Orphan Kids Quotes

Lots of kids in books are only-child orphans, but I think it’s fun to have family as part of the adventure, to have familial love be as important as romantic love, and to show that love can go through fire and darkness - not unchanged, because experiences like that change everyone - but never faltering

She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That's the difference between us and the others.

We came here because no place would take us after our momma died. They all said go away, come back when you're older, when you know better, when you've learned. Only no one wants to teach how to be older or to know better - not even Devin. They just teach us how to be broken.

So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right? [Will nods] Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.

We both look mournfully in the window as we pass, though I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't. Nothing says orphans like two kids breaking their necks looking at trays of November cakes and platters of shaped cookies and lovely soft loaves of bread still steaming the window they're next to.

No. I told you before, I don't even remember coming through the gate. I woke up in thecemetery, my poor wing snapped, my leg broken, beaten like an orphan kid in regency England. I was a pitiful wee creature." "Um, okay. 

Sean: …………And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my life apart. You're an orphan right? [Will nods] Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Likewise the Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.

There would be fewer absent fathers, if straight men were turned on only by women with whom they would not mind having children.

Some people ate less food less often when they each had a home than they now do as hobos.

Dead parents are gruesome, yes, but anyone who’s anyone in children’s literature has either been orphaned or abandoned; well-adjusted kids from stable two-parent homes don’t go on hero quests.

I don't really know them, but I know this: they're just like your kids were. Or are. Sweet, trusting, good in ways we adults hardly even remember. We have to look out for them. Not because of the tattoos, or in spite of them, but because they're kids and we're supposed to look out for kids.

At this point, John flung himself to the ground and screamed, “YOU SHOT ME! AAARRRRGHHH!” Not a shot had been fired. I rushed to John’s side. “You shot him! He has four kids! Or should I say, four orphans.

I really want to believe that when our Quiet Waters kids wake up in the middle of the night, scared, they’ll remember being in their bunks with John and Kate and Whit and me right there protecting them,” he said. “I hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there’ll be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.

My aunt says, she is a very bad wife to her husband, because she is busy serving orphan kids and physically challenged people of our society. Everyone praises her work that she is doing really good for society. But yes! She is only a very bad wife. She says proudly and laugh.

Charity begins on the street when you are homeless.

How many little kids were being orphaned or killed, right that minute, while I was sitting there watching TV?

Every kid today wants to be Batman, Superman, or Spider-man. Personally, I blame the Parents. If parents were better at parenting, kids wouldn't want to be orphans.

For I was indeed a student of human nature, as every orphan and hooker and unwanted kid must be.

According to UNICEF, 153 million kids worldwide have lost one or both parents due to all causes.1 That’s twice the total number of children in the U.S.2

KID: [Whispering, pointing at Avery.] Mom, why is that girl here alone? MOM: I’m sure her parents are nearby. Don’t worry about it. KID: [Shouting, as I turned to walk Avery to the stacks.] ARE YOU AN ORPHAN?

I wonder: why is it noble to help men in the workplace, help orphans, help widows, help your pastor, help the neighbors, or help your parents, but degrading to help your husband—your groom, your lover, and your best friend?

Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined desert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped him together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe’s frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe’s massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God.

There was a single ray of sun shining through the window. I got up, went to the cracked glass, and saw that it was both raining and shining outside-- a bit of meteorological weirdness whose name no one can seem to agree on. My mom, I kid you not, refers to it as "orphan's tears.

I got kicked out of my first home for poking a wire hanger into an electrical outlet. My foster mom caught me, shrieked, and called the DCFS to come cart me away, because I was clearly suicidal and no one had told her that I was a child with ‘special needs.’” “Were you? Suicidal?” “I was five.” “Still.” “No, I wasn’t trying to off myself. I was curious. Little kids spend half their waking hours being warned not to do things. Don’t run with scissors. Don’t lick a flagpole in winter. Don’t stick anything into electrical outlets. Those three little holes looked so mysterious. I had to know if they were as dangerous as everyone said.” “What happened?” A smile curled the corner of Conn’s mouth, indicating he’d already guessed the answer—which wasn’t exactly hard, given that I was standing right there in front of him, and not buried in an early grave with the tombstone Here Lies Darcy Jones, electrocuted orphan.

Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction. Anyone who has read a novel by Charles Dickens knows that the liberal regimes of nineteenth-century Europe gave priority to individual freedom even if it meant throwing insolvent poor families in prison and giving orphans little choice but to join schools for pickpockets. Anyone who has read a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism’s egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of daily life. Contemporary American politics also revolve around this contradiction. Democrats want a more equitable society, even if it means raising taxes to fund programmes to help the poor, elderly and infirm. But that infringes on the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they wish. Why should the government force me to buy health insurance if I prefer using the money to put my kids through college? Republicans, on the other hand, want to maximise individual freedom, even if it means that the income gap between rich and poor will grow wider and that many Americans will not be able to afford health care. Just as medieval culture did not manage to square chivalry with Christianity, so the modern world fails to square liberty with equality. But this is no defect. Such contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture. In fact, they are culture’s engines, responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species. Just

I was helping Avery, a six-year-old library regular, at the children’s reference desk when I overheard the next kid in line talking to his mother. KID: [Whispering, pointing at Avery.] Mom, why is that girl here alone? MOM: I’m sure her parents are nearby. Don’t worry about it. KID: [Shouting, as I turned to walk Avery to the stacks.] ARE YOU AN ORPHAN?

All of a sudden it dawned on me. I knew. I just knew. I was adopted, and my adoption papers were in there. If I were adopted, that would explain why I didn’t look like anyone in my family, why I didn’t act like anyone in my family, and why there were so few pictures of me. I wasn’t Mom and Dad’s real kid. I was an unwanted baby, or an orphan like Emily Michelle.

I'm all strung-out, my money's spent Can't really tell ya' where last year went But I've given up paying my bills for Lent My landlord, he says he wants his rent Fuck 'em! Hey, now, the women they come, the women they go The hens start to cackle when the cock starts to crow Hell, I take 'em in when the warm winds blow But I boot 'em in the ass once it starts to snow 'Cause fuck them! Yeah, got a letter from my folks, and they say they're in debt They say that things are as bad as they can possibly get You know, I haven't answered that letter yet I might use it to light my cigarette 'Cause fuck them! What'd they ever do for me anyway? Threw me outta the house when I was twenty-nine years old and cut off my allowance Fuck 'em! Hey, a woman come around and handed me a line About a lot of little orphan kids sufferin' and dyin' Shit, I give her a quarter, cause one of 'em might be mine The rest of those bastards can keep right on cryin' I mean, fuck kids! Throw up on your shoulder, piss in your lap, Never give you nothing Fuck 'em! You might also like Think U The Shit (Fart) Ice Spice Anuv Jain - Husn (Romanized) Genius Romanizations ​yes, and? Ariana Grande I had a fight last night with a big lumberjack I spent most of the fight laying flat on my back You know he beat me up fair, and that's a fact But I busted his head as soon as he turned his back 'Cause fuck fair fighting! Yeah You know, my junkie buddy got the shakes again He give me five bucks and sent me out in the rain I'm supposed to bring back something to kill his pain, oh Shit, I took the bread and I jumped on a train Cause fuck junkies!

Why do people have this thing about their roots?' Klinsman asked Karen when the laughter subsided. ‘Is it really that important?’ 'Only if you don’t have any,' said Karen, 'Most of us take our roots for granted. We know where our mother and father came from and probably our grandparents, maybe even our great grandparents, but not all people have this foundation and it can be a big miss. The people who suffer most are orphans who know nothing at all about their origins. Many will spend their entire lives worrying and wondering about where they came from and who their folks really were.' 'I guess that’s why adopted kids often insist on tracing their real parents,' said Mike Kellerman. 'Exactly that,' replied Karen. 'And it causes such distress because it's construed by the folks who brought them up as ingratitude. But it's not. It's just something the kids have to do. They can't help themselves.' 'So what's Mac's problem?' asked Kellerman. 'I suspect he's just mildly curious,' smiled Karen.

It takes an obsessive streak that borders on lunacy to go rummaging around in the past as memoirists are wont to do, particularly a fragmented or incendiary past, in which facts are sparse and stories don't match up. I don't know if memoirists as children are lied to more often as kids or only grow up to resent it more, but it does seem we often come from the ranks of orphans or half-orphans-through-divorce, trying to heal schisms inside ourselves. Like everybody, I suppose, people we loved broke our hearts because only they had access to them, and we broke our own hearts later by following their footsteps and reenacting their mistakes.

