Great Weekend

This past weekend was a great weekend. The girl I had with me was such a sweet and wonderful girl. I was a little apprehensive about taking in a teenager, especially since I was told she was going to respite due to fighting with her sister, but we ended up being just two little kindred spirits! I explained to the case worker and the foster mom that I had plans to attend the Arts Festival at the Goggleworks and hoped the girl would be amenable to attend with me. As it turns out, she was psyched because she is an artist herself (a painter) and had never been to the Goggleworks and had really wanted to go to the festival. When I went to pick her up she was waiting for me and holding a small wooden container that looked like perhaps it had a flute in it. I asked her if it was an instrument and she said no, it’s my paint kit. Woo-hoo! That meant she might not only tolerate the trip to the Arts Festival but actually enjoy it! And she did! Before we met my friend at the Goggleworks, we went to a yard sale in the historic section of the city. It was rather dull until we went into the basement of a huge old mansion that was converted into a Bed and Breakfast. This basement was a catacomb filled with junk, both valuable and not. There we were enthralled with an old-time gas stove, I fell in love with some small doors (the owner wanted $100 a piece! Yikes!) I could use for my projects, we found two old suitcases, and stood for a good ten minutes pouring over old black and white wedding pictures. The pictures ended up being the owner’s which she missed placed in the basement – the pictures were of her wedding, her mother and father’s wedding, and her grandparents wedding, plus her high school senior picture. They were not for sale. We did buy the suitcases and I gave the bigger one to the girl because she was so in love  with it and I know she will make it into a great art project (she found inspiration at the art festival when we saw how someone else painted their suitcase). After the art show we went home and she took a nap (haha! So much for no napping!) and then we went to have dinner and a movie with my parents on the farm. Sunday we went to church and then spent the afternoon with my friend (she is nearly 71 years old!) watching another movie and eating pizza. Before I knew it the weekend was over and I was taking her back to CHOR – sad to see her go. She told me Friday night (I took her out to dinner because I had not eaten and neither had she and as it turned out, we were kind of near a restaurant that I love but don’t go to often because it is out of the way from where I live) that basically she was sent to respite as a punishment for fighting with her sister. We laughed about this because of all the fun things we had done (no one had told me it was a punishment to come to my house!) and she said it would have been more of a punishment to have stayed at her other foster family’s home because she wouldn’t have done the things we did (the couple she lives with are old enough to be her grandparents and they have a full house with 7 children living in their home). So, I told her she is welcome to come back to my place anytime she likes and she said she will ask to come to me for respite should the need arise.

 

I enjoyed my time with this young lady so much it nearly makes me reconsider my no older kids stance! If the pre-teen I had last year was like this girl (polite, fun, willing to try things, willing to go places, appreciative, sweet) she would never have left my house. This girl’s story is no less heartbreaking than any others you hear in foster care but her resilience is amazing and her heart is good. She was dealt a bad hand and is trying to make the most out of it and I applaud her efforts and hope her desire to be adopted by a close family friend comes to fruition and she can blossom into the lovely young lady she is becoming. What saddens me almost more than her tale of woe, is that she cannot cleave to her sisters in her time of need. She has one older sister who lives on her own and two other sisters in care, one living with her, and she is not close to any of them (abuse, dysfunction). Growing up, no matter what happened, I always had my sister (not always my brother, in fact he was the cause of a lot of anguish in our household) – sure we would fight and a few times we got physical with one another (again, more common with my brother) but we always made up and we always had one another’s back – you hurt my sister, you hurt me no matter how angry I am with her, I will stick up for her. I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have that kind of relationship with my sister. And I wish these girls could have that kind of special bond.

 

I explained my weird aunt theory to the girl, telling her sometimes I feel weird with the older kids because I don’t feel old enough to be their “mother” and yet I’m not really like a big sister because should the need arise I would have to exact discipline (not a need at all this weekend!), so I’m like that weird aunt you get sent to visit and you don’t want to go but then you have a really good time. She said that aptly fit how she felt about coming to visit me this weekend and she gave me a hug before she hopped into her foster parents car. Her sister was sitting in the front seat and I think she was a little taken aback at how well we seemed to get along. I was worried my weekend would be less relaxing and more like work with the additional responsibility of a foster kid, but the opposite was true. She made the weekend more enjoyable and was a great helper, even making the bed so neatly before she left. I hope the best for her, I hope all the bad things that have happened to her will be turned into beauty and blessings in her life.