Tuesday, February 3, 2015

357

Pages upon pages of faces, mostly black, mostly teenaged.  The short descriptions more often than not highlighted all the reasons why you would never want one as your child: anger issues, problems with attachment, emotional instability, aggression, inability to control outbursts, poor attention span, lack of motivation in school.  Cerebral palsy, fetal alcohol syndrome, Downs syndrome, spina bifida, and the catch-all of mental retardation.  Another face, another face, another face.  These kids would age-out before they ever had the chance to find their "forever family".  Taken away or abandoned in childhood, their problems detailed so finely that no one reading would take the next step.  Foster home to foster home, or, perhaps, to a group home, but never the adoptive home.  Finally, the 18th birthday.  A fine, store-bought cake without a name.  Then, what, a hearty handshake and out you go?  How do you live in an apartment at age eighteen without a family for support?  If you have physical ailments, it is, perhaps, a group home for the rest of your life.  Without visitors.

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