Excerpt: "You Get Past the Tears"

April 22, 2002 -- You Get Past The Tears: A Memoir of Love and Survival tells the story of Hydeia Broadbent, a teenager who was born with AIDS. Written by Patricia Broadbent, Hydeia Broadbent and Patricia Romanowski, it is a first-person account of a mother and daughter trying to keep life as normal as possible.

Excerpt from You Get Past the Tears : A Memoir of Love and Survival

ONE

The first time I saw her, she didn't even have a real name.

Just six weeks old, she had been taken from the hospital nursery, where her mother had abandoned her, to Child Haven, a county-run temporary facility. Now, here at my doorstep, was Baby Girl Kelloggs. As it turned out, Kelloggs was not her father's name or her mother's, either. Perhaps her mother picked it up off a cereal box. This fact, like so many I learned about the children I had fostered or adopted over the years, would have shocked me if I hadn't heard a dozen stories like it before, and worse. A veteran social worker, an activist for minority adoptions, and a foster parent, I knew how this story began and how it would probably end. A baby born to a drug-addicted mother and temporarily cared for by the state now needed a loving home until she could be adopted. A friend who worked for the state had called and told me about this baby. Was I interested in taking care of her until she could be adopted? As a foster parent, my role in this little one's life would be brief but, I hoped, important. Having taken in several foster children before, I had learned the art of loving and caring for children who would not be mine forever. I knew when to hold tight and when to let go, how to draw the lines around my heart and theirs so that they regarded me as Auntie Pat and not Mommy. (Besides, I already had four of my own children to call me Mom.)

This little one, like so many, was born with drugs in her system. That, along with the fact that her mother had left the hospital within hours of giving birth, told me that she probably had not received good prenatal care. I expected a baby who was smaller than average, more likely to fuss, less likely to interact spontaneously. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had problems with eating and sleeping or didn't like to be held as much as other babies. That was okay. To hear the media — then in the grip of hysteria over crack babies — tell it, "drug babies" were close to hopeless. But I knew better. With a few months' care, love, and attention, this baby girl would blossom. Even before she arrived, I was looking forward to the day when she would leave in the arms of adoptive parents who would love her forever.

If this sounds a little idealistic, then maybe I was, even though I have always been a very pragmatic person. Some people see taking in a foster child as a noble sacrifice. For me it wasn't about that. I had always enjoyed kids and had spent most of my adult life working with them in both the public and private sectors. I imagine that there were people who looked at the lifestyle my husband, Loren, and I had made and wondered why we did it. Three children from my previous marriage and one from ours had been adopted. I had always felt that parenting had more to do with how you raised a child once you got him than with how you got him.

By the time this little baby girl came along, two of my children, Paige, or Pepe, as we called him, and Kimmie, were teenagers. My oldest son, Kendall, was an adult, married and stationed in Germany with the military. We had decided that our family was complete. There would be no more adoptions, but that didn't stop me from wanting to help a child however I could. Most of the children we fostered were thrown into the system because their parents — usually their mothers, since fathers were rarely involved — could not care for them, for various reasons. Sometimes, as in the case of this little one, the parent made it clear enough through her actions that there would be no going "home." For many others, however, there was hope. There were mothers and fathers who worked very hard to overcome the obstacles that kept them from being the parents their kid deserved. It felt good to provide a safe, temporary home until parents could take a child back. Recalling the positive lifelong impressions a few caring adults had made on me as a kid, I truly believed that I could and did make a difference. When we brought foster children into our home, we made them feel at home. I knew of some foster families who would send the foster kids to another foster home while they went off on vacation. We didn't believe that was right. Wherever we went, they went. We provided extra clothes and toys — items that were not covered by the small monthly payment we received for their care.

