Our foster boy loves to ride his bike. He asks about riding his bike (or scooter) after school when I wake him up in the morning. He asks to ride his bike after school when I drop him off at the bus stop. He asks to ride his bike before he's buckled in his seat when I pick him up from his after school program. When we get home, he takes off. No time to talk about how the day went. Daylight is burning. He loves to move, to go, to be going. He does not like stillness. There is a lot of pure boy in him. There are also hard things that race around his little heart and mind that he'd rather not think about. Or that he'd rather think about while racing around neighborhood cul-de-sacs.
The line between coping mechanism and escapism can get blurry on these streets.
I picked up The Littles (that's our shorthand for the two foster kiddos who have been in our home since early June) from their time with their bio mom and two older siblings last week. This was only the second time I had picked up The Littles from family time. Which means I don't usually see The Littles until they are back home. And for the most part, the re-entry into our household's atmosphere after their twice-weekly visits has been mostly calm and frictionless.
But not this visit. The boy (who is 6) was very emotional when saying goodbye to his mom. A handful of factors contributed to this. First, it had been a long day. I picked them up at 7 p.m., and the boy went to family time straight from school (and it was only his third day at a new school). So he was spent. Second, and despite my best efforts, it was not a quick goodbye. Prolonged goodbyes affect the angle of re-entry. The emotions can run high; the tears flow hot. Finally, his mom can speak loosely about when her kids will be returning home. She makes things sound more imminent than they likely are. The boy hears this and gets his hopes up, which brings him down. He just wants to go home with his mom. Why does he have to go with me? This question increases the steepness of the handoff at my car.
The boy was crying when his mom finally closed the door. He called, "Mama! Mama!"
But before we got into the car, he was asking if he could ride his bike when we got home. Through sobs, he asked again the instant we started driving away. I told him that it was already almost bedtime and that because it was a school night, we needed to take a bath and go to bed when we got home.
This was unsatisfactory. He kept asking. Rightly or wrongly, I held to my original answer. Then he started to ask if he could jump on our trampoline when we got home. I said no; see previous answer.
He thought for a moment, then he said, "Can we listen to the wardrobe?"
Wardrobe. As in, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, which we had recently started on audiobook.
Yes. Absolutely, yes. I hit play. Lucy had just re-entered our world after her first trip to Narnia. He stopped crying. He looked out the window and seemed to be content.
I thought we were in the clear. But then he asked about riding bikes again. We were at a red light. I hit pause. I turned in my seat and looked at him. I said, "I think you're sad about not being with your mom. And you want to ride bikes and jump on the trampoline or do just about anything to not think about it. Does that sound about right?"
He kicked the console between the front seats. Then he kicked the back of the passenger seat. "You can kick my car all you like," I said, "but it won't help anything."
He didn't respond, and I resumed the audiobook. We drove home the rest of the way without incident. It had started raining again at the Professor's house, and Lucy was looking for a hiding place.
The boy had a bite to eat when we got home, took a bath, and went to bed. He seemed mostly regulated. But he woke a couple hours later wailing at the bottom of the stairs, just outside his bedroom door. I helped him back to bed and prayed with him. He slept the rest of the night.
Two days later, he was dismissed from his after school program for not sharing toys and running away from the program's leaders. He led them on a chase around the playground and refused to come inside.
There are no magical portals on public school playgrounds or in after school programs. Lewis knew this. In The Silver Chair, Eustace and Jill found the portal to Narnia just outside their school's property. To be fair, most places in this world are not magical gateways to other worlds. But we are always looking for them—even if we're not aware that we are. We look for wardrobes not because they are a way to escape the real world. The inverse is true. The fantasy genre is not escapism. “Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth,” Lewis wrote. “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.”
Myth and fantasy, rightly understood, help us live more truly and fully and deeply in the “real” world. As terrible and alienating as it is.
Few know the terrible passages of this world like those in the foster system. In the foster care world, it is always winter and never Christmas. And so the boy who has been entrusted to our care is looking for more than a return to his bio mom's home. He is looking for that further-in reality and further-up Presence that surpasses all understanding.
Later that night, on the day the boy was dismissed from his after school program, I was praying through Compline (bedtime prayer) with the older kids, including the boy. After an opening call-and-response, Compline begins with a prayer of confession. We don't always follow the confession part of the liturgy, but we did this night. We prayed the confessional together, and then, as is our custom, I gave the kids (and myself) an opportunity to listen to the Spirit to see if there was anything that they needed to confess to one another.
To my great surprise, the boy spoke up first. "Dear God," he prayed, "I'm sorry for not being nice to my after school teachers."
When he finished, I looked at him and told him how beautiful that prayer was. And that God is quick to forgive us and throw away our sins to the bottom of the ocean. That his love and grace are bigger than our fears.
Our bedtime confessions have often served as powerful moments of reconciliation in our family's life together. We've experienced the power of confession and forgiveness time and time again. So I knew this was a big moment for this little boy. He had taken something to heart and wanted to live differently. Perhaps it is prayer that offers an always-open portal to the Lion who helps us move further up and further in to repentance and healing.
The boy's maladaptive behaviors are still a factor most days. But he has had a much, much better week at school and at his after school program. The after-school staff have praised him for how well he's listened and behaved this week. He even got to pick out a little prize the other day because of how well he got along with everyone. He was beaming with pride as we picked him up.
On the way back to the car, he asked if he could ride his bike when we got home. Without hesitating, I said yes.