The coffee was never hot. It was brewed using the auto-brew function, and she was always grateful to see how easily coffee just appeared at 6:05 a.m. She would go downstairs, baby or babies in tow, grab a cup, and place it on the counter. That was as far as she would get, at least for a while. The cup would be sitting there for almost an hour before she would remember to go back, grab a cup, and take a drink. The coffee was never hot or, for that matter, warm either, but she liked a temperature that was somewhere between lava and baby bath water, which was where hers always was, just short of cold.
More than thirty years of life had taught her that there were seasons of life. Man was a temporary creature, a blink of an eye against the vastness of history and, ultimately, eternity itself. There was, however, one lifetime during which a person had to live it right. This was what was leading her through this season of life, a season where her coffee was cold, her showers were missed, her sleep was broken, her toilet visits were for an audience, her questions were endless, her fingers were sticky, and her nose was running. This was her reality, and she wouldn’t give it up for anything.
It seemed like only yesterday when she had opened her doors as a newly licensed single foster parent, with empty rooms and a wondering heart about what faces would eventually fill her beds. She blinked, and somehow four and a half years slipped by. Now her houses are full, and her days are a haze of washed diapers, completed homework, melt-downs, giggles, and deep hugs. She could no longer be guilty of blinking, as Time had no intention of slowing down, no matter her plea to do so. During those years, Mama had welcomed twelve precious ones into her life—some for a season, some for a lifetime.
The fifth adoption loomed. But it had not always been that way. Foster care never went according to plan. Yet every day, she felt herself sinking deeper into the role of mother. Her home contained all different ages and levels of connections: babies she’d had for months and years, and those whom she’d watched take their first steps and utter first words. But then there were stories she was still trying to reconstruct, bit by bit. There was a complicated and messy family background filled with love and loss and decision and tragedy.
Foster care providers served as placeholders. They could become fixtures. They could be present for a season, holding space, gathering hope, inhaling healing. Timeframes became unclear. Estimates were made, and then revised, and then erased altogether. As she lingered within this liminal state, the damage caused by addiction became ever clearer. A mother wrote, pregnant again and weighed down by the guilt of relapsing, dreading judgment. But instead, the judgment was self-judgment. This mother, like the others, was missing the small details she gathered each day: the first steps, the first words, the embrace. Her struggle was costly.
This was the season of her life in which she dared to want the clock to tick more slowly. There was so much to take in, to see, to celebrate. Soon, her coffee would be hot once more. For now, she wandered through the house looking for her cup, drinking it cold when she found it. She could hope that her days were full. She could expect that the to-do lists she never managed to complete would not haunt her. She could hope that the soul she nurtured could find peace within the beautiful messes that surrounded her. Their tale was still being written, sewn together with the threads of love.