That’s really sweet of you, O,” Bellamy said. She shrugged. “No big deal. The little kids aren’t the ones we should be pissed at. It’s their parents who locked us up.” She was trying to sound blasé, but Bellamy knew that growing up in the Colony’s care center had given her a soft spot for orphaned kids. “Come on, Leo,” she said, reaching out for his hand. “I’ll show you where the bunny lives.” She looked at Bellamy. “You going to be okay out here?” she asked. Bellamy nodded. “It’s just for today. Once things settle down, we’ll come up with a plan.” “Okay… be careful.” She smiled and turned to Leo. “Let’s go, kiddo.” Bellamy stared after them and felt something in his chest twinge as he watched Octavia hop down the slope, pretending to be a rabbit in order to make Leo laugh. She

For some people, the transition to adulthood happens almost overnight. It certainly did with me. I’ve met other orphans. We are kids who can’t even pinpoint when this change happened. We have felt like old people since our fathers died. Our mothers looked to us for big decisions. They relied on us. Before we ever went out on our first date, we were already acting like a retired father of four. All our paychecks went toward rent. All our spare time went toward helping to keep a home fire burning. We got so good at pretending we were older than our age that we started to believe it. We begin to hate our own reflections because they betray how we see ourselves. The mirror portrays us too young. We are not children; we are ancient. We’re fifty years old thirty-five years before our fiftieth birthday.

The kid in the newspaper was named Stevie, and he was eight. I was thirty-nine and lived by myself in a house that I owned. For a short time our local newspaper featured an orphan every week. Later they would transition to adoptable pets, but for a while it was orphans, children your could foster and possibly adopt of everything worked out, the profiles were short, maybe two or three hundred words. This was what I knew: Stevie liked going to school. He made friends easily. He promised he would make his bed every morning. He hoped that if he were very good we could have his own dog, and if he were very, very good, his younger brother could be adopted with him. Stevie was Black. I knew nothing else. The picture of him was a little bigger than a postage stamp. He smiled. I studied his face at my breakfast table until something in me snapped. I paced around my house, carrying the folded newspaper. I had two bedrooms. I had a dog. I had so much more than plenty. In return he would make his bed, try his best in school. That was all he had to bargain with: himself. By the time Karl came for dinner after work I was nearly out of my mind. “I want to adopt him,” I said. Karl read the profile. He looked at the picture. “You want to be his mother?” “It’s not about being his mother. I mean, sure, if I’m his mother that’s fine, but it’s like seeing a kid waving from the window of a burning house, saying he’ll make his bed if someone will come and get him out. I can’t leave him there.” “We can do this,” Karl said. We can do this. I started to calm myself because Karl was calm. He was good at making things happen. I didn’t have to want children in order to want Stevie. In the morning I called the number in the newspaper. They took down my name and address. They told me they would send the preliminary paperwork. After the paperwork was reviewed, there would be a series of interviews and home visits. “When do I meet Stevie?” I asked. “Stevie?” “The boy in the newspaper.” I had already told her the reason I was calling. “Oh, it’s not like that,” the woman said. “It’s a very long process. We put you together with the child who will be your best match.” “So where’s Stevie?” She said she wasn’t sure. She thought that maybe someone had adopted him. It was a bait and switch, a well-written story: the bed, the dog, the brother. They knew how to bang on the floor to bring people like me out of the woodwork, people who said they would never come. I wrapped up the conversation. I didn’t want a child, I wanted Stevie. It all came down to a single flooding moment of clarity: he wouldn’t live with me, but I could now imagine that he was in a solid house with people who loved him. I put him in the safest chamber of my heart, he and his twin brother in twin beds, the dog asleep in Stevie’s arms. And there they stayed, going with me everywhere until I finally wrote a novel about them called Run. Not because I thought it would find them, but because they had become too much for me to carry. I had to write about them so that I could put them down.

