He called me Miss Margaret for the first year and then, one afternoon in the car, without any ceremony, Mom, and then went back to Miss Margaret for a week as though testing whether the roof would hold.

His mother got clean. That is the part people don’t want to hear, because it makes it nobody’s fault.

She did the whole thing. Eighteen months of it, program after program, every appointment, every test, and a caseworker who genuinely believed in her and who turned out to be right.

She got a job at a laundry service in Lewiston and a two-bedroom apartment and she came to every single visit, and she was, by the end, a woman I liked.

Reunification is the goal. It is supposed to be the goal. I have said that sentence to other foster parents and meant it.

They gave him back in July of 2011. There was a little ceremony at the office with a cake, which they do sometimes, and I stood there and ate cake.