Carson's social worker arrived a while later and told us that while the court notification said to be there at 8:30, we had plenty of time to wait while everyone involved got settled. I guess you could say showing up at the scheduled time was a rookie mistake, like not realizing that when you hear the party starts at 8, none of the cool kids will show up until 9. So, like the kid who shows up before everyone else and stands around looking uncomfortable, we spent about 2 hours sitting there in the lobby with Carson and his parents. There was the occasional conversation with a social worker or a lawyer, but for the most part we just sat and watched Carson play with his mom and dad.
I will admit it was a little awkward. It always seems awkward when we watch Carson interact with his parents. We try hard to think of Carson as our son, not a kid we are babysitting or even a favorite nephew, but our own son whom we love more than anything. We are far from perfect, and since we don't have biological children we are still trying to figure out how to be parents, let alone foster parents (This struggle might be an entirely separate blog post). Anyways, we try and love Carson as our own son, but here are his biological parents demonstrating that we are not his only parents, and in some ways, we are not even his "real" parents. His parents have never said anything like this to us, but we see it in the way they interact with him. We sat in the lobby for 2 hours and for 2 hours his mom and dad played with him, getting down on his level and taking toys that probably had 20 minutes of interest and making them last 120 minutes.
In a sad and selfish way, this may be easier for us if we could watch and see that Carson's parents did not really care about him that much. If they were to only give him some of their attention or keep their heads buried in their smartphones, then we could think that we were somehow "better" or something. Of course this really isn't what we want. We are so happy to see Carson's parents engaged, and to see how much they love him, and how much he loves them, makes the likelihood of reunification a lot easier to think about. It's just that times like this remind us that this family we are working hard to create is most likely temporary, and will never be the "only" family that Carson has. We want Carson's bond with his parents to get stronger, and so for 2 hours we have to almost disengage as the parents that we try to be and just be observers as Carson plays, laughs, questions, and cries. While it is a little awkward to interact with another couple who thinks of "your" child as "their" child, what is most difficult is to try and give Carson's parents space to be the parents while not wanting Carson to feel that we are disengaged from him. I'm afraid that Carson will think of us as the parents who take care of him, except when those other parents are around. That's not the kind of parents we want to be, and trying to figure this out for ourselves is hard enough without trying to explain it to a toddler.
Eventually, Carson's name is called and we find seats at the back of the courtroom. There are attorneys for mom, dad, Carson, and Child Welfare. The Child Welfare attorney recommends 6 more months of services, no other attorneys object, and the judge says that we will meet again in December. After 2 hours of waiting, the 3 minute hearing is a little anti-climactic, but the outcome is what we were expecting. I suppose it's fitting that in the midst of a legal procedure leading to Carson's reunification with his parents, we got a little relational procedure reminding us of our unique relationship with Carson as his foster parents.
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