Delbert was the only Bumpus kid in my grade, but they infested Warren G. Harding like termites in an outhouse. There was Ima Jean, short and muscular, who was in the sixth grade, when she showed up, but spent most of her time hanging around the poolroom. There was a lanky, blue-jowled customer they called Jamie, who ran the still and was the only one who ever wore shoes. He and his brother Ace, who wore a brown fedora and blue work shirts, sat on the front steps at home on the Fourth of July, sucking at a jug and pretending to light sticks of dynamite with their cigars when little old ladies walked by. There were also several red-faced girls who spent most of their time dumping dishwater out of windows. Babies of various sizes and sexes crawled about the back yard, fraternizing indiscriminately with the livestock. They all wore limp, battleship-gray T-shirts and nothing else. They cried day and night. We thought that was all of them—until one day a truck stopped in front of the house and out stepped a girl who made Daisy Mae look like Little Orphan Annie. My father was sprinkling the lawn at the time; he wound up watering the windows. Ace and Emil came running out onto the porch, whooping and hollering. The girl carried a cardboard suitcase—in which she must have kept all her underwear, if she owned any—and wore her blonde hair piled high on her head; it gleamed in the midday sun. Her short muslin dress strained and bulged. The truck roared off. Ace rushed out to greet her, bellowing over his shoulder as he ran: “MAH GAWD! HEY, MAW, IT’S CASSIE! SHE’S HOME FROM THE REFORMATORY!” Emil

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.

How many of us actually do know the number of days we have left to live? The number of days we have left to fulfill a dream or to mend fences with a loved one or to simply spend time with our kids?

Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen. There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

And then I did the best thing I knew to do with the strange concoction of sadness and hope brewing inside me. I prayed. I prayed for the people whose initials were on those slivers. Not just for those people, but for the cave people before them and the robot people after them. For real orphans. For all the people who have lost shoes in the road. For kids whose parents play war. For Toodie Bleu Skies and Toodi Bleu Nordenhauer, for M. B. McClean and Douglas Nordenhauer. And all the people who need to find the magic in Make Believe. That, I figured, just about covered the whole world.

remember asking my mom when I was little if I could go live at this place in Boston called “The Home for Little Wanderers.” I didn’t realize that it was a facility for orphans. It sounded to me more like a place for free spirits who knew that even if they loved where they were one moment, that could change tomorrow.

You know what everyone likes to forget about me? I was a kid. I was a kid when I got into all that shit. I was a kid addict. I was a kid when I had Sadie. And my mother— my mother dying. I was a kid for that too. I was an orphan. I’m not making excuses but I don’t understand why Sadie was too young for everything I put her through, but I … I was just somehow old enough for the shit that got thrown at me. Soon as she was born, May Beth ripped Sadie out of my arms and started turning her against me. It broke my heart. And I let it happen because I was just a kid and I was fucked up and I didn’t know how else to be. My mom was dead. There was no one. Sadie hated me , and all I could do was let her. And then Mattie came and— Mattie, she loved me.

You see a refined, nearly impenetrable man in an expensive suit. And he is that, but I don’t see that anymore. I see a boy that started as an orphan determined to protect his brother. Just a poor kid living on a bad street, intimidated by a world he didn’t understand and determined to change it for himself, for his brother, and for us. I see the man he’s grown into, who’s never forgotten where he came from and how it shaped him, no matter how much he’s evolved.” “It’s admirable…he’s truly…he’s some kind of man.” Tobias’s gaze drifts over to me as electricity spikes in the air between us. “He is,” I agree. A true king.

You think that just because you’ve suffered, we know nothing about suffering. You think that our pain pales in comparison to yours. Your pain is so much more important than ours. You, so holier-than-thou, with your fucking orphan kid doctrine, and your rules and your orders, with that white-hot vengeance burning in your veins.

The hair on her body stood on end as she looked through the crowd, able to pick out the kids who would need her. The ones whose lives were forever tainted and ruined by the life they'd lived in the orphanage. No one protected them. Society didn’t think about the fact that orphans were left under the control of a select group of people. They never thought about what happened when one of those people betrayed the trust that was placed in them. She

And for the world's orphans. A portion of this book's proceeds will go to you.

forward. So I was engrossed by the provocative 2012 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Don’t Pick Up: Why Kids Need to Separate from Their Parents,” by English professor Terry Castle, in which Castle offered the orphan as a role model for youth suffering from overparenting.7 Terry Castle has taught English

an

Froi slipped off Finnikin’s horse, quietly looking up at him and then the others before turning in the direction Evanjalin had taken. He removed his bedroll from the saddle and placed it on his shoulder. “She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That’s the difference between us and others. I seen them. I seen Lumaterans die, and you know what I do to live? Anyfing. Do you hear me? I do anyfing. Just like her.” Froi turned and followed Evanjalin, and this time it seemed he understood exactly which path he was taking.

Any of you ever been to Disney World?” Ferbus gave her a harsh look and pointed around the circle at each Junior. “Foster kid, orphan, foster kid, disowned—” “Okay, so no,” she said. “But perhaps you’ve heard of the place.

