Cacophony

One thing that is very important is the degree of trauma that a child suffers. This can alter their ability to relate to anyone, but especially parent figures. It’s like trying to tame a feral cat. If the child has never learned to trust adults or has been abused by them, how can we expect them to trust anyone? If they have been kept in tentative care situations where they cannot form emotional bonds in the first three years of life, or if they have bonded and then been removed from those they are bonded to, they still suffer serious trauma. This alters the development of their emotions. They are anxious, expect rejection, fear abandonment, and live in a survival mode. This delays their other areas of development so that they are often behind others their age socially or in academics.  (Click here for the post and comments.)

Cautiously, Doris shivered in the frigid Virginia November as she plodded down the brick sidewalk from her fastidious home to her stately, elevated mailbox.    Maybe there will be news today, she wondered.  Holding her breath for a moment at every jangle of the black rotary telephone in the hall, she also waited with cautious optimism for the mailman.

She longed to hold her baby, a girl, whom she wanted, really really wanted to have her husband, Leonard's, dark hair and both of their translucent, cerulean eyes.    In her mind's eye, she saw herself wheeling her baby girl in her pram down Willard Drive, stopping  at the corner of Hemlock and Willard  for her first encounter of  the Highty Tighties' in the parade at VPI homecoming.   Doris loved the Highty Tighties, and the scoreboard behind her home that let out its cackle when the Fighting Gobblers scored a touchdown.   She didn't care for games themselves, though.   The cacophony of touchdowns, whistles and the crowd irritated her ears.  Leonard's job involved coordinating student activities and booking bands for Squires Student Center at VPI, a job that suited him well.

Her reverie was shattered by Sharon, her next-door neighbor, also checking her mail.   "News?" smiled Sharon cordially.  Her brother sister-in-law had adopted last year and she knew how eager Doris was to fill the empty nursery that stared mockingly at Doris every time she passed it.

"I don't know why it is taking so long," complained Doris to Sharon.   "Everywhere we're been they tell us there's babies.   When Virginia (meaning Montgomery County, Virginia Department of Social Services) got our home-study from Alabama,  they said it was the most thorough home-study they'd ever seen."    To Sharon, Doris' thorough sounded like thurl, but then, Doris over-enunciated her words anyway.    Doris and her husband both, albeit nice enough, were a little on the strange side, for reasons Sharon couldn't quite put her finger on.  Sharon knew that Leonard and Doris had been trying  to adopt, and their efforts had followed them to at least a couple of places. "I don't know what the hold-up is."