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She still has not met Dan -- but she did meet her new grandmothers, when they appeared unexpectedly in Ann Arbor last month. They watched Jessica play, they bathed her. "They were nice," Roberta recalls, and she told Jessica to call them Grandma. As they were leaving, Roberta recalls, Cara's mother thanked her and said, "Take good care of our baby." "I said, 'Well, don't you think we've done a pretty good job in the last 2 1/2 years?' She just looked at me real funny and turned and walked away. It literally tore me to a million pieces. That she couldn't give me that much."
Both sets of parents now have three weeks to make their preparations. The DeBoers say they are setting up a college fund for Jessica and are trying to ensure that she will get continued psychological monitoring and support. Last Friday lawyers for the two couples met behind closed doors with Judge Ager to work out the details of the transfer. The arrangement remained private, but the meeting was more cordial than past sessions. "I think what is dramatic about today is we all turned our attention to an event we know is going to occur and we all now focused on what is going to make that easy for the child," said Marian Faupel, the Schmidts' attorney.
Two weeks ago, Cara Schmidt gave birth to a second daughter, Chloe, at the same Cedar Rapids hospital where Jessica was born. She and Dan are looking for a bigger house. On the door of their small corner white frame home in Blairstown, a sign with carefully drawn hearts announces WELCOME HOME BABY SCHMIDT. When Jessica joins them, she will have a new name -- Anna Lee Jacqueline Clausen Schmidt.
Though it is hard right now to imagine, in some ways Jessica is lucky. She has two families fighting passionately for the right to love and protect and raise her in their home. There are children lingering in foster care, or under the roofs of parents who abandoned them every way but physically years before, who would envy a child whose presence is so precious to those around her. But right now it is hard to feel anything for Jessica other than enormous sorrow, and hope that her own resilience and the devotion of so many who wish her well will give her the strength to cope.