Seeing Photos

Although the month of June brought many blessings with Julian's progress physically and the blessing of our little family unit starting to figure each other out better. It also brought a ton of confusion. At the beginning of the month Belinda came out to see us. She was the social worker that represented my husband and I. She was the only one I trusted that worked for social services because she was always looking out for our feelings and trying to keep us in the loop with any information she had about Julian's case. She wanted us to feel knowledgeable so we always knew what we were up against. She never made any promises about the future but she did give us all the facts of the case that were available to her.

During her second visit Belinda brought us photos of Julian's biological parents. She knew we lived close to them and she wanted us to know what they looked like just in case we were ever approached by them while we were out in public places. She also wanted us to have the photos for Julian so someday we could show him who his birth parents were.

I remember taking the photos from her and almost having an out of body experience. My eyes were glued to the pictures. Even having the proof in my hands that they were really people, and not just a made up story by social services, I still couldn't grasp the concept that they were the ones that gave birth to our child. It was hard to imagine anyone being parents to Julian other than my husband and I.

There were three different poses in the photos. They were taken at one of Julian's weekly visits with them. As I looked at the pictures I first saw his biological fathers face. Julian did look just like him. Their eyes were the same deep brown and as both he and Julian looked into the camera they both had a haunted stare and neither of them smiled. Julian's biological mother looked so young. She was full of smiles and in every picture she didn't take her eyes of Julian. During my analysis I was looking for any clue about how this case would go. Did they seem to love him? How was he reacting to them? Did they really break his arm and two of his legs? And of coarse none of those answers were in those three photos I was given.

Belinda finally interrupted my search for clues and asked if I was okay. I told her it was weird to finally see them but that I was glad she shared the information with us. I asked her if she knew anything about the case. She told me that Betty Rose hadn't given her an update in awhile but she did know that when she went in to take the pictures for us during visitation that day that Julian wasn't a happy baby. She explained that he was very fussy and that the bios didn't seem to know how to calm him down. I thought back to the visit where I was told that they didn't have food for him and I began to tell Belinda the story of that day. My frustration grew the more I talked. I was struggling with the fact that they didn't feed him that day. I was worrying about the fact that he cried the entire visit and nobody knew how to help him. It broke my heart to know that when I dropped him off at these visits he was just being watched like an animal in the zoo but he wasn't really being cared for because they wanted to see if the bios could figure out how to care for him. When I was done with the story I asked her, "What do these parents have to do to get him back? Is that really a possibility?"

She saw the pain in my eyes. She knew that each day we spent with Julian meant one more day that he took a piece of our hearts. And each day we didn't know the outcome of this story just caused more pain. She said, "I know you love him and your doing amazing things for him. I will work on finding out what is happening with this case and you just keep praying for him to take your last name." And so with her words and her pictures I said good bye to her that day and once again had to trust that someone with more power than I was going to do the right thing by Julian.