The Ross Family
Our parents were dismayed and perplexed when my husband Andy and I announced that we were “taking in” a foster child of 15. At 27 and 28 we were a young, professional, childless couple with a bright future ahead of us. Why would we saddle ourselves with this, they wondered?
That was the least of it. We were a Protestant German (me), Italian Catholic (him) couple and at the time of our marriage in 1967 our parents had rolled their eyes and made some empty threats that they were still recovering from when we made the announcement about Mitch in 1971. Although we did not announce this, for some time I had been a nurturer looking for a child. When Mitch arrived on the scene he was with us in part because he had pleaded with his social worker that he just wanted to find out what it was like to live in a real family. The stage was set. He brought to our struggling-to-be-middle class family the mindset of his early life as an only child in a privileged urban Jewish family. He came to us straight from a 6-month stay in a local hospital psychiatric unit. Our first act as a family was to agree to redecorate his bedroom, his request being to paint the walls, after steaming off the old wallpaper, flag blue, the ceiling blood red, and buying matching striped linens. It was only much later that he admitted that he was color blind.
We settled into a routine. Andy and I went to work and Mitch went to school. Months went by. The therapist had predicted that after a few weeks or months Mitch would move from our home to a residential treatment center, his needs being too great to manage in a foster home. We were on our own swimming against the current, but unaware. Andy was working two jobs, so Mitch and I spent many evenings alone together, moving from awkward silences to comfortable congeniality, often sharing Mitch’s favorite meal of canned corned beef hash and scrambled eggs as he gradually revealed his painful secrets. His friends were also outsiders. His favorite group activity proved to be a kazoo band that practiced at our house.
We celebrated holidays, careful to choose a gift in a price range that its loss wouldn’t trouble us. Mitch often gave away, left behind, or “lost” personal possessions. We were a motley crew. Mitch sat in Andy’s lounger in the living room watching studio wrestling and game shows on TV, while I preferred movies and Masterpiece Theatre. His favorite game with Andy was to win “a night’s service”. The loser would meet any request of the winner for the entire evening – “get me a coke”, “wash my jeans”, etc. Then he found a job at a neighborhood gas station. Andy and I wore suits to work while Mitch wore Andy’s old Army boots, a fatigue jacket and his work uniform. I was in graduate school, Andy was taking classes for his PhD, and Mitch started stealing absence notifications from school out of the mailbox. As Andy and I dozed in front of the late night news the tow truck light would shine into our living room window, beckoning him to go to work. His late, erratic work hours brought me many tear filled, sleepless nights of worry.
One afternoon as Mitch stormed out of the house following a family argument I remember striding to the porch and screaming that he’d better be back home in time for dinner. We had arrived as a family. Days and months had turned into a year. The psychiatrist confided in Andy that Mitch would never have the capacity to form a lasting relationship with anyone. This was after months of weekly sessions when Mitch sat silently in his office with his arms crossed. Mitch and I shared confidences daily.
We made a trip to Ontario, Canada, and a camping trip to Florida, complete with fishing in the Everglades. Andy and Mitch made bets on the day that our daughter Katie would be born. After her birth he became helpful, even making a grilled cheese sandwich with a slice of cheese between two toasted slices of bread. Privacy with a teen aged son had become less awkward, but how could I nurse a baby with a teenager in the house? We managed a trip to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the experimental aircraft show to indulge Mitch’s love of planes. One memorable family activity was my brother’s wedding. In preparation we found Mitch a denim suit with matching denim hat. We decided the event required Mitch to have his hair cut to chin length. The barber complained that he had to wash Mitch’s hair three times and that he broke several combs taming Mitch’s unruly locks. Mitch’s wet hair following showers had convinced us he was washing everything! Wrong.
