Mason
Life settled into something I hadn't quite let myself imagine possible during the chaos of the previous year, an ordinary rhythm built around school pickups and bedtime stories and the particular mundane joy of watching a healthy kid navigate the everyday dramas of kindergarten friendships.
I found myself genuinely happy in ways that surprised me, given how much of my life before this family had been defined by a rootlessness I'd never fully acknowledged until I experienced its absence. Foster homes had taught me not to get too attached to any particular place, any particular collection of people, always braced for the inevitable disruption that would send me somewhere new before I'd fully settled.
This felt different. This felt permanent in a way I still occasionally struggled to
