Nature versus Nurture
Without Prejudice
She was a natural born survivor, She was street wise and cocky and full of bravado and she still is. I am not sure if its nature or nurture but I know she survived it, she survived us, left shipwrecked and stranded on the quiet shores of fate, of grief, of ennui. There was nothing on our landscape except us stuck as we were on the island of no hope, of despair of hours of nothingness and robotic movements and speech. There was just nothingness for a long time.
Probably about 6 years went by, remembered but not fully lived. I blank out to that time and shudder when I go to the old places, the old areas, the old haunts, looked at through grey eyes of acceptance but not wanting to linger. I don't like it there in the sad light of memory and want to rush and be gone, only stopping because I have to. I no longer wander those streets, I no longer want to. She's not there. And neither am I.
She still displays the raw wounds of poverty in a former life and camps it up or openly brags at things that have changed for her, now. She knows the road toll of her parents and her siblings, deaths and madness and suicides and beatings and hopelessness and the waiting and the hiding, she knows the safe places, she knows the speed she is prepared to give to heart and muscle and sinew. nerves achatter, adrenalin making her legs judder.
She knows of tricks and cons and lies and running and ducking, weaving her headlong dash from sadness and madness and unrelenting fights to a light at the end of the tunnel. We encircle her and test her out, seeing where her loyalties lie. She's a gutsy survivor, a tough nut, a cocky tomboy. She's heard it, done it, seen the darker sides of life. She's 13..............................
We allow her to just hang on the fringes for a while, she susses us out and tries a few old tricks that get her nowhere. We have been around kids like her all our lives, the lost, the broken, the empty and some you can help and some you can't. Depends on the damage, she comes in up under the youngest, fitting nicely in to the groove filed for her all those years ago. When we went to class after class for Special Needs adoption. Troubled kids, great, hand them over and it didn't happen. All those classes, hours long after al full day of work and getting the girls minded and being there and trying not to drop asleep on the way home.
We knew the guidelines, we knew the pitfalls, we knew the troubles it could bring but we were a family out of kilter anyway and it just seemd to make some sort of sense. Crazy illogical sense. And then he was gone and I stayed with the girls, and she stayed and she slowly, became one of us, too young, to raw, but what could we do? She wouldn't go home, she hated home, she wanted us and I went to court 2 months later and became her Mother. Her "Other Mum", my Other Mum, My Foster Mum, Janette, it didn't matter what the title was.
To all intents and purposes I became her Mum, got her to school, made sure she was ok, fed, happy, and disciplined. She was slapped by all of them at one time or another, or yelled at, or openly despised or formed a new alliance, moving between the siblings and celebrating their differences. She was friends with Yvette mostly and Alena, Debbie older and more remote.
To be contnued......
She was a natural born survivor, She was street wise and cocky and full of bravado and she still is. I am not sure if its nature or nurture but I know she survived it, she survived us, left shipwrecked and stranded on the quiet shores of fate, of grief, of ennui. There was nothing on our landscape except us stuck as we were on the island of no hope, of despair of hours of nothingness and robotic movements and speech. There was just nothingness for a long time.
Probably about 6 years went by, remembered but not fully lived. I blank out to that time and shudder when I go to the old places, the old areas, the old haunts, looked at through grey eyes of acceptance but not wanting to linger. I don't like it there in the sad light of memory and want to rush and be gone, only stopping because I have to. I no longer wander those streets, I no longer want to. She's not there. And neither am I.
She still displays the raw wounds of poverty in a former life and camps it up or openly brags at things that have changed for her, now. She knows the road toll of her parents and her siblings, deaths and madness and suicides and beatings and hopelessness and the waiting and the hiding, she knows the safe places, she knows the speed she is prepared to give to heart and muscle and sinew. nerves achatter, adrenalin making her legs judder.
She knows of tricks and cons and lies and running and ducking, weaving her headlong dash from sadness and madness and unrelenting fights to a light at the end of the tunnel. We encircle her and test her out, seeing where her loyalties lie. She's a gutsy survivor, a tough nut, a cocky tomboy. She's heard it, done it, seen the darker sides of life. She's 13..............................
We allow her to just hang on the fringes for a while, she susses us out and tries a few old tricks that get her nowhere. We have been around kids like her all our lives, the lost, the broken, the empty and some you can help and some you can't. Depends on the damage, she comes in up under the youngest, fitting nicely in to the groove filed for her all those years ago. When we went to class after class for Special Needs adoption. Troubled kids, great, hand them over and it didn't happen. All those classes, hours long after al full day of work and getting the girls minded and being there and trying not to drop asleep on the way home.
We knew the guidelines, we knew the pitfalls, we knew the troubles it could bring but we were a family out of kilter anyway and it just seemd to make some sort of sense. Crazy illogical sense. And then he was gone and I stayed with the girls, and she stayed and she slowly, became one of us, too young, to raw, but what could we do? She wouldn't go home, she hated home, she wanted us and I went to court 2 months later and became her Mother. Her "Other Mum", my Other Mum, My Foster Mum, Janette, it didn't matter what the title was.
To all intents and purposes I became her Mum, got her to school, made sure she was ok, fed, happy, and disciplined. She was slapped by all of them at one time or another, or yelled at, or openly despised or formed a new alliance, moving between the siblings and celebrating their differences. She was friends with Yvette mostly and Alena, Debbie older and more remote.
To be contnued......
