Guest writer

Editorial: To love the children

Mom never faltered in her duty

From her heavenly home, my mother would probably like to have a word with Justin Harris.

In 1961, our family was a foster family for four girls ranging in age from 1 to 5. The girls had been removed from the "care" of their prostitute, addicted mother and placed in the Buckner Children's Home. The baby was still going through withdrawals because her biological mother had often put alcohol into her baby bottle. The others had witnessed their mother's activities and occasionally spoke in her rough language.

For one year, Mother raised her own three sons and these four girls. She made all our clothes, prepared all our meals, nursed us when we were sick, and did all the things a caring mother should, including great doses of love for all of us.

She got the baby girl through her withdrawals and made sure that the older children understood what misery the smallest of us was enduring. Mother taught the other girls to behave properly, proudly dressed them up and took them to church, and made sure they knew that they belonged in our home.

If anyone had dared to mention that any of her children were demon-possessed, they would have been lucky to get away with their skin intact because she would have ripped them to shreds for harboring such wicked notions about anyone's child, much less her own.

Mother's idea of a good family religion was certainly not one that held children to be spawns of Satan. To her, they were all gifts from God.

My mother did not have access to child-rearing books or special techniques. There were few, if any, agencies set up to provide help to parents. There were no timeouts, no rebonding techniques, and no reward mechanisms; no psychological or religious prescription she ever relied upon in dealing with children under her care. She simply was authoritative without being authoritarian. And she was fabulously rich in the one substance that made her so successful: love.

We were quite poor at the time, money-wise, but not destitute. Daddy worked six days a week and had additional duties as choir director for our church. In every sense of the word, Mother was the homemaker for the family, the foundation of our lives.

Like the Harris family, she also had some outside help with funds. As part of the fostering agreement, she relied on a small stipend from the children's home to help her with the added expenses.

After keeping them in every sense of the word for one year, a day that Mother called one of her saddest came. Foster parents were not allowed to adopt those in their care--such was the policy then. Mother and Daddy left us with kinfolk that day and took all four of the girls back to Fort Worth to meet their new adoptive parents.

There is a photograph taken of them early that morning before they left. They are standing outside in the bright summer sunlight. They stand in a diamond formation, the oldest in the back, the youngest up front, and the two middle girls standing on the sides. They are all dressed in clothes my mother made for them back in the spring. The youngest is pulling at the front of her hair, probably wondering why so much attention was being paid to them that day.

Not once did my mother consider "re-homing" the four girls. Not once did she doubt her abilities to love and care for them. Not once did she even consider abandoning her duty to them.

The only injustice she ever considered was what had been done to the little girls before she came into their lives. And the only thing she might have considered unjust was the bureaucratic ruling that took them away from her after that special year in her life.

My mother would have a lot to say to Justin Harris. She would speak of the joy those girls brought into her life and the joy she brought into theirs. Their problems became hers and she never faltered in trying to resolve them. She continued to love and miss them long after they left.

Mother did not fail those entrusted to her care and keeping.

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Jake Tidmore lives in Little Rock.

Editorial on 03/27/2015

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