Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul Read Free Page A

legally possible from foster parents to adoptive parents. Samantha nestled down into family life preferring hand-me-downs from her new cousins to store-bought clothes, getting crushes on the same Montessori teachers as her brother had a few years before. She danced around the living room with my old rhinestone earrings clipped to her ears. She smiled at herself smiling back at herself from the silver frames on the piano . . . and the desk . . . and the walls.
    And we were friends, she and I. We baked cookies. We shopped together—a lot, once I discovered the “pink aisle” at the toy store. She put on my lipstick and gave me elaborate, fanciful hairstyles. And during all this time, she called me “Mom.” But it still felt more like “Aunt,” or “teacher” or “pal.” During all of our mother-daughter moments, Samantha’s big blue eyes checked me out, looked me up and down, kept me at a distance.
    Once, in the middle of the night, I went into Samantha’s room to check on her. She was sitting up in bed. She hadn’t called out to us, and she wasn’t crying, but when I came close to the bed her eyes registered fear. “I dreamed you were a witch, and you were going to kill me.” I held her, whispering that I would never hurt her. She was safe now. That night she told me about violence she had witnessed, about playing with rats, about being locked in the trunk of a car. Other times, only late at night, only in the dark, and only when I wasn’t looking at her, she told me of many horrible experiences she had lived through in her four short years.
    Therapists had warned me that of all the hurts that Sam had endured in her short little life, the cruelest blow was from her biological mom. I should be patient, they said. She needs to learn to trust again.
    When a tiny brain is growing, a circuitry network of neurotransmitters and jumpy dendrites branch out, creating a blueprint for the future. Through experience, children lay down patterns in their brain, designed to keep them safe and help them thrive. Children learn to recoil from big dogs, or scary clowns, or weird Uncle Max with fermenting breath, but they don’t usually recoil from mom.
    Moms are supposed to be the soft lap, the gentle hands that soothe away the nightmares. They are supposed to be the big warm blanket you wrap up in when the world is too cold and too rainy. But what happens when Mom is the stinging rain? When it is Mom who is the monster under the bed?
    Samantha did not trust me. Nothing I said was accepted as truth. She had to see things with her own eyes. “Don’t touch that knife; it’s sharp,” led to bloody fingers. “Wait on the curb; a car is coming” sent her running into the street to see for herself.
    Samantha had come into our home with a “colorful” vocabulary. Once I overheard Barbie and Ken arguing in language that could make a hard-core rapper blush. I explained to my angel-faced daughter that those were not nice words; they make people uncomfortable. That night, at a restaurant with friends, she spewed profanity throughout the dinner, all the while gauging their reaction. Our son was highly entertained. Our friends were not.
    Samantha challenged me in a thousand different ways, calculating the results, evaluating the extent of my affection. How far could she go before I’d be gone? She broke treasured heirlooms, defied rules, lied, hoarded, stole. She did not scare us off, but still she refused to depend on me, to believe in me. When I tucked her in at night, and whispered, “I love you,” she squirmed. When her runaway mind kept her up at night, restless and anxious, I massaged her hands and feet, but her muscles stayed taut and tense beneath my fingers. I ached to relieve her from her post of hypervigilance, to loosen her grip on her emotions, to hear her genuine laugh, to help her just let go and resume her rightful role as innocent child.
    Intellectually, I knew her therapists were right. I would nod my head. Yes,