Then Andy’s brother Vince, also 16 and struggling not to attend school moved in. Now we had two tow truckers working night shifts. We needed weekly family meetings to organize our lives. Neither was attending school, and finally Andy and Mitch’s dad agreed to allow him to drop out of school. More tearful nights for me. Greasy hands, filthy work clothes, crazy work schedules, tow truck emergencies, diapers, graduate school; we just took it one day at a time. We heard stories of how the two of them were challenging trucker codes of ethics, pulling stunts with burley, street-wise men. Finally Mitch was turning 18, was working full time, and school was history for him. I was ready to return full time to complete my graduate program, Andy was still taking classes. We agreed that it was time for Mitch to move out on his own. With the traditional ambivalence of his age and maturity level he did it in the middle of the night.
Following that, Andy couldn’t understand why Mitch still returned home to do laundry, raid the refrigerator following a dinner invitation, and load firewood into the trunk of his car when he had not paid his utility bill. He had inherited a substantial amount of money, but “got rid of it” he told people, probably due to his plane trips to Chicago for Uno’s pizza and the fully equipped tow truck he abandoned in an airport parking lot to fly home. His dad would call to check on his status, but Mitch still wasn’t talking much to him, and not visiting at all. Then came Missy. Our nice Jewish boy was marrying a Catholic girl from a family of 12. He drove his 18 wheeler down the quiet tree lined street in small town Pennsylvania to introduce her to my parents. We gave the rehearsal dinner, stood up for them at the wedding, and received his dad and step mom in the receiving line. By that time Katie was 7 and her sister Emily 3. Both Andy and I had completed our graduate programs. Mitch was still in the tow truck business. With that phase of our lives behind us, and Mitch married and now a father himself, we were leaving Cleveland. It would be hard to keep in touch from Iowa, our new home, and we expected our relationship with Mitch to diminish over time and space. That was not to be the case.
Instead of drifting farther apart, Mitch became closer to our family in an adult way, and grew more involved with his dad. We had opened our hearts to him, and he expanded our spirit and our horizon. He would surprise us with visits, bringing his daughter and complaining when she had forgotten to brush her teeth or her hair. Long walks and supportive phone calls helped him mend from his broken marriage. He has translated his lifelong love of planes into jobs that combine trucking in some form with required flights. The bonus for us is that we often consult him regarding flight questions, and sometimes he will surprise us by upgrading us to first class for our trip. When Emily offered to help him and his girlfriend Nancy paint their new home, he paid her plane fare for her to Cleveland. He still takes fishing trips, and sometimes our daughter Emily goes along to Florida with Nancy and he. Our son-in-law Michael invited him to be a groomsman in their wedding. After the wedding Mitch and Nancy drove to North Carolina to transport Michael’s old car from their driveway to Cleveland. He has brokered his experiences on the road into managing a fleet of trucks and naming the company he owns jointly with his dad “Ross-way Trucking”.
Generally I have learned to accept things as they are, but when I think about our relationship I am awestruck and inspired. Despite the different paths our lives have taken, somehow they have become more intertwined. We now live in Baltimore, where I supervise a treatment foster care program and Andy oversees schools for children with emotional disabilities. Mitch still lives in Cleveland near the end of the airport runway so he can see his beloved planes. Despite the time and space we are family. He and Vince, Andy’s brother, are brothers.
Mitch and his dad have reconciled in the past fifteen years to the extent that they talk on the phone with some regularity and the two couples get together every few months for dinner. They all live in Cleveland. Each has learned to accept the other for who he is, neither perfect. They visit with Mitch’s daughter and her son, and Mitch is amazed that Damon loves motorcycles like his grandfather does. Somehow, in the grittiness that is life, and over time, one can have faith in and believe in human beings and how relationships are built on challenge and struggle. We have simply been fortunate to live long enough to see the benefits of this.
In January much of the Ross clan joined Mitch’s friends and family in Cleveland for a surprise 50th birthday party, an event planned by Nancy. I presented Mitch with a photo album of our memories of him and some of our shared experiences. We also pored over Gelfand family albums and heard stories from his cousins about Mitch’s early years. The stories came together.