At 10:30 p.m., the phone rang and woke Tracy Parsons from a sound sleep. She thought the call must be from her husband, Glen, a truck driver who was on the road that night. But caller ID read “Department of Children’s Services.” The Parsons had recently been certified as foster parents through DCS and were waiting for the call. But what Tracy heard took her by surprise: Four siblings were in need of a home.
“I remember getting the call and thinking, four?! But the other foster families contacted before us hadn’t been able to commit to keeping them together, and I just couldn’t tell them no.”
When Tracy and Glen got married in 1995, they knew they wanted children. But after trying to conceive for a couple of years, they adopted the philosophy, “If it happens, it happens.” Meanwhile, they decided to become foster parents.
For children whose families are unable or unwilling to care for them, foster parents provide a supportive home until the problems can be resolved.
“I had a childhood friend in Michigan who grew up in a foster home,” Parsons said. “I learned from knowing her what a need there is for these children to be given a chance and to have a good home.”
So when the call came, Tracy contacted Glen and then enlisted the help of her mother-in-law, who lived right next door in Lawrenceburg. She headed off to a Shell gas station in Fayetteville, Tenn., on a cold, snowy January night to pick up the children and begin her journey as a foster parent.
By 2 a.m., she and her mother-in-law had the children home, bathed, fed and lined up on the couch – 6-year-old twins Vanessa and Victoria, 2-year-old Carlos and 16-month-old Hunter. “I brought our dogs out to meet them one by one, and that put life into those little faces. Then I said, ‘OK, time for bed.’”
Glen arrived home the next day. “[rquote]He had left the house with no children and came home to four. And that’s the way it’s been ever since. Our lives changed that night.”[/rquote]
Three years later, in May 2010, the Parsons legally adopted the children, forming one big happy family – mom and dad, four children, four dogs and three cats. They live in Culleoka, Tenn., just down the road from Columbia. Glen stays home to take care of the children, and Tracy works in Vanderbilt’s Lymphedema Clinic, where she has been a patient service representative since May 2011.
“Not all foster stories are going to be like ours,” she said. “For us to be the children’s first foster home, and for them to be our first foster children – it’s rare for it to work out so well. But if you have the patience and can deal with the ups and downs, it can work.
“When I tell people about them,” Parsons said, “I say that I can’t wait to see what they do with their lives and how they use their experiences. And I get to be there to watch them succeed.”
written by Donna B. Smith