Mostly Tiana.

This is the first time in days I’ve been able to stop and write. Today a friend broke up with her boyfriend, David and I talked about whether the kids are ready for squirt guns, and the big picture affects of not letting the kids watch Mr. Rogers. We took a drive that started Friday at noon and didn’t end until Saturday at 11pm. We visited family, friends, and the ocean view, dreamed of a farm of our own (the romantic type) and did what little we could for friends with so little.


About eleven years ago a little girl came into my life. She of course brought her mother with her, but for all intents she was mine. I ran a registered family childcare group; fancy way of saying I took care of kids that were not my own and the state approved. Little Tiana was just two years old. This was 1996 and my own boys were 1 and 3. Her mother was interviewing for a childcare provider and brought this lovely little angel into my life. She had beautiful brown eyes and deep brown ringlet curls down her back. That day she wore a sweet little white cotton dress with matching sandals. My own boys ran the house in diapers and nothing more.

Now the living room of my home was right next to the playroom, a converted dinning room, decorated with alphabet letters, plastic play structures for both preschool age and toddlers. Books and toys littered the room and the air was fragrant with muffins. My goal in life has always been to be kid friendly with the décor, and to this day nothing fragile is placed under 4’.

Mom and I sat on the sofa and talked. We were getting along so well that she didn’t notice Tiana had left her lap and gone off to the playroom. An ear splitting squeal stopped all conversation as panicked mother jumped to investigate. Tiana, Sam, and Thomas beamed giant smiles as they ran around the playroom like found siblings. Tiana had torn off her dress and matched the boys. Since then she has been part of the family. My four sons call her sister and we always get those quizzical looks that wonder if I had been married before.

Every summer since then she has come to stay with us usually for a month, only less with a protest, and sometimes more if I can sneak the time, and since her mothers’ marriage, we now get her older sister and younger brother. So now my house swells from 4 to 7 kids that sleep in 3 bedrooms and cram my mini van beyond legal limits, and I love it!

This family has fallen on hard times. They lost their home to a crooked mortgage broker that didn’t explain anything about the loan they signed for, and threatened them with a law suit at closing if they didn’t sign. No one was looking out for them and they didn’t call. I cry inside when I think of the suffering. A broken man unable to provide, a mother trying to keep her kids safe, and kids doing what they do best, rolling with it. They have no power and no water. That means drinking water bottles and soda, eating out of the same cans that stored the food because no water to wash anything and never being home because it isn’t home anymore, just a place to sleep.

He starts working again this week and they’ll find somewhere to live after his first paycheck. Until then, they will just squat in the home that was their dream, and wait for someone to tell them to leave. I’ll get the kids after the hay harvest, the end of July, and keep them until school starts.

What a fucked up summer!