God-Incident

I think I am finally ready to let you all know.  However, just so nobody gets to the end and says, "Hey!  What a ripoff!" I will tell you now, I don't know what it means.  If it seems like I use euphemisms and code, it's just because I didn't get permission to write specifics about these places and some of the people who receive services need anonymity.  Now, let me explain.

In case you haven't been following along you may not know that the team of youth from Centerville Presbyterian Church went to work with the poor and homeless as a mission trip over Easter break two weeks ago. We worked in some of the poorest areas in Oakland, Richmond, and San Francisco.  We all had a wonderful time but my family had an additional benefit to our time together.

It was the Tuesday of our week long trip and our team was headed to a school in Oakland to be teacher's aides in a community day school.  The school is designed to help people who have very little money but need someone to take care of their kids while they work.  This place is like a daycare/preschool/kindergarten and it is full, active, and appreciative of all the help that groups like ours are offering to give.

As we walked up to the door, first thing in the morning, our host Anita explained that this was one of her favorite places because the kids were so cute.  I said, in my usual smart-aleck way, "Careful...Sylvia has a history of taking cute kids home with her."  Anita laughed but I said, "It's funny, but it's also true."  I went on to explain that when Sylvia taught kindergarten there was a family in her class who was falling on hard times and was about to be homeless. She told the single mom that if there was anything at all we could do to help, just let us know.  Then she emphasized  a n y t h i n g.

Mom called back and asked if she was serious.  Of course.  She then went on to say that she was indeed going to lose her apartment but had a place to stay for herself...she couldn't make it work for her daughter though.  Through many more details than I want to go into here, we took in her daughter.  I had never met the mom or the daughter and, likewise, she had never met me.  It happened that she dropped her off at our house as she was driving her packed car to another city.  She came in and signed a handwritten paper stating that we were going to be taking care of her and that we could get her medical attention if we needed.  Then she told her daughter to listen to Mrs. Garrett and how great it was that she was going to get to stay in the same school for a whole year.  Then mom looked at me after meeting me minutes before and asked, "Are you sure about all this?"  I assured her that I was, and then she held my gaze.  In order to be a teacher you have a series of interviews.  I have been interviewed by rooms full of people asking about minute details I could barely remember from college due to the stress of the situation.  That was nothing compared to the fifteen unblinking seconds that mom and I shared in the kitchen.  I passed muster and the hugs goodbye ensued.  The little one was thrilled to be having a sleepover with her teacher and we were happy to be able to do something concrete to help someone out.

It wasn't without its challenges.  We were met with opposition from the school district where Sylvia worked. The "district office" heard of the living arrangements and told the principal to order Sylvia to give her back to her mom.  They saw it as an open door to liability and they wanted none of it.  For the first time in my life, we went and got help from the union.  The president of the union told Sylvia that he, too, was a kindergarten teacher and he completely understood what she was trying to do.  He assured her that there was nothing official the district could do, and besides, who in their right mind would suggest that a child would be better off homeless than with a caring family?  (I'm happy to report that we are no longer affiliated with that district)  There were other challenges along the way.  We would get stares in restaurants since this multiracial little girl was obviously not biologically ours.  We managed it all.  The one thing that always resurfaces when we talk about her is our inherent inability to take care of her hair.  We had creams, and rinses, and treatments from the "Ethnic Hair Care" section of the supermarket...but we never really nailed that one.  And the one time that Sylvia gave in and allowed her to win the daily "Can't I have my hair down!?" battle...she ended up with three hours of brushing to return her beautiful long hair back from the brink of bird nestiness.

We had her for most of the school year and then Mom got an apartment and back on her feet.  We started the transition from our house to hers.  Over the next few weeks we had sort of a joint custody thing to help the little one have a smooth transition.  Over the next few months we would visit occasionally and talked on the phone from time to time and then, when it seemed like they were doing very well, we lost touch.

In front of the day school steps I did not have time to go through all of these details.  I merely said the little girl's name.  It is a unique name for a special little girl.  Anita stopped walking.  She asked us to describe her and we told her that she was a biracial girl with long hair.  That wasn't what she meant.  She asked specifically about any physical traits that would identify her.  We told her about the one characteristic that could be an identifier and that is when Anita said, "You are going to see her this Thursday!"

My offhand comment about Sylvia's tendency to take children home set a whole set of wheels in motion.  Anita called the other group to prepare our daughter that she was going to see her.  The site director tried to contact mom to see if this was something that she would like some say about.  The one unfortunate thing about the whole incident is that mom was not available that day and our daughter, Krisi, for confidentiality purposes, was not allowed to run over and hug her and ask if she remembered her.

Two days later our group visited the same facility.  By the time we went to this after school program, the director had reached mom and was assured that not only was it OK for us to talk to her, she had been "praying about how to reach us" since they had moved.  We were given the standard orientation and told that we would be helping kids with art projects, homework, and doing a Bible study lesson before they stopped to eat dinner.  After everyone else was sent to set things up and get ready for the kids to come, Sylvia and I were pulled aside and given our own orientation of sorts.  It was then that we found out our re-found friend only came to this program two days a week...Tuesdays and Thursdays...the two days that our teams would be there.

I don't want to go into a lot of details about what happened when we finally saw her.  I will say there were smiles and tears and shyness.  We left our contact information with the director and said that it was OK to pass it on to mom.  We just got a message from her...she left her number and asked us to call her back.

And now I am back to where I started.  I don't know what it all means.  I'm not sure what God has planned for us in our reuniting with this family.  I am sure, however, that it has not all been a coincidence.  I would rather call it a God-Incident.