Alice – Fostering Blog.
Friday.
Today has been one of those blissful days with no plans whatsoever. I had recently found our old camcorder and a whole stack of mini DV tapes that we had take when our two birth children Annie and Lauren were babies and toddlers. I realised I had never actually put them on to video tape at the time – of course wouldn’t be able to play video tapes now anyway, so I needed to track down all the leads and connectors to transfer them onto the computer – so I could put them on DVD’s. Fortunately a ‘techy’ friend had everything I needed, so I spent the day looking through the tapes.
I have to admit, after a couple of hours of watching the footage, I was feeling rather nostalgic. Were my (now teenage) daughters ever that tiny. It really feels like a lifetime ago and yet also it feels like yesterday. I had one of those moments of “they are soon going to be gone”. I remover watching Toy Story 3 with a friend a few years ago – she felt so sad at the end as her nest was now empty!! I have nearly six years till my own daughters leave – that’s not long!!
I also felt a little sad that there is no one to have these moments with Alice. There are no photo’s of video footage of her as a baby or toddler for us to share with her. We have no idea what her parents have of her, but they have refused to share it with social services. Whatever they have will never be part of her life story work – there is a gap which we simply cannot fill. No matter what lovely things we have done with her in the last five years – there is a gap from the first four years, The older she gets the more she is aware of this. I feel torn as t whether to share our newly discovered footage of Lauren and Annie because I don’t want to draw attention to what is missing for Alice. But on the other hand I don’t want to not share it with my girls – it is part of their story and in sharing it, it forms part of their memory and it our family history – which I don’t want them to miss out on just because we don’t have Alice’s history – highlighting to her that this part of her story is missing.
There are many situations like this where we feel torn as to what to do, we make a decision and hope that it will be right – and not hurt anyone, or let anyone miss out on anything – either our foster daughter or our own daughters. In this instance we opted for now to share it with our girls when Alice was in bed.
I do hope that one day her parents will change their minds and share what they have of Alice in the first four years of her life and her life story work can be started.
A Less Ordinary Fostering Family Blog.
