Curtain

For some time now, we've been sharing our home with two new siblings. Well, they're not new siblings to each other, of course. They're new to us.

They are a sister and a brother who face the extinction of their family. The dismantling of what they have come to know as their family, anyway: a fractured thing, broken to pieces by the carelessness of those who call themselves parents.

I won't be judgmental, though. It's not my place. I'm sure - in fact I know - that this is painful for everyone and that they are fully aware of what they've done. I need not go on about it.

We're not sure where this is headed. We're not sure where we've come from, either. We've endured six months of disorienting confusion as if being led around a carnival fun house with blindfolds. If this were a staged drama, it would resemble Six Characters In Search of an Author.

The expurgated synopsis (sorry theater folks for having to do this) goes something like this: six strangers show up at the rehearsal of a play in search of an author to finish their stories after having been abandoned by their previous author and left incomplete. In a nutshell, it's a wonky story about abandonment, the ego and the nature of reality. The kind of play they'd have you dissect in high school English that would force you to hate theater forever.

The story of our current sibling visitors is precisely that: a wonky story about abandonment, the ego and the nature of reality. The stage being the Maine courts, our house, DHHS offices. The characters being innocent children, well-meaning bureaucrats, duplicitous biological family members, and a couple of crazy folks. You can guess which roles Corrine and I landed.

It's almost a tragicomedy. It would be a full-out farce if children's lives weren't the center of the plot.

So we're waiting. In a week or so a judge will decided how this stage of the children's lives will end, and in which direction their new story will take. Will he decide to send them back to their original author, or to someone else?

We don't know. We have no read on this at all. And no say.