This is a post I wrote many months ago--February or March 2024--but never posted.
Since Dale's cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments, he has slowed down considerably, and I've been spending much more time at home. I miss our days of travel, of eating out, and simply going and doing all kinds of things. Many of these activities are still available to me but I feel the need to keep close to home. So, I've been getting bored with not much to do although I do keep busy. Something felt missing and I couldn't quite figure it out. So I started to pay attention to what might fill the void I was feeling, what might I do to feel more engaged with life in general, what good could I do to benefit myself and just maybe, help someone else on this journey through life. It came to me one day while reading the paper--an advertisement for hosting a foreign exchange student, an idea that had never once entered my mind. I thought about it a lot and contacted an organization that pairs host families with foreign exchange students. I made it perfectly clear that we were not a traditional American family, we were two elderly gay men with a dog and two cats. Surprisingly, the organization I contacted is very LGBTQ+ friendly with a strong belief and practice of embracing diversity, accepting people of all races, all cultures, all genders. This was news to me, so I moved forward with our application, still feeling very uncertain about all this but knowing that I was not yet making a committment but rather researching and learning about all that's involved. I latched on to AFS Intercultural Programs USA and put in my application. An extensive background check was performed, a home visit and interviews were conducted, and of course a mountain of paperwork, references required, and so on. After a while I began receiving bios of students from a variety of foreign countries, and clearly many were not a match but there were some that I thought might work. But then I received a bio from a young man from Thailand, and his writing was simply brilliant, funny, very frank and very interesting. How could a young man from Thailand have such mastery of the English language? I was more than intrigued and even though the organization seemed to be promoting other suggestions, I was subtly insistent that I wanted to keep the Thai student on the list of potential possibilities. And so it came to pass that we were approved to be his host family and he accepted us and we finally connected via Facebook, email, What's App, etc. He is with us now and we simply adore him. Somewhat unimaginable that a 16 year old heterosexual teenager would find us to be the near perfect host home for him and vice versa. We enrolled him in Dripping Springs High School and he says he loves it. He has now joined the local YMCA and is working on transforming his body as well as immersing himself in American culture. All of his holidays will be celebrated with us and our friends and family and he will not go home until the end of his 10 month tenure here with us. So far, the connection has been filled with intriguing coincidences. There is magic in the air now and I cannot imagine what it will be like when he leaves. Each moment is a joy, with of course all the expected sorrows and minor conflicts. Such is the way of engaging with others.
On December 13th, we were totally shocked to learn that for reasons not given, it was decided by his family (his parents, most likely his mother) that he was to be rehomed. Both Dale and I were in total shock about this and talked about how shocked and disappointment our student would be when he found out that this inexplicable decision had been made without any communication whatsoever with us about the how, when, where, or why of this. When I picked up our student after his gym class and told him that he would soon see that Dale and I were very sad for reasons we could discuss later, he let me know that he knew exactly what I was talking about. In other words, he was in on the behind our backs discussion about moving him to another, as yet undesignated, home. The organization that we worked with told me they had as yet found no family to host him. Why in the world would he be rehomed to another home that had not yet been found? Over and over again I heard that host families in the US were in extremely, unprecedented short supply. It has now been 6 weeks since he left and the mystery behind his leaving has been very slow to unfold and reveal itself as he and his family have communicated absolutely nothing to us about this decision, and the organization said that they could not overrule the legal parents. It can be best be understood by studying Mary Ainsworth's Attachment Theory, which has been proven over and over again to be a valid assessment of the various relationships between a child and his/her parents. In this case, his mother. If you imagine a triangle with three angles occupied by myself, our student, and his mother, and you are aware of the dynamic at play, it is easy to understand how and why this decision to rehome him occurred. Firstly, he and I formed a deep connection and a strong bond as a result of endless conversations and a wide range of activities. Additionally, we were able to provide him with things that were not possible for his mother. But far more importantly, his mother wanted to be an integral part of his experience and she happens to be a rather strong personality with a strong, 17 year old bond with her son, and she wants to be the one in charge of everything. This kind of connection between a mother and son is not unusual, but when a student becomes an exchange student and comes to live with a family in the US, that student is to immerse himself/herself in the American culture, become a member of the hosting family and their holiays, traditions, etc, and detach himself/herself from both his family and his country of origin. When I decided, with the support of the organization that his contact with his family was excessive and intrustive, and should be limited to about an hour or two a week, as is recommended by all foreign exchange organizations, everyone agreed with this. However, his mother continued to interact with him in various ways on social media platforms which he felt he needed to hide from us. In other words, he was being pulled in one direction by his controlling mother, and he was being pulled in another directions by me, and I did not want to engage with his mother as I found her personality to be quite distasteful--aggressive, passive-aggressive, narcissistic, controlling, and superficial. When our student interacted with his mother, which often got filmed and posted on social media by her, you could see her talking non-stop while he lay there looking like a young child whose duty it was to be totally obedient to his mother. He was being pulled apart by both myself and his mother. Basically, I wanted to be the sole parent for this 10 month period and I could not find the energy or the desire to have his mother along for the ride. It is really quite sad and tragic all around. All of this pulling had a negative effect on our student causing him a great deal of anxiety, forcing him to chose his mother or me, as the circumstances would not allow for both so long as he was under my guardianship. And of course he chose his mother, as he really had no choice. Fortunately he was able to be rehomed through a high school friend and gets to finish out the year here in Dripping Springs with a very nice family, and for this I am greatly relieved and happy for him. Unfortunately, all this and because of my profound attachment to him, forced me to go to inappropriate lengths to try and get him back. I simply could not let go without a fight and for all that I am truly sorry, but my actions were coming from my heart. He has now severed all communication between us which is actually for the best, and I am working with a highly qualified therapist who is helping me understand all this and the next step will be for me to learn to let go. I have experienced weeks of deep sadness and grief. This is good. I have learned a lot about others and myself.
