Alodi

Well last night at about 8:30 we got a call. This was a call we'd trained for, prepared our home and hearts for, waited for, and we're still not exactly prepared for.

The director of our Foster Family Agency called to ask us if we could take an emergency foster placement, just for the night. A 14 year old girl needed a place to stay for the night since there had been allegations of abuse in her current foster home and all of the kids were being immediately removed. It was too late in the evening for them to take her to Orangewood, the county group home and obviously the social worker can't just take her home.

Our experience with foster care and the whole system has been so smooth and relatively 'non-foster-care-feeling' that we almost forgot that sometimes this is what it's like to be a foster parent. Some times you get calls like this in the night, a boy or girl, infant/toddler/child/teen needs a place to stay, some place warm, some place safe, a place like yours.

After juggling our kids around, we set up Joe's bed for her, changed the sheets and bedding so she didn't have to sleep with Lightning McQueen and Batman blankets and then I set up toiletries in the second bathroom for her.

We didn't interact with her much since it was late when she came, and she got picked up for school at 7:30am. It was such a short time it really didn't affect our lives a whole lot actually, but when it was time for her to leave she hesitated a bit. When Darren and I talked about it later, we talked about how it seemed like she wanted to run away when she first came, and it almost looked like she didn't want to leave by morning. Whether or not either of our observations were correct, we did our part.

When asked to do something like this, not very many people would say "Sure! Bring your emotionally distraught teen with an anxiety disorder over for the night" But that's what makes foster parents different from other people. We're not better or anything, but we've opened up our lives and homes to these kids who really need it. In the middle of the night, even if only for one night, we were there for her when no one else was.

And in the end, that is what being a foster parent is all about.