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On Monday, a mother in northern Utah is expected to stand before a juvenile court judge and relinquish parental rights to her 4-year-old and 7-year-old daughters.
Before that happens, the foster mother who has been caring for the little girls and plans to adopt them will share her Mother's Day with the biological mother.
"It's her last time to be mom," said Suzanne Larson. "It's Mother's Day and she should have a chance to say goodbye to her kids."
The profound act of kindness is typical of Larson's nature, says husband Richard. "She's been like this ever since I've known her," he said, explaining that the couple met when she was 13 and he was 17.
Larson said she believes that on Mother's Day, mothers should honor their children and be grateful for the opportunity to be moms.
It's understandable that a 47-year-old woman who is the mother of 18 children — 10 of whom are living with her and her husband — would want to reach out to another mother.
But it is more difficult to comprehend how Larson, who experienced years of neglect and abuse at the hands of her parents — and spent time in foster care — became a nurturing and effective parent.
Except for a kindly maternal grandmother, Larson had no positive role models to pattern her own parenting.
Dad was a drinker and her mother was mentally ill. When Larson's baby sister was born, their mother neglected the infant because she didn't "like her."
"The only way she managed to survive in that house was that I would sneak her food," Larson said.
Larson, then just 4 ½ years old, would pick berries and feed them to the baby, taking care not to leave a stain so her mother wouldn't know. She also drew water from the storm sewer behind the house to give her baby sister something to drink.
Five chaotic years later, Larson's father split from her mother. He sought custody of the girls, which was highly unusual in their small rural Mississippi town. At the time, the law presumed that children would fare better with their mothers if the parents divorced. Larson's father had to establish that he was the fitter parent by documenting his wife's abuse of the children.
In December 1973, Larson's father moved his daughters to Utah to hide from their mother and attempt a fresh start.
"We lived in a camp trailer at an RV place in Bountiful so she couldn't find us," Larson said.
In the years that followed, Larson's father remarried. "My stepmom took over where my mother left off. She was young and didn't particularly care for me and my sister," she said.
At 14, Larson ended up in foster care. Her mother was allowed unsupervised visits. "On one visit, she grabbed me and took off with me to Texas," she said.
It was not a happy reunion. Her mother's bipolar disorder had worsened and Larson was essentially on her own.
"I worked graveyards at Sambo's restaurant and went to school during the day. I had a little apartment that I paid for. That was my life," she said.
Larson said she believes her inner strength had resulted from surviving her mother's abuse. She was perhaps more driven by the outrage she felt when her mother abused her little sister.
"That's what made me strong. If I had survived that, nothing was going to get me down at 14," she said.
A pregnant Larson married at age 16 but the marriage was short lived.
At 18, she married a man who was several years older than she was.
When the couple was living in Florida, she learned through a news report that 525 children in state custody were available for adoption.
"I was looking at all of the things in my house. How can I have things and these kids don't have a mom?" she said. At age 23, she adopted a 14-year-old.
As she explained to her then-husband, "I'm not 5 any more. I can make a difference so let's go," she said.
Over the years, she has been mom to 18 children, 12 of whom were adopted, one stepchild, three biological children and the two foster daughters she and Richard plan to adopt later this year.
While most people mirror the parenting they received, "I hope with me it ended up being exactly the opposite," she said.
Bonnie L. Peters, executive director of the Family Support Center, says parents who were abused and neglected as children are not destined to be bad parents themselves.
"We tend to mimic what our parents did. A lot of the time, many times, that parenting is not healthy parenting. There is abuse that can and does happen. That's not a death knell for that child as a parent, however," she said.
Parents can make deliberate choices to be better mothers and fathers by taking parenting classes and emulating the actions of extended family members or other positive adult role models. "We will parent as we were parented unless we do something to change those behaviors. We can do that. There is always another answer," Peters said.
Larson, who returned to Utah to get specialized health care for one of her children, has chosen a path of forgiveness and kindness. Although she and her mother were estranged much of her life, Larson took care of her the last year of her life.
She and her husband, Richard, who have been married 17 years, have dedicated themselves to caring for children whose childhoods have been marred by abuse, neglect, violence, substance abuse and other dysfunctions.
For all her sacrifices, one might expect that Larson would want to be showered with gifts and attention on Mother's Day.
Not so.
Larson said she believes that on Mother's Day, mothers should honor their children and be grateful for the opportunity to be moms.
"I think we need to stop and think how important they really are to us and not let that be routine. It should never be routine."
Email:mcortez@ksl.com
