My son’s first voice

Eight years ago this week, we were settling in to the new normal of life with Phineas. In the six years since Jack had been born, we had inched slowly towards the kind of independence that only a family who has left behind the season of little ones understands. There were no sippy cups to tote, no nap times to schedule around, no need to keep the Legos off the floor or the kitchen cabinets secured. Suddenly we were back to navigating all of that and more: the 24/7 work of peeling back the layers of quiet contemplation that masked Phin’s personality and revealed to us just who he was, and why.

I still remember realizing, that very first week, that this business of foster adoption was far weightier than any training could possibly have prepared me for. Yes, I knew the rules on how one was to apply time-outs for tantrums, but no one had told me what to do with a 14-month old who had been trained, from birth, not to ask for his needs to be met. I was well-versed in the regulations of child-proofing. But what was I to do with a child who wouldn’t even reach for the toys I offered, or who searched my face with a palpable detachment, as if this interaction was a trick question that he was destined to fail? I had been told that he could not sleep in our bedroom. But what do you do with a toddler, suddenly ripped from everything he has known, who sleeps soundly in a new room, a new bed, in the presence of a new family?

And then there were the deeper, more painful questions that worked their way to the surface minute by minute. Who did this? Why did this happen? How was this missed? Why had it been allowed to go on for 14 painful months? We knew that the adults in his life had been given multiple chances. But had anyone, anywhere, spoken for Phineas?

As a mother, that last question — had anyone taken the part of my son? — plagued me. My role as his foster mother was well defined; I was his caretaker, not his liaison. I carted him to visitations, appointments, evaluations. At each stop, he was poked and probed and measured against a standard that was then reported back to the powers appointed to decide every detail of his future by simply flipping through the masses of paperwork that were accumulating in his name. Plenty of people (too many people!) spoke about Phineas. Did anyone speak for him?

Finally, towards the end of his time as a foster child, a CASA was assigned to represent Phineas. He finally had someone speaking on his behalf during the myriad meetings and hearings that were held behind closed doors. She was a fierce, practical woman who got down on the floor, looked Phineas in the eye, and pulled him out of the safe places he had constructed in his head. She played with him. She understood him. I felt confident that her words, spoken in front of commissioners and lawyers, were what Phineas would say if he were able.

I sighed with relief. Finally, someone had spoken for Phin.

Weeks before our appearance in court that made him our son forever, I received two large cardboard boxes bursting with documents. These were the redacted disclosure records relating to everything that had happened in Phin’s life since his birth. Every scrap of paper. Every piece of evidence presented in court. Every statement.

Much of it was in my own handwriting. Our agency had a form for everything, and I used them, scrupulously recording every observation, every skill mastered, every sniffle and cough. The bulk of the papers dealt with the endless details of a life lived as a ward of the state: psychiatric testing, the reports of speech therapists, the recommendations of lawyers who had never met a blue-eyed three year-old who had come into care when still a baby, but were charged with overseeing his case anyhow.

Towards the bottom of the first box were medical records. I knew his history, yes. But the boy who had been hospitalized six times in the first year of his life hadn’t had so much as an ear infection on my watch; it was easy to forget the true depth of what had landed him in my home to begin with. I lifted the piles from the box and began the job of trying to piece together a picture, between the blacked out lines, of my son’s life before I knew him.

And there it was, on the first page. Written in careful, slanting penmanship, signed by an RN whose last name had been blacked out. It was a photocopy, but that didn’t diminish the weight of the words.

It was Phin’s voice. His first voice. At last.

No eye contact.
Shows no interest in surroundings.
Does not cry.

As I leafed through page after page, the tears fell.

No family members present overnight.
Questionable home environment.
… spent teaching time on phone instead of engaging.

The more I read, the more complete the image of my silent son became. Through the frustrated, worried words of a host of women trained not just in healing hurts, but also in the act of truly nursing a broken body, I heard Phineas explain why his first nights in the strange comfort of our home were no more or less traumatic than any other night of his short life. I listened as he told me how he learned to be silent in the face of scary things. I wept as he showed me why he didn’t expect me to save him from the people who took him from my arms week after week to sit through another session of this or that.

The RNs spoke for him. Multiple notes raised alarms, flagging behaviors they knew to be outside the norm of simply a struggling family needing a little extra support. They expressed confusion at a lack of attention. They detailed conversations that simply failed to ring true. There were highlighted areas spotlighting specific conferences with MDs who, invariably, dismissed the information. Social workers were called in to consult, but the results were the same. The details were precise, and copious. The women writing these notes, I have to believe, knew in their heart of hearts that this little one needed to be saved and yet … no one listened.

It took me days to read every page of the heartbreaking observations recorded by the RNs charged with caring for my broken son. As I finished the last of the notes, I pondered anew the world in which we live. No one wants a society where the unvetted concerns of a single individual—based perhaps on their prejudices, assumptions, or simply their lack of familiarity with a family—run roughshod over the rights of a family. No one wants a system where events that may not be what they seem on the surface are used to rip apart a safe, loving home. But no one wants to be rendered mute, as Phineas was, in the face of life-altering abuse and neglect. No one wants to be a professional whose hands are tied, who must release a child back into circumstances that they fear might bring that baby back to them again and again…, or eventually, not at all.

Phineas’ first voice was hidden. It was ignored. It was set aside as the over-alarmist gossip of women who ought to have been busying themselves with the practical in the face of the volume of their work. It was sealed up, forgotten in a box, and only given air after years of further proof had stacked up to render it plausible.

I write this today not to condemn those whose job it is to make sure that the steps the state takes are sure ones. It is a fearful thing to dissolve the bonds of parental rights, and should never be done lightly. I write this to encourage those whose work brings them into contact, day in and day out, with the most vulnerable among us. Babies. The elderly. The disabled. I write to encourage them to continue on. Continue to serve. Continue to observe. Continue to record. Continue to speak.

Phineas’ voice was not heard, but years later, it shed precious light into a dark place. It gave me insight into a time I could not have known. The work of those who spoke for him was not in vain. I am more grateful than those overworked, overlooked RNs will ever know. They took the time—the love—to speak for Phineas. When he had no voice, they lent him their own. In doing so, they have allowed him to speak to me about the things that shaped his heart, and given me the tools to understand.