Even after you explain all that, some people still wonder why you do it. At the time, I was the unit director of a Boys Club of America chapter and the executive director of Camp Fire Girls. Those jobs, like most I'd had throughout my career, involved helping kids and providing a role model. I guess you could say that I gave at the office but felt the need to do more. Financially and emotionally, I could do more. We were financially secure and upwardly mobile, with a six-figure income, a new car every couple of years, and a Mercedes out in the double garage. With Las Vegas on the verge of a major boom, we had amassed a healthy portfolio of real estate that practically guaranteed we could retire around age fifty. In the meantime, though, we didn't sweat it. If we saw something we wanted, we bought it. If there was somewhere we wanted to vacation, we went. After years of moving from one side of the country to the other because of my first husband's military career, I was ready to settle down. I felt that I'd finally found the partner, the lifestyle, and the home I had dreamed of. To have come to this place and yet still be in my early forties struck me as some kind of blessing. Every which way you cut it, we had it made.

It was mid-July, and it was hot, even for Las Vegas. My friend Luria Walker, who worked for the Nevada Division of Welfare, had called to say she was bringing the baby over. When she pulled up in front of our house and tooted her horn, I hurried outside. As I leaned in and reached for the baby in the backseat, I couldn't believe how tiny she was. Not only that, her skin was still wrinkled, just like a newborn's. Weighing under six pounds (less than what she had weighed at birth), this baby looked more like she was six days old. At six weeks, she should have regained her birth weight plus at least another pound.

"Are you sure this is the baby?" I asked Luria. "She looks like she was just born!"

"Yeah, this is her," Luria replied.

"Gosh, she's so little," I said, noticing that the orange-and-white Cabbage Patch outfit she wore wasn't a baby-size version of the popular dolls' clothing — it was a pajama set literally made for a doll. She was that tiny. Her complexion was chocolate, and with her fine, straight black hair and delicate features, she looked almost East Indian. All she was missing, I would joke, was a red dot on her forehead. With her big brown eyes and fine black hair, she was a very pretty baby.

The idea of having a baby girl in the family, even if only temporarily, really appealed to our youngest, three-year-old Briana, whom we call Keisha. There was a big age difference between Keisha and her older siblings, so in many ways she was essentially an only child. We found that taking in foster children not only helped them and their families but gave Keisha an opportunity to be around other kids and to learn to share. At the time, two brothers were living with us. Keisha liked them well enough, but she loved the idea of having a baby sister, and this was the first female foster child we ever had.

Oddly enough, that same day Keisha happened to watch an episode of Sesame Street that concerned a family having a baby. Every now and then, Sesame Street explores an important issue using the human characters or other real people without the Muppets. This program showed a mother discussing a new baby's arrival with a little girl not much older than Keisha. She told her, as I had told Keisha, that she would be a 'big sister' and reassured her that there would be enough love for everyone. That made an impression on Keisha. The parents on Sesame Street gave their daughter a Swahili name — Hydeia (pronounced hie-DEE-uh), which means 'again.'

"Mommy, this is just like us!? Keisha said. "Can we name our baby Hydeia?"

"We sure can," I replied, pleased at how well Keisha was handling the new arrival. Of course, I didn't bother then to remind Keisha of the ways in which this new arrival was not like the one on television — namely, that this baby would not be staying. We had already discussed that, and I knew she understood that in a month we would bring Hydeia to an "adoption fair," where, we hoped, a loving couple would discover her. I remembered back when my eldest son, Kendall, then six, was determined to name his younger brother after himself. We gently explained to him that Kendall Paige Jr. would be a great name for his son, but that his brother needed something different. We compromised with Paige Bendall, though we always called him Pepe. Although I had never heard the name Hydeia before, it sounded both beautiful and strong, ancient yet new. It could have been the name of a warrior princess or wise woman. To grow up a smart, strong black woman in this world, I knew she would have to be a little of both. So she became Hydeia.

— From You Get Past the Tears : A Memoir of Love and Survival, by Patricia Broadbent, et al. March 12, 2002 , Villard Books used by permission.