When you come in here and pick up one of these,” he gestured at Hamlet, “or even watch one of the crappy holos out in the main room, you’re not just an orphaned kid marooned on a dustbowl planet anymore, with no more rights than any slave might have. It’s a way out of here. You’re a hero, or a villain, or anything else you could imagine, and a lot of things you probably can’t. Every time you turn a page you can go somewhere, even someplace that’s never been. But anywhere you go is somewhere far away from here. And the best part about it, the part that keeps me alive and sane, is that the words in the books leave a lot of blanks that your mind has to fill in. It makes your mind work without you forcing it to, and you get better and better at it without killing yourself like you have to sometimes in the fields.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5 (NIV) LEARNING TO TRUST I clicked my pen against the couch cushion and stared at my husband, waiting for him to respond. So far, the notebook on my lap was empty. “I don’t know,” Ryan finally said. I sighed. Earlier that day, we had officially decided to send out support letters for our adoption. We were sitting in our living room, attempting to make a list of people to whom we should send them. We weren’t sure if many of our aunts and uncles and cousins would understand our heart for the orphan. We had already run into our fair share of interesting reactions when we announced our intention to adopt. Family members didn’t understand why we would take this emotional and financial risk to travel to a war-torn country, just so we could bring some kid we don’t know into our home. Some of them looked at us like we were crazy. Our worries reached their peak, so we put down the notebook and did what we should have done in the beginning. We prayed. And afterward, when we said our amens, Ryan looked at me. “God can work in any heart—even the ones we think are unlikely.” That afternoon, we sent out the letters to everyone. Forgive me, Lord, for all the times I’ve let my fear and doubt limit Your power. Help me to be faithful with what I can control and trust You with the rest. —Katie Ganshert Digging Deeper: Jo 1:9; Ps 56:3–4; 2 Tm 1:7

There’s something about Cape kids. Maybe it’s the constant drumbeat of the ocean, like a clock reminding them how short the time is, or maybe it’s just the loneliness of the long winters . . . but they party more than anyone else.

It is not as if I—or the church as a whole—was hard-hearted and didn’t care about the plight of orphans. I simply did not know the enormity of the problems. No one had seriously engaged the issue of orphan care in any of the churches or schools I attended. But in this case, ignorance is not bliss. Millions of kids around the world are hurting in ways we cannot imagine, and we are called to respond with compassionate care.

He makes the turn into the long gravel lane of my brother Jacob’s farm. The place originally belonged to my parents but was handed down to him, the eldest male child, when they passed away. I mentally brace as the small apple orchard on my right comes into view. The memories aren’t far behind, and I find myself looking down the rows of trees, almost expecting to see the three Amish kids sent to pick apples for pies. Jacob, Sarah, and I had been inseparable back then, and instead of picking apples, we ended up playing hide-and-seek until it was too dark to see. As was usually the case, I was the instigator. Kate, the druvvel-machah. The “troublemaker.” Or so my datt said. The one and only time I confessed to influencing my siblings, he punished me by taking away my favorite chore: bottle-feeding the three-week-old orphan goat I’d named Sammy. I’d cajoled and argued and begged. I was rewarded by being sent to bed with no supper and a stomachache from eating too many green apples. The

Who lived here?” Steven asked, slowing his pace now that they’d reached level ground. Emma reached back to be sure her braid wasn’t coming undone. “Just some homesteaders. I don’t know what their names were.” Steven released her hand and gave the remains of the house a thorough assessment, as though it might be important to remember what he saw. “It must have been nice, living out here—just a man and his wife, and maybe a couple of kids.” “It must have been lonely,” Emma countered. “Besides, you don’t know what this lake is like in winter—it freezes solid in some places. These people might easily have been marooned here for weeks at a time.” She shivered, even though there were bees buzzing in the warm May air. “I imagine they found things to do,” Steven said quietly. He held out a hand to Emma, and she went to him, just as she always did. Emma flushed as she lowered her eyes, unable to help picturing herself and Steven in such a situation. “I imagine,” she conceded. Just

Caleb stood on the Tibbet porch, gazing after Lily through the thin veil of rain sliding down from the porch roof. He’d been employing the tactics the colonel had recommended, and he’d liked the results—until he’d noticed Lily leaving the house with Corporal Pierce. When he’d seen her take that green kid’s arm and look up at him as though he’d just cured all the ills of humanity in a single sentence, Caleb had wanted to vault over the porch railing and run after them, shouting protests like a fool. He ached, knowing Lily wouldn’t have made such a familiar gesture with him, even after all they’d been to each other. Saddened,

