Never letting go of love for foster child

She called me “Ballerina.” I suppose it was because she was just 2 the first time I met her. She had a fountain ponytail on top of her head and a doll baby tucked under her arm.

“Karina” must have sounded like “ballerina” to her.

No one had ever mistaken me for a ballerina, so I never corrected her.

I can’t tell you her name; she was a foster child. But I know I’ll never forget her.

She had been taken into state care the first time after she had been left alone in a bathtub full of water, in a motel room, while her father smoked spice, a synthetic marijuana.

She spent six months in foster care before going to live with her mother. Two weeks later, child welfare workers found her living in filth, the refrigerator empty and her mother high.

My cousin Kasey had just been licensed as a foster and adoptive parent. The girl with the ponytail arrived at Kasey’s house wearing clothes that were a size too small and clutching a Cinderella wand. She talked like a baby.

A few days later, Kasey brought her to my house to swim.

I was at the grocery store when they arrived so I missed the tantrum. My teenage son Sawyer gleefully reported that she had thrown herself on the travertine floor under the bathroom sink and yelled, “Die! Die!” at him. We’re a hard family to scare. She pulled on my hand, “Ballerina.” I called her “Baby Girl.”

We spent the afternoon in the backyard swimming and pushing her back and forth on the tree swing. We read books. She ate her weight in grapes. And just like that, she was one of us.

Our tribe, our own kind of family

My family is not very traditional. There’s the part created by blood and bonds of marriage, and then there is part I’ve pieced together over the course of a lifetime.

When my son was born, I recruited a tribe for him, one made up of family,