The CASA Connection
Learn more about what’s going on at CASA Project Worcester County, in our Central MA communities, and with our partners by reading our monthly blog! Have a topic you’d like us to write about or want to be considered for a featured spot? Email communications@thecasaproject.org!
So Glad We Found You
I spent the first six years of my life in foster care in San Francisco before being adopted by Larry and Gina Bauman.
It was Spring 1971 when they visited the Bay Area for a work-related conference. They were from far away Michigan where I had relatives who’d asked them to check in on me. I greeted them with my best smile, mile-a-minute chatter, and walked them several blocks uphill to show off my kindergarten. They claim it was love at first sight.
By December, I was living with the Baumans, adapting to snow, three new blue-eyed brothers, and my favorite new sibling, Winnie the family dog who glued herself to my side and slept on my bed. Like me, she was the only girl in a family of six, with big brown eyes and I adored her. My Emotional Support Animal before it was a thing.
That first summer, I sat on the back porch with my dad. It was just dark, and we were out of breath from chasing what seemed like hundreds of fireflies around the yard. He turned to me and said, “Your mom and I are so glad we found you. I love you – you know that don’t you?” I side-eyed him and answered truthfully. “I’m not so sure about that.”
With time, I was sure and “I’m not so sure about that” became a family joke, but my dad never stopped telling me – on birthdays, holidays, at graduations, over long-distance calls, during our father-daughter wedding dance, meeting my newborns, “I love you”, “we’re proud of you” and “we’re so glad we found you.”
I knew my dad loved me with all his heart, but the other part of his refrain started bothering me. After all these decades, was I still an anomaly? Like that song I hated as a child. “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn’t the same…” I hid it well, but each time my dad referred to adopting me it stung a little.
Then, this past March I traveled to see my parents. I visit them frequently, but this time was different. My dad at 89 was increasingly confused and had fallen and fractured his pelvis. He’d been in a rehab facility for a couple of weeks, with my 87-year-old mom visiting daily.
“My darling, my dear, my precious, my pet,” Dad greeted me from a recliner, oxygen tubes snaking from his nostrils. The familiar endearments warmed my heart. We held hands, talked a while, and then my mom and I wheeled him to the dining area for lunch. “I love you, honey,” he said with a glint in his eye, “I’m so glad we found you.” I nodded, hugging him.
For the next few days our visits were similar, my dad feeling a little better, then a little worse. He couldn’t walk on his own, he became tired of trying, and it was becoming more likely he wouldn’t regain the strength to return home. On the fourth night at what I was starting to think of as “Mom’s house”, I climbed into the same four poster bed I’d slept in as a child and sobbed.
I cried for my mom and dad, the heartbreak of their separation, this new living situation that was unwanted but necessary, the absurdity of leaving your house one day and never returning to the place, people, and rhythms you are used to – not unlike getting adopted to a new home as a six-year-old, it occurred to me. I thought of my dad’s ongoing assurances of love and pride, his “so glad we found you.” I sat up in surprise. Maybe his mantra wasn’t about me being adopted, but about him adopting me.
In 1971 my dad and my mom were a young couple living in a small town in Michigan with three sons ages 4, 11, and 12, one income, and not at all well-off. They met 6-year-old me for a few hours, then made the unplanned, life-rocking, brave, and logistically and financially challenging decision to adopt me from halfway across the country. They did it all with immense grace. Why shouldn’t my dad recall and feel proud of this amazing accomplishment?
Our visit the next day, the last before my return to Massachusetts, was great. My dad held my hand, made jokes, waved to other folks getting wheeled to lunch, and asked me to bring my husband and girls to visit soon. When it was time to say our goodbyes, he said he loved me. I leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head. “I love you, too, Dad,” I said. “I’m so glad you found me.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jena Bauman Adams is on CASA Project Worcester County’s Board of Directors and was a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer for six years. She has lived in Massachusetts since 2006 with her spouse Doug and their two daughters, now 21 and 23. Jena is passionate about CASA’s mission, human rights, and volunteering. She has a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan and has worked for three decades focused on eliminating health inequities and improving healthcare for our most vulnerable community members. Jena is the Senior Vice President at the Center for Health Impact in Worcester. She wishes to express her gratitude to foster and adoptive parents everywhere!
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