The Letter

We mailed a letter to Jack's foster mom today.

I can't tell you exactly why it took 10 months. It was too hard to do. Our agency had guidelines for us to follow and even a sample letter, take a piece of paper and write one to two paragraphs thanking the woman who helped raise your son and give her an update on how he's doing. It should be short and sweet. I couldn't do it. It was too short, too simple, it was not the letter I would want if I was her. So Kyle did it, he wrote a simple but grateful letter with a good update on Jack, I added the pictures and we put it in the mail.

Here is the letter I would have sent:

Dear Mrs. K,

For the first few months that Jack was home with us, he looked for you. I could see it in his eyes when he approached women at the library that looked similar to you, he was terrified of any stranger, but these ones he walked right up to, close enough to touch, and looked up into their face, searching. I could see it when he would wake up crying in the middle of the night and I would go into him, seeing me would startle him, he was waiting for you, and it would take all I had in me to calm him down. He loved you fully and I know that losing you will be a hidden hurt in his heart for the rest of his life.

We keep your picture in his room. He doesn't notice it or ask about it. But someday he will. Someday I will pick it up and talk to him about you, about how you loved him, and the way that you cared for him so completely in the beginning of his life. I will take out the photo album you gave him and all the presents and he will be grateful as I am, that he has at least those things that are in some small way a part of you. He will be able to find a connection to his past, to his birth country, to you, through those items.

Jack is doing well now. It was a hard first few months for him. So much loss, so much newness, then sickness, and surgery, and pain. But now he is good, not just hopefully, but really. He is healthy, I know that will calm your worries. He is funny, so funny, and loves to laugh. He is a little ham putting on singing and dancing shows for us. So often when he giggles and when he sings I think of you, of how you taught him to love to laugh and to love to sing. Of how you told me that first day that these were things he loved to do.

Thank you, is not a good word. It is a word I use when the store clerk hands me my bag, yet in English there is only one word for thank you. I hope that there is a better word for it in Korean, that when this letter is translated they use a word that contains what it is that I feel, a feeling of being overwhelmed by the gift you gave us.

With love,
Jack's third mommy