The Dining Room Table

I always wanted a large family. I imagined a grand dining room table with many hands passing food around it. I imagined laughter echoing down the halls, the messes, the tired and yet deeply satisfied sighs surveying chaos all around me. Nine children have called this house a home. Only two are permanently part of our family.

Our longest-term placements left almost three years ago. We’ve kept in contact over the years and babysat the kids for a few days recently. My love for them hasn’t changed… but so many other things have. I’ll always be there when needed. How could I not? But it’s gotten to the point where I can’t ask how things are going anymore. The updates are hard to handle when there’s nothing I can do.

My latest memory with them was saying goodbye after their recent visit. The youngest silently wiped tears from his eyes as I walked him to the door. The rare moments something can break his happy-go-lucky nature are powerfully felt, and my mama’s heart leaped out of my chest.

It’s complicated. Who knew you could feel everything, all at once, all the time? Fostering is hard, but it’s even harder after kids leave, you don’t have support anymore, and you don’t suddenly stop caring or forget that you were the parent for so many years. You want to contort your body around them as a human shield, but the door opens and the parenting reigns are transferred to someone else.

9 children have lived with us, but it hasn’t been all at once. I’ve set my table for 8 and 6 and more often than not, our original 4. I’ve pulled the high chair out of our garage and dragged it back out. Our family grows, and it shrinks.

It isn’t what I imagined with a large family. I kind of thought the kids would be more concurrent than consecutive and a little more permanent than temporary. I didn’t realize that absences would be acutely felt around the dining table. I most certainly never expected that if an end was coming I’d be capable of feeling numb, distant, grateful to be down to just us again, and feeling a sorrowful kind of love that leaves a permanent, dull ache.

We sit down for “family dinner,” as my boys call it, and we don’t pass food around the table. The four of us can easily reach it from the center of the table.