Common ground

Iknow a man involved in the foster-care system. A few years ago, he sat in the very back of a simple courtroom listening intently to a judge’s booming voice. Filling every corner of the room and echoing off the wood panel walls, the voice commanded respect. But it was awful.

The judge held his forehead as he read the charges against the woman in front of him. She had neglected her children, put them in peril. A decade ago, that very judge had severed parental rights for her older kids and placed them in foster homes. He was about to do it again for her youngest child.

The charges were hard to hear. A lawyer turned away when the judge held up accompanying photos. The woman wasn’t a bad person, the judge said, but she had been given services and opportunity to get her act together. She hadn’t.

As procedural phrases filled the air, the man, who had followed his wife’s lead in becoming a foster parent, looked out a second-floor window.

Cars passed by on the sunfilled street, trees swayed in soundless wind.

The man thought about a conversation he’d had with a woman a couple of years before that day in the courtroom. The woman had spoken with compassionate authority. “You know, if you want to see complete desegregation, go watch children at a day care. They don’t care about each other’s family income, family heritage, or the color of their skin. They simply want friends who will play and enjoy the moment.”

He nodded. It made perfect sense. “Then, the world gets hold of them. They’re conditioned to judge, to develop biases based on socioeconomic status, differences, and race. Somehow, we adults do that to them. Somehow, we adults have to break that cycle.”

The woman was a diversity and inclusion specialist and had worked for various national corporations in that capacity. She knew the deep and between-the-lines aspects of living in a diverse society.

The man nodded again. Adults project their biases, unintended or not, on their children. Harmful cycles continue. Then, you end up in a courtroom.

The judge’s voice rose and the man snapped back to the moment when he heard the words, “Parental rights are severed. Bailiff, escort the defendant out of the courtroom.” A big uniformed man stood by the woman as she began sobbing. The bailiff was gentle, taking the woman’s elbow and holding open the door for her. They exited and heavy springs closed the door silently as if it were the entrance to a chapel.

When the proceedings were over, the foster parents stood. The mother’s child had been with them for over a year and they knew the child’s final visit with her mother would be devastating. The man and his wife tried not to look at each other as they exited behind lawyers chatting seriously about details.

It was late. The courthouse had closed. They walked down scuffed stairs, their heels echoing off concrete-block walls and metal handrails. The man fidgeted with his blazer buttons. Descending to the courthouse’s main entry, he noted it was empty except for a single figure sitting on a large windowsill, holding her legs to her chest, eyes planted firmly on her knees. It was the mother.

Because he’s a man, he looked for an escape route, another door to make a quick exit and avoid the discomfort of walking past the woman who had just lost her child. He quietly motioned to a side door, and turned to his wife, seeing only a blue blur.

His wife strode directly to the grieving mother and they embraced. They held each other tightly and securely as the grieving mother bawled. The wife gently stroked the mother’s hair and whispered things the man couldn’t hear.

The man stood in the background like an idiot. Finally, he overcame his shame and walked toward the scene. He heard his wife say, “Whether she’s with us another day or another year or a lifetime, we will take care of her and we will make sure she knows you. We will make sure she knows the good about her momma.”

The mother answered through her tears with part surrender, part command, “Take care of her, take care of her, take care of her …”

After several minutes of the man staring at his shifting feet, the mother broke contact with the wife and embraced him. She hugged him strongly and smiled. He still felt like an idiot, the embrace stealing any words lingering in his throat.

As the man led his wife to their car, he looked back once more at the figure sitting on the windowsill. She raised her hand in a slight wave. He waved back. He got into the car and pulled the seatbelt across a wet map of tears still dark on his shoulder.

The nation, primed now for meaningful change, should hear the words of the diversity specialist who spoke truth to the fact that children are not born with racism or hatred. They learn it. In order to fix the disparate opportunities, the inequality of chance that permeates so many everyday lives, we can boil down any potential progress to finding allies and common ground.

Maybe we could do what those two women did in that courthouse on that fall afternoon. Maybe we could frame the scene of two strangers who, despite fleeting advances and devastating failures, good intentions and wrong actions, found similarities. Like them, maybe we can see a bit of ourselves in one another.

Maybe we could remember the scene of two mothers who made a vow that a child would not be taught hate, but would learn something redemptive. The child would learn the immense power in a simple bond born of common ground.