Fourth Utne Reader Response

"My Grandmother's Peonies" by Michael Fox

In this article, the writer talks of his grandmother's legacy. Using her beloved peonies to represent and describe life, the author's use of analogy is vivid.

Fox writes that shrubs or perennials purchased from a greenhouse are somehow different and in a way inferior to those from a cutting, seedling, or mature plant that had belonged to a gardener of one's acquaintance. He talks of the peonies his mother transplanted from his grandmother's garden and the ground they came from as being from his own past. The greenhouse plants must be trained to behave in their newly planted environment while the transplanted cuttings are planted in a place of honor. The gardener takes care to arrange the environment to suit the plant as he and his mother did for the peonies by adding stone fences to compliment the flowers.

I can't help but compare the writer's descriptions between the less-valued greenhouse plants and the cherished seedlings from a loved one's garden, with the children I work with who are in foster care.

Children come into foster care much like the greenhouse plants and not from a loved one's garden. They are often seen as some how inferior to one's own genetic children. They are transplanted in a strange environment and rather than change the environment to help them grow, we expect them to adapt and fit into the established family.

Children who are the biological offspring have their environment changed to meet their needs. Nurseries are decorated and the clothing is brand new. Baby books, pictures, christenings, showers, and of course acceptance and unconditional love greet the long awaited blossom. They enjoy an honored place in the family while the foster child is always aware they somehow don't belong.

It takes a gardener of unique skill and talent to make a place for the greenhouse plant to grow and blossom. This is just as true for foster parents.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999