Other People's Kids

A Delightful Phone Call

I just got a call from one of my former foster sisters that I haven't seen for many years, though I do get news of her through Mom from time to time. It tickled me pink to hear from her, not least because she was calling to thank me for our Christmas card. Her father is suddenly dying of acute Leukemia, and it sounds like it has her rattled...her mother died 5 years ago, and the rest of her family are...well, let's just say there's a reason she was in foster care as a teen. But the letter I wrote and sent with the card got to her at a low point, and went a long way toward cheering her up. That alone made the whole Christmas-card-sending hassle worthwhile.

I remember her dearly as one of my favorite foster siblings of all time. She would sit with me and watch All Star Wresting, and when it was done we would whale the tar out of each other with body slams, flying elbow smashes, "The Claw", "The Sleeper", and every other goofy wrestling stunt we had just seen. I enjoyed this because it was SO much fun...but also because she was a few years older than me and I was right about smack dab in the geographic center of puberty. She was blond. She was hot.

Pubescent boy gets the chance to wrestle with an older hot blond girl. Yowza. Sign me up.

But she just had this really-good-friend-who-I-could-trust feel to her, and we always had a special friendship when we still saw each other. We could cry on each other's shoulder. There's not enough of that in the world.

She's had a pretty tough life, and not all of it has been self-inflicted. Probably not even most of it...and she actually managed to foster herself with some success for awhile, though she's had her problems as well.

It sounds like she's in a pretty good place these days, though. I've been meaning to get on my motorcycle and go back and spend a day visiting old ghosts in my hometown where she still lives...maybe I'll drop in on her and see how she is. Life is too short not to do something like that every great once in awhile, don't you think?

posted by Dan @ 6:33 PM