Mrs. Winter’s Angel

A dear friend once asked me if I cried over the sad stories our foster kids carried with them. Answer: not usually. I prioritized providing the necessary structure and nurture these kids needed in their first days with us. Stopping to cry would have interrupted that process. But this one got me.  

A little over two years ago, we received a phone call about a kindergarten girl who needed temporary placement while her permanent foster home was preparing to receive her. Our youngest child (Meg, second grade) was a professional foster sister by this point. She set up multiple centers and playtime options in anticipation of her new friend’s arrival. Matt and I knew that this little visitor had been the victim of unspeakable abuse. We quietly prepared ourselves for a long night, fully expecting apprehension, tears, or a total meltdown.

Answering the door, I greeted a grinning waif with dirty blonde hair. I’ll call her “Angel.”

I never got a word in edgewise. Angel thrust a stuffed pink bunny in my face and exclaimed, “Hi! This is Pinky, and we’re gonna stay the night here, okay?”

She strode past me and bounded from fish tank to play kitchen to Meg’s room to play kitchen to couch to fish tank to Miles’s room (“Whoa! Did you know there’s a lizard in here?!”) to play kitchen…

Meg finally bribed her with gummy snacks, a tent, and the iPad, and they had a tea party with Pinky the bunny and Ella, Meg’s elephant. After several minutes, an exhausted Meg asked,  “Do you think you’re feeling a little calmer? Because it’s bedtime soon.”

Angel paused to consider before responding, “Yeah. Where do I sleep?”

“In the extra bed in my room—the one with all the stuffies on it,” Meg replied.

Angel nodded.  “Okay. I like that bed.”

While Angel brushed her teeth, Meg whispered to me, “I wonder how long she will cry for her mom. You know, they always cry like that on the first night.”

“I know, baby,” I said. “I’ll stay up here with you girls until she falls asleep.”

I tucked both girls in their beds. Angel gazed up at the ceiling and began to pick out the shapes Merrilee had painted in the clouds years before. Meg and I braced ourselves for the wave of grief that would wash over all of us when the reality of her situation set in. Playtime is a nice distraction. But bedtime hits differently.

Except…this little whirlwind never mentioned her parents. Not once. I explained that in the morning the nice social worker would be coming back to get her, and they would go on a trip to another house where a kind family was waiting for her.

And that’s when it hit her.

“I can’t go on a trip tomorrow!” she shouted, bolting upright in the bed. “I have to go to school! I have to go see Mrs. Winter!”

“I know you will miss Mrs. Winter,” I replied gently. “And she will miss you, too. I think you will meet another kind teacher very soon.”

Angel was inconsolable. “No! There won’t ever be another Mrs. Winter! And they probably won’t have first recess and snack recess at a different school. And Mrs. Winter took a picture with me—just me and her with no other kids, even!”

Mrs. Winter was her safe place. Mrs. Winter made her feel like somebody special. Mrs. Winter was her home. She wept for thirty minutes before finally surrendering to sleep.

Teachers, we can never know for sure how important we are to the individual kids in our classrooms. Angel’s abuse had been ongoing, and it all happened under the radar. I don’t know if Mrs. Winter knew who she was to this child. But this story has continued to breathe wind into my sails on days when I need motivation to be my best self in the classroom.