Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [42]
The last kids to leave the old-fashioned way—by graduating from high school—were my sisters Kathleen and Migena. Kathleen joined the family when she was three months old (I remember her foster parents handing her through the door of our Volkswagen bus in a basket). Migena’s route was far more circuitous. When her brother Donard arrived in New Auburn as part of a foreign exchange program, well-meaning citizens bunked him with another Albanian exchange student, not realizing they were from opposing factions in Albania’s rapidly escalating civil war. To preserve the peace, Donard moved in with Mom and Dad, after which they discovered his paperwork had been forged as a means of moving him safely out of the country. One night after Don had settled into school and become a familiar face at the table, Mom and Dad’s phone rang. It was Migena, in tears and calling from Michigan. She had made it to the United States with another student exchange program, only to discover upon arrival that the Michigan program would not provide her with graduation credits, and thus no opportunity to continue her education in the United States. Mom and Dad drove to Michigan and brought her home.
Today Don and Migena have both gone to college and found good jobs. They have endured tortuous paper chases in order to maintain their legal status, with my parents filling out form after form and vouching for them with government officials as necessary. They show up at birthdays and holidays, and once even managed to get some of their relatives into Wisconsin to go deer hunting with us. I am proud to call them brother and sister. “How many kids are in your family?” people still ask, and now you know why I never have a number. We’re all spread out now, over geography and vocation. I have a sister Lee in Montana. My sister Suzy served in the army and is now raising a son and taking college classes. Jud lives in a group home and I haven’t seen him in years. Somewhere out there I hope Eve is well and Larry is walking strong. Back home, Mom and Dad are living the empty-nest syndrome writ large. Dad doesn’t seem to mind. Shortly after Kathleen and Migena graduated, I visited the farm. “I got up the other morning and a miracle happened,” said Dad. “For the first time in forty years, I was first in line at the toaster!”
Once I asked Mom what drove her and Dad to start taking in children all those years ago. I was expecting some philosophical and possibly faith-based answer. Not so. “When we were still dating, your dad told me he wanted sixteen kids,” she said. I chuckled. “No, really!” she said. “I said, No sir! Six, maybe, but not sixteen! So we decided we wanted to have some of our own kids, adopt some, and take some in through foster care. It was just always our plan.” Her own parents had begun taking in foster children when their youngest daughter—my aunt Annie—said she wanted a younger sister. Mom says she was reading the newspaper at the time and found an ad seeking local foster parents. She showed it to her mother—my grandma Peterson—and shortly they took in their first foster child. Grandma kept a photo album of each child she and Grandpa fostered, and when she died there were twenty-eight children in the book.
Even with the baby yet to be born, Anneliese has brought up the subject of adoption and foster care. I once heard a man say that when a woman asks, “Honey, do you think we should have another baby?” he might as well start setting up the crib, but I’m not sure where this will go, or if. It has not been one long gauzy shot for my folks. You cannot take in that legion of children over the years and find joy with every one. Many arrived with their own history of troubles. There were the runaways.