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Foster Mother TributeA Salute to Foster Mom's and the children they care for.
A little boy out playing one day came across a wounded bird.
Carrying it home in the nest of his small pudgy hands, he cried.
“Don't worry little bird, I will take care of you,” he sobbed.
Answering the quiet knock at the door, the little boy's foster mother gasped at the sight before her, “Oh honey, you can't touch baby birds!”
He held the wounded bird up to his mother and said, “But it is hurt!”
She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, knelt before the boy and said, “But if you touch a baby bird, your smell will stay on it, and it's Mommy won't know who it is.”
The little boy looked down at the bird and closed his fingers around it's little body. “Just like me,” he cried, “You touched me and that's why my Mommy can't come get me.”
The foster mother picked the boy up her arms and asked him to show her where he found the baby bird. Across the street in the park they stood before a dying tree. She looked up into the branches and saw the nest. Putting the little boy down, she climbed up and carefully retrieved the nest.
“Look sweety, this is the bird's nest. The bird's mommy is not here. Something must have happened to its mommy. The little bird tried to fly, but since he didn't know how, he must have fallen from the nest. We'll take this nest back home, and the baby bird. We'll take care of it until it heals.”
The little boy placed the baby bird into the nest and said, “Just like me. You take care of me until I heal?”
“Yes. Just like you and me. And when the baby bird heals, we will take the nest and the bird back to the park so that other birds can find it and then the bird will become a part of a new family.”
“Where will you take me?”
“When it is time, I will take you to your new family.”
The little boy thought a while and then looked up at his foster mother and said, “Maybe the bird will find a family that can teach it to fly.”
“That would be nice, wouldn't it?”
“And maybe the bird can teach the new family stuff too.”
The foster mother laughed and held the little boy close, “I'm sure it will honey, I'm sure it will.”
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That little boy had been taken by the state eighteen years ago after his mother had left him in a hotel room for four days alone. The little boy, age 3, had been starved, was naked, and had bruises and burns on his body. He'd been in foster care for two years. His Foster mother did in fact spend almost a year healing him.
The little bird that he had found also got better after a visit to the Vet. Two weeks later, they went back to the park and put the bird in the nest and the nest back into the tree. When they went back the next day, the bird was gone. Every day for the next three months, the little boy and his foster mother went back to the park to watch for him. Two days before the boy was adopted into a family, he went to the park and climbed up the tree to check the nest. He found three little eggs.
That little boy grew up and is now known for his famous photography in magazines such as “Life,” and “National Geographic.” He travels the world to find rare or soon to be extinct birds.
You never know the impact you will have on the life of a child. And you will never fully understand the impact a child will have on you.
© Courtney Frey
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