I have thought hard about how to begin this post, as it is not really personal finance related, even though it is very personal and finances, as part of our American class system, do play a part. This is a post about our friend Russ, who died a few years ago of cancer. He was one of those rare friends who was in our lives for a reason, a season, and a lifetime, all at once.

 

How to Begin

I grew up solidly middle class. Even when my mother and I lived in low income housing, we were solidly middle class in our outlook on life. My mother made sure the low income housing she applied for was zoned for the best school in the district. I never lacked for anything I needed, and I was still required to save a percentage of all my babysitting money.

For most of my life, everyone I knew was also solidly middle classAmericanain their values and outlook on life. We held prejudices against people not with different skin colors but who made choices that did not make sense to us- choices where it seemed there was an obvious right answer, and they had chosen the wrong one.

I had these prejudices without even realizing it, mostly because I never really got to know anyone who was different from me in that sense.

Then I met Russ.

I have mentioned before that I am a gamer. I started dating a guy who was running a WarHammer FRP campaign, and I was invited to join the game. Russ was one of the other players.

 

An Alien Life

I was in my early 20s. Russ was in his late 30s. I was in college, dating the son of one of my former high school teachers, who also had a degree. I’m not certain Russ had even finished high school. He worked, intermittently, in construction.

I hated the taste of alcohol, had never tried any drugs. Russ was a former addict of multiple substances.

He was one of the most intelligent and self aware people I had ever met. During the course of that campaign, and subsequent ones with the same characters, our characters became very close and so did we.

I still remember the first real conversation we had, just the two of us. We were sitting outside the apartment where we held the game. I, at least, was waiting for the boyfriend to come pick me up. I do not remember why. I do not remember if Russ was waiting for him, too, or if he was just waiting with me. But we had over half an hour to talk.

I learned about his kids- his two daughters and his ex-wife’s older son, who he considered his, despite there being no blood relation. I learned that he and his wife had used together and struggled to get clean together and realized that being together was the main thing preventing them doing so.

They divorced. They both did their best to stay clean. They both sometimes failed. For Russ, this meant that he was not always working, that he did not always have a stable place to stay. It meant that he was not in a position in his life to have custody of his daughters, not even partial.

For his wife, it meant that sometimes she dated men who used, and she would start using again, too. When that happened, Russ would call child protective services himself. His girls would be taken away, put in foster care, and that sometimes meant he did not even get visitation, as the courts looked at the situation and worked with the family to make a plan that would allow the girls to return home.

 

Love and Faith

Russ loved his daughters absolutely. They were his world. He believed them capable of taking over the world or doing anything they put their minds to. He believed that until his dying day.

Russ did not just believe in his family. He believed in his friends. He would sometimes argue with me because he felt I dreamed too small.

When most kids watch the Oscars or the Grammys or any awards shows, they dream of being up there accepting the award. I never did. I always dreamed of being the first person thanked.

Russ understood that, but he also thought I needed to dream of my own spotlight. He would push, he would challenge.

And not just me. When C decided to take the MENSA test, timing dictated that he take it in the middle of a convention, where he was seeing Russ for the first time in years. Russ went with him and took the test, too, just as moral support.

When we were getting married, he got an invitation. He was not able to make it, but he sent a note saying that he was going to hold on to it and send our announcement back to us as a ten year anniversary gift. Because he believed in us and people, and he believed in us as a couple.

Russ died shortly after our 6^th wedding anniversary.

I am FaceBook friends with his oldest daughter, who was 8 when I met her. She is now in her 20s, an amazing young woman, who could probably take over the world if she wanted to.

 

A Different Perspective

We have been doing a lot of training for the adoption. There is a lot of talk about why kids end up in foster care, and there is a frustration among potential foster and adoptive parents when it comes to kids who are in and out of the system. There is anger and a belief that the state should be more active in removing parental rights.

I understand the emotion behind the arguments. I get them completely. I would feel the exact same way if I had never known Russ, never seen him with his daughters. There is no way you could ever convince me that the state should have had power to remove his parental rights, even if he was not able to have custody. (And he did have custody of his older daughter during her teen years.)

None of us are perfect parents. Some are less perfect than others. But I hope, very much, that I can be as good of a parent as Russ was in the ways that are truly important. That no matter what, I will believe in my children; that no matter how hard it is for me, I will always do the right thing for them, and that I will be able to raise them to be strong, independent thinkers who know that someone thinks they are capable of taking over the world.