“Is your name Mommie?”

By Donna Rotsch



          My girlfriends and I met regularly at noon on Saturdays for the matinee at the Strand. As we munched our 10-cent popcorn and laughed and cried with our heroes and heroines, we dreamed of growing up and having marvelous lives of our own. The afternoon I watched Myrna Loy play the mother of 12 in Cheaper by the Dozen, I knew that was for me! An image of a rambling house in the country with frolicking children spilling out was indelibly printed on my mind.

          The years came and went, but no Prince Charming appeared. I graduated from college and drifted from one job to another, all the while wishing I were a homemaker. At the age of twenty-nine, I went to a revival meeting in East Los Angeles. It was there I found Christ.

          A year later I met the man I thought was my prince and we married.  Four children were born to us over the next ten years, even though my dream took on the shades of a nightmare and my marriage crumbled. We were married seventeen years before we parted for the last time.

           Packing our most treasured belongings in two cardboard boxes each, the children and I and my eighty-year invalid mother boarded a bus and traveled 2,000 miles from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Our family of six settled into a big old, three-story brick home with ten-foot ceilings.  It was my plan to care for my mother while becoming a foster parent and opening a small private school in two large rooms of the house.

           The school never materialized but I was approved as a single foster parent. At the end of the summer, seventeen-year old Leann arrived.  She was to live with us while she finished her senior year in high school.  Her two-year old son lived with his grandmother in a neighboring town.

          Leann became fast friends with my sixteen-year old daughter, Melissa, sharing clothes and secrets. She was so grateful to be in our home and often told Melissa that she was lucky to have been born into our family.
     

          Over the next few months, Melissa’s attitude toward me grew hostile and she blamed me for things that had happened in the past. Her grades plummeted. We had tried Christian schools when she was unhappy in the public schools. Now we were home schooling. I encouraged her interest in singing, dance, theater… Nothing made Melissa happy for very long. Doctors said that her physical problems we caused by stress and buried anger.

          During this time, Jack, a six-foot-tall thirteen year-old joined our family. These foster children had been through some tough times and they loved the home Melissa was coming to hate. Her outbursts destroyed the peaceful, harmonious atmosphere I was working to create. I told Jack and Leann that this was unfair to them and I thought we should have them placed in other homes. Since Melissa’s rage was directed only at me, they wanted to stay with us.
   

          It was Melissa that decided she’d had enough and called friends in Arizona asking to live with them. That wasn’t possible but arrangements were made with a pastor’s family there to take her in for the remainder of the school year. At the bus stop, Melissa voiced second thoughts about leaving but she went.
    

          It was hard to let Melissa go. Only sixteen… kids need so much… But how could I insist she stay where she didn’t want to be? Knowing what I did about runaways, I’d cautioned my children never to do that. I’d promised them that if they didn’t want to live with me I’d find them a place where they’d be happier. Right then, I didn’t know where I’d gone wrong. I had taught them all to know Jesus, provided all that I could materially with His help, and loved them as unselfishly as I knew how.

           For years, I’d shared my home with the homeless and now that Melissa had chosen to leave us, someone was providing a home for her.  Every Friday night I called and we’d talk. I sent extra money when she needed a gown to wear to her first prom and didn’t tell her I cried because I’d missed it. As Spring turned into sweltering summer in the desert, the last of the bitterness in Melissa’s heart melted and she returned to us.


            To date, as a single Mom, I have had forty-five foster children. These, with my four, far exceeds my dream of a dozen children.

            As I came downstairs at church the other day a child looked up at me and asked, “Is your name, Mommie?” I had to smile as I said, “Yes, dear, it is.”