A little preface. I have one drawback: I do not know how to be indifferent. Many years ago I moved from a village to a big city and I still do not understand why it is considered normal here to pass by a person who needs help or to throw a woman with a child out on the street because she cannot pay for this month. Of course, there are exceptions, but they happen not so often. Once, after a day of work, I stopped by the mall to do some business and as I was walking back to the exit, a young mother with a little girl caught my attention. The mother was obviously in a bad mood:
– What do you want?! – she shouted at the girl.
– I want to eat, – the girl answered quietly. A few steps away, parents were buying some treats for their children. And, judging by how modestly this girl was dressed and how sad she spoke, she was really hungry, not just naughty. But the mother was completely mad and pushed the child. Shouted at the girl that she had ruined her life, she went somewhere and disappeared from sight. To say that I was surprised is to say nothing. The girl stood up and, realizing that she did not know where her mother had gone, sat down on a bench and cried. It was not a loud cry of a spoiled brat, but a very quiet cry of a child who was mistreated.
I felt very sorry for the girl, but I doubted that I should interfere. Surely her mother would be back now, they would make up, and everything would be fine. Twenty minutes passed. No one came to the girl, and most importantly, her mother still did not appear. I could not sit there any longer. I had to go up to her and try to calm her down. I must say that you feel awkward when you start a conversation with an unfamiliar child. It seems as if everyone around you will think that you have something bad on your mind. In fact, no one around her cared. She was shy and was afraid to talk to me at first. But when I called the guard to find her mother, she began to trust me a little. I remembered that she was hungry and bought some food while we waited for her mother. She objected at first, but hunger prevailed.
As it turned out later, she had not been fed all day, and it was already evening. Mom disappeared in the middle of nowhere, and I had to call the police. I had no choice but to hand the child over to law enforcement officers so that they could find her parents and return the child to them. But I felt that this story was not over. Fortunately, I had a friend in the police, and I could follow the further fate of the girl. As it turned out, the man had left the mother long ago, and she had to raise the child alone. She earned little, because this pregnancy broke her life and career, as she always reminded her daughter. As a result, she decided to get rid of the child and just abandoned her. “Why, they will take it to the orphanage anyway”. The girl cried and asked her mother to forgive her and let her return home. But her mother refused. The girl took it very hard. In short, her mother’s maternal instinct was stuck somewhere in her ass.
We finally managed to adopt the girl. She is 8 years old, she is already going to the 2nd grade. Before that there was a lot of paperwork, because of which she had to live in an orphanage. Some of my friends took the adoption badly: “Someone else’s child? Why do you need her?”.
I did not even notice how my daughter turned 16 years old. How time flies. I am often asked if I regretted taking her? No, never! And I never will.
