Lisa Fuld and Dawn Henning: We Are Family
family

 

Dawn Henning, age 8, wasn't accustomed to hospitality. She sat next to her sister Tammy, 5, scrutinizing the welcoming smiles of her hosts, the Shickmans, and inhaling the unmistakable aroma of pizza. Just today, Tammy and Dawn had trudged into their new foster family's house in Patchogue, New York, hauling two black garbage bags filled with their clothes and toys. The delicious dinner was meant to celebrate the Hennings' arrival at the Shickman household, but Dawn could not relax. She remembered being taken from her parents' abusive home, and living with several foster families. She was not ready to trust anyone--not yet. Carefully, she eyed each person as they bit into the steaming pizza. Once Dawn felt satisfied that the food was not poisoned, she would eat.

"I was scared," remembers Dawn now. "We never knew how long we would be welcome in a foster home, and no one explained why we were kicked out of others. None of our previous foster families were Jewish, but that didn't matter because we didn't know we were Jewish."

When Bernard and Elaine Shickman applied to be foster parents through Ohel Children's Home and Family Services in Brooklyn, New York, they had no idea how the experience would change their lives--and the lives of the children they welcomed into their home. Faced with the challenge of raising children from difficult family circumstances, they responded by opening their doors and their hearts, in much the same way that Avraham welcomed guests into his tent (Bereishit 18:1-8). One sign of the Shickmans' success is in the way their foster children now relate to them: Today, Dawn simply refers to them as her mom and dad. "They are not my foster parents," she insists. "They are my parents."

The family's growth also indicates its achievement. Several years after Tammy and Dawn's arrival, two of their biological siblings, Penina and Tzvi, moved into the Shickman home. Not long afterwards, they were joined by another foster child, Leah. All told, the Shickmans welcomed five foster children into their home, along with their own two biological children, Lisa and Gary.

Being a foster child is not easy, says Dawn. "You are taken from your home, you have no idea why your parents fought, what went wrong, and whether it was your fault," she explains. "You go to different homes and different schools, and don't know where your siblings are going. It's almost like a different life every day."

The Hennings faced the additional challenge of adjusting to the Shickmans' observant Jewish home. "My [foster] mother said I had a very bad reaction," Dawn laughs. "She said my exact words were, 'I'm Irish, and I'm Christian, and I don't know what I'm doing here!' It was hard."

Yet Dawn has fond memories of how she came to love Judaism. "Every Shabbat, my father would sit me on his lap for Ein Kelokeinu and sing it with me," she recalls. "I only knew that the words of the song ended with 'nu,' but it was really special. It made me want to learn more." Her foster parents, adds Dawn, never forced them to accept their newfound heritage. "They would always explain things," she says.

Lisa Shickman Fuld, who was 14 when the girls arrived, remembers helping her new foster siblings get settled. "We took them shopping and bought them hair bows and cute outfits," Lisa recalls. "I was very excited about it."

In time, says Lisa, it was hard to imagine that Dawn and Tammy weren't always part of the family. "They fit in," she notes. "It was never that they were foster and we were not, or we got something and they did not. It was as if they were always there."

The welcoming atmosphere in the Shickman home had a profound effect on the girls' lives. Today, Lisa works with developmentally disabled adults, is married, and is the mother of three boys, ages 2 to 6. She and her husband just applied to be foster parents, a step that she describes as completely natural. "I think a young child would fit in great in my family," she explains.

And she knows that welcoming others into the home is not a difficult task. "If everyone treats people as part of the family right away," she notes, "it makes things easy."

Dawn works at Bais Ezra--an Ohel program for the developmentally disabled--and speaks regularly to foster parents and children. She created a publication called Voices, written by foster kids to give them a sense of belonging.

She is positive about her foster care experience and is grateful for the events that ultimately brought her to the Shickmans' home. "If this had to happen to me again," she insists, "I would want it the same way. It was scary, but the most rewarding part was getting the family that I deserved."

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