Tag: Father’s Day

Becoming A Father: Adopting A Foster Child

I knew I would be a father someday. I just assumed it would happen the normal way. My wife Whitney had other ideas. She suggested that, instead of going the traditional biological route, we should become foster parents. After some long conversations, she had me onboard, too.

I wrote the following essay for the Father’s Day episode of Inside Appalachia.

Credit Zack Harold
/
Zack Harold
Zack Harold takes a walk in the forest with his new daughter.

We began 10 weeks of classes, where we learned all the rules and got advice on how to deal with issues kids in foster care might experience. We started turning our home office into a kid’s room, too. This was tricky since we didn’t know how many kids we’d be getting, what their genders would be, or how old they would be, so we got a set of bunk beds, some gender-neutral bedding, a few toys — and figured we’d sort out the rest later.

After that, we had someone out to our house to do a home inspection. And just like that, the day after Easter 2019, our home was “open,” as they say in the foster care world. By that Wednesday, we got a call to see if we’d take a 5-year-old girl. By Friday night, Whitney and I were parents.

It was a strange thing to have a kid in the house at first. It’s a little bit like getting a roommate who can’t cook her own food, do her own laundry, or reliably groom herself without prompting. 

Somehow we figured out how to take care of her and she seemed to enjoy living with us.

I felt a deep responsibility to take care of our little girl, and I liked spending time with her, but there was no spark.

For me, fatherly love came like a slow-rising tide. I was developing a bond; I just didn’t notice it as it was happening. Then I looked at her one day, I think I was following her up a trail in Kanawha State Forest, and realized I felt this brand-new kind of love in my heart — one that wasn’t ever going to go away.

Eventually it became clear our girl wasn’t going anywhere, either. It is a complicated thing, adopting a foster child. A lot of bonds have been broken in their lives for them to become eligible for adoption. The first priority of foster care is to reconnect kids with their biological families. If that fails, the goal is to find a safe, loving forever home for children. A few months after our little girl came to live with us, our foster care agency asked if we’d be willing to adopt her. This time, Whitney and I didn’t have to talk about it. The answer was, without hesitation: “Yes.”

So began months of paperwork and anxious waiting. Until you get your day in court, it feels like a trap door could open, and she could be gone. We’d had that experience before. About six months after welcoming our first foster daughter, a second little girl was placed in our home. Then one day Whitney called me at work. DHHR decided to move her to a biological family member, who would pick her up from school that day. 

She lived with us for two weeks. I’d helped her with her homework. I’d fixed her breakfast. I’d hugged her goodnight. She was becoming part of her family. Now I wouldn’t get to say goodbye. 

What if that had happened with this little girl, too? Luckily, I didn’t have to find out. Courtrooms are still closed because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But last Thursday, we got our day in court via Skype.

As the hour approached, we all got dressed up. Whitney bought special dresses for the occasion. I put on a tie for the first time in three months. Then I propped my laptop on the coffee table and logged on. There was the judge, the court reporter, our lawyer, and the adoption specialist from Necco, our foster care agency.

The whole thing took about 15 minutes. Our lawyer asked us a few simple questions: Where we live, what is our wedding date, and whether we believed this adoption was in the best interest of our family. And then, it happened.

Throughout the Skype call, our girl had been motionless and expressionless. I worried what was going through her mind, but once it was over, she said she didn’t want to speak up because she didn’t know any of the people on the screen. Fair enough, kid. I think it was a strange experience for all of us.

The rest of the day was a party. The grandparents all came over — and stayed six feet apart, of course. But we ate hotdogs, hamburgers, and sheet cake. Our girl devoured about two dozen chocolate covered strawberries one of Whitney’s aunts made. And while we usually try to watch her sweets intake, we told her all bets were off that day.

After all, we missed out on five years of her life. We’ve got a lot of celebrating to catch up on. 

Sharing The Love Of A Father For His Daughter

Thomas Burger was a stay-at-home dad during the 1970s. Back then, only two percent of fathers stayed home with the kids. He said people often seemed confused when he told them he was a stay-at-home dad. 

Forty years later, the number of stay-at-home dads has climbed to four percent. A Pew Research Center survey from 2013 found that eight percent of people in the U.S. said children are better off if their father is home and doesn’t work. More than half think kids are better off if mom stays home.

In 2018, Burger sat down with his daughter, Renee Frymyer, inside the Storycorps recording bus in Charleston West Virginia and told her what it was like. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Burger: I remember the first time I held you. And I can remember I saw your eyes. I didn’t want to scare you. In fact I thought, it’s a good thing babies can’t bring everything into focus because it’s so different out here than it is in the womb. I remember saying, ‘I hope you’re never afraid when I’m around.’ Anyway, I do remember that. But your birth was a big moment in our lives. 

I took a year off to be a full-time father, an at-home dad from the time you were a one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half. Lots of good times during those years. Your mom was teaching school; we had moved to Milford, Delaware so she could teach school and support us while we did this so-called experiment. 

Frymyer: At the time, this was 1978, ‘79 and there weren’t a lot of full time stay at home dads. 

Burger: There weren’t. Well, not at all in our circle. We were always active in church, in the United Methodist Church, and we joined a church there. I remember taking you to bible study, and there were women with their kids around the circle and here’s me with you. People would ask me, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m a full-time, at-home father.’ People couldn’t quite understand that. I often joke that they said, ‘Okay, what are you really doing here? Do you have some kind of terminal illness and you’re just kind of waiting? What are you doing? Nobody just stays home.’ 

Well, I learned later that lots of fathers who are out of work, they’re taking care of their kids at home. There are lots of circumstances where many men, fathers, would stay at home and take care of their children. I certainly wasn’t a pioneer or the only one. But I wanted to experience fatherhood. I wanted to show your mom that I was committed to raising you. It wasn’t just her job. And it was a real blessing. 

I remember I had a bike and we had a little baby carrier in the back, not baby but a toddler carrier. It was a seat and we buckled you in. It’s not like today where everything’s surrounding you and you’re wearing a hard hat and everything else. The only thing you had on your head was a little wool woven beanie, no matter where we went. 

We would go grocery shopping. I had baskets, wire baskets on the back there just below your feet, where I put the groceries on the way home. And we were pedaling through the parking lot and a couple little ladies in a car drove by and said, ‘Look, look, look, look,’ I said ‘What?’ I turned around and you had gotten the carton of eggs and opened it. [You] just watched them roll out onto the pavement. Plop, plop, plop, there are eggs on the pavement. 

You and I took a little walk down to the local pond that was not far from the apartment there. And I told you that [it was] steep there, you might roll into the pond. Well, you wanted to see the pond up close. So you kind of toddled over there and sure enough, headfirst right into this fishy, dirty old pond. 

I picked you up, I don’t remember if you cried or not, but I picked you up and hurried back to the apartment. Your mom was right by the door sitting at her desk grading papers or doing some teacher thing. And she said, ‘Oh, what’s that smell?’ I said ‘That’s fish. Your daughter fell in the pond.’ Anyway, we got you cleaned up and we moved on. We had a wonderful year, I thought.

Exit mobile version