Love is My Gift

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m wiiiiide awake. I usually wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 but 4:30 is a surprise this morning. I went to bed at 7:30 as usual. So the fact that I’m wide awake this early I take to be a good sign. That, plus I can go up and down a flight of stairs without pain or getting winded at the moment, so I think my flare up of *whatever* the hell is wrong with me is dying down of its own accord. Too early to cheer but Dude. I’ll take it!

The room that belonged first to Kiddo then Miss Kicks is almost ready for a new kid. It just needs a good vacuuming and floor washing. The bed looks welcoming, the desk is now clean and ready for school work. It could use a real dresser – the one we have in there is a bit anemic. I’d like to claim it myself and put a real dresser in there but that doesn’t have to be done before we take a new kid.

And contrary to everyone’s advice, logic, and my own best interests, we are officially open for a new kid. Girls only, in case we wind up rearranging bedrooms and a new kid has to share with Tiny. Plus our decor is for girls. Plus we just have girls down to an art form. A boy would feel foreign to us right now!

I can’t really explain to people why we are open for another kid already before we have my new meds figured out, but my heart is just longing for it. We have the space. We have the love. I always find the stamina somewhere.

I have a trio of good friends from college with whom I am in touch daily through a life-giving messenger chat that we started up when Miss Kicks came to us. We re-bonded over raising teens and now they’re just my peeps and I can barely remember life before this group chat started. I refer to them as “The Girls.” That group chat gives me life. I’m telling you. They make me howl with laughter, build me up, support me, make me feel cherished. They’re Da Bomb.

Anywho, I told The Girls the other day that I think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot when it comes to why I do foster care. In season 5, in an episode called “Intervention,” Buffy consults with the first Slayer, who tells Buffy “death is your gift.”

I think “love” is my gift.

I don’t care what it costs me, I have love to give to kids. We have space. We always find the money somewhere. And I find the energy somewhere, too. I can’t stand hanging onto that spare love in my heart and not directing it somewhere useful.

So I called our homefinder (a social worker who represents and manages foster parents, rather than representing kids) the other day. I said girls only, 11 and under. No more teens. And ideally? We’d like a kid with medical issues (we can handle them because Seth is a nurse and we have a great rapport with the medical team for foster kids in our county) between 4 and 7.

Who knows who it’ll be when the call comes. It may be a while because kids usually come in sibling groups and we can only take one kid because that room is tiny and we only have one seat available in our cars right now. Getting a vehicle with third row seating is on our agenda but not in our budget yet. But somehow just knowing it could happen at any time makes me feel, well, like things are the way they’re supposed to be.