, her life, and her parents. Before the end of her junior year of high school, she was accepted to Bowling Green University in Toledo, Ohio and announced that she would become a social worker to help other kids like her who have grown up in foster care.
Kay turned eighteen at the beginning of her senior year. She moved from SD’s apartment into her friend Caitlin’s place, bought a car with money she had saved, and started building her own life. She re-established a relationship with her mother. They spent a few months getting to know each other again before her mother died as a consequence of a lifetime of drug abuse. She was fifty-one. Kay is still grieving the loss of her mother and the relationship she dreamed of having with her.
On June 4th, the day after I return from my Camino, I will be at Kay’s high school graduation where she will speak as salutatorian of her high school class. I’ve never known anyone with a heart as big, who has so much compassion and empathy for others, who has fought so desperately to succeed; she is resilient beyond what seems humanly possible. She has taught me how to live and has shown me the kind of person I want to be. She is the strongest woman I know and I am proud and honored to be her sister.
Beautiful story
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