We are
just finishing up the busy morning of errands, loading the back of the car with
all of the items we had purchased. “Why
don’t you take the cart back to the store entrance,” I suggest, “while I get
the little ones buckled in.”
A few
minutes later I pull the car around to the front of the store where she stands
waiting, and as she settles into the seat beside me, she pretends to be getting
into a taxi. “If you would be so kind,”
she says in a fake British accent, “please take me to the corner of 5th
and High Street.”
I laugh
at her sense of humor, and then ask, “Have you been to London?” I cringe inwardly for being so insensitive. What a stupid question to ask! Of course she has never been to London! What foster child has ever been to London?
“No,” she
responds with a sigh, her shoulders drooping slightly. “I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve never even been on an airplane.” I am humbled, reminded yet again of her
painful childhood, a childhood that was spent, not traveling the world, but
just trying to survive.
In an
effort to lighten her spirit, I ask, “So if you could travel, where would you want to go?”
“Paris”,
she answered instantly, the light in her eyes returning. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris!”
“Paris is
beautiful,” I agree. “I do hope you get
to go there some day. If they offer
French classes at your school, you should take them.”
“No, I
probably won’t,” she mumbles. “I
probably won’t ever get to travel anyway.
I probably won’t do anything.”
Alarmed
at this attitude of defeat from someone so young, I ask, “What do you
mean? You have your whole life before
you. You can do anything you want. You can be
anything you want!”
She
stares at me as if I am speaking a foreign language. As if she has never heard such nonsense
before. “Not really,” she says. “I’ll probably just end up like my mother.”
My heart
breaks for her. Where are the people who
were supposed to encourage her to follow her dreams? Why hasn’t she been told that the world is
full of opportunities and possibilities for young ladies like her?