I was hoping—er—thinking—” He went crimson from his neck to his hairline. “Would you dance with me, Miss Emma?” She smiled and offered her hand. “I’d like that very much,” she said, hoping her face didn’t show the ravages of her earlier crying fit. Nathaniel cleared his throat and marshalled Emma awkwardly into a waltz. It seemed strange that, only three years before, she’d been his age. “If Steven or Macon is mean to you,” he ventured boldly, “you just come and tell me. I’ll give ’em what-for.” Resisting an urge to kiss his cheek, because she knew it would embarrass him too much, Emma nodded solemnly. “I’ll do that,” she promised, both amused and touched that Nathaniel was willing to do battle with such formidable opponents for her sake. Nathaniel’s handsome young face was dark with conviction and his palm was moist against Emma’s. “I know you think I’m just a kid, but I’m strong, Miss Emma. I won’t let anybody hurt you.” “Thank you,” Emma said, and she meant it. After

Joss’s littlest child, a girl with her father’s curly hair, came bounding down the path toward them. “Papa, is Uncle Caleb really a damn Yankee?” she chirped. Joss didn’t so much as glance in Caleb’s direction. “Yes, Ellen,” he said gently. “He’s the damnedest Yankee I ever saw.” Caleb smiled. “You wouldn’t have Susannah and all these beautiful kids if I’d done what you told me to do that day,” he pointed out. “You’d be nothing but a pile of bones moldering in the brush somewhere.” Joss glowered at him. “I guess that’s so,” he conceded. “But don’t get the idea things are settled between us, little brother, because they aren’t. I’m still going to beat the living tar out of you the day your arm comes out of that sling.” This was the old Joss, the Joss whom Caleb remembered and loved. “Don’t be too confident, big brother,” he replied. “Just in case you haven’t noticed, I’m all grown up.” Lily

Yes, my sister is weird and says crap like en route. I smirk - it's a common facial tic of mine - and turn to her.

He tells me about his family—how there was some kind of dispute, and his brother killed his father when Mr. Grote was sixteen and he ran away from home and never went back. He met Mrs. Grote around that time, and Harold was born when they were eighteen. They never actually tied the knot until they had a houseful of kids. All he wants to do is hunt and fish, he says, but he has to feed and clothe all these babies. God’s honest truth, he didn’t want a single one of ’em. God’s honest truth, he’s afraid he could get mad enough to hurt them.

In the darkness he tells me more than I want to know. He and Mrs. Grote barely say a word to each other anymore, he says. She hates to talk, but loves sex. But he can’t stand to touch her—she doesn’t bother to clean herself, and there’s always a kid hanging off her. He says, “I should’ve married someone like you, Dorothy. You wouldn’t’ve trapped me like this, would ya?” He likes my red hair. “You know what they say,” he tells me. “If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.” The first girl he kissed had red hair, but that was a long time ago, he says, back when he was young and good-looking. “Surprised I was good-looking? I was a boy once, you know. I’m only twenty-four now.” He has never been in love with his wife, he says. Call me Gerald, he says. I know that Mr. Grote shouldn’t be saying all this. I am only ten years old.

Unwrapping the leftover currant bread at the Grotes’ that evening, I tell them about my party. Mr. Grote snorts. “How ridiculous, celebrating a birth date. I don’t even know the day I was born, and I sure can’t remember any of theirs,” he says, swinging his hand toward his kids. “But let’s have that cake.

Have you met Terry? The housekeeper?” Molly nods. “Actually, she’s Jack’s mother.” Dina perks up. “Wait a minute. Terry Gallant? I went to high school with her! I didn’t know Jack was her kid.” “Yep,” Molly says. Waving a chunk of hot dog around on her fork, Dina says, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” Molly gives Ralph a what the fuck? look, but he just gazes placidly back. “It’s sad what happens to people, y’know?” Dina says, shaking her head. “Terry Gallant used to be Miss Popular. Homecoming Queen and all that. Then she got knocked up by some Mexican scrub—and now look at her, she’s a maid.” “Actually, he was Dominican,” Molly mumbles. “Whatever. Those illegals are all the same, aren’t they?” Deep breath, stay cool, get through dinner. “If you say so.” “I do say so.

she rescued stray cats and was a disturbing mix of orphan and daddy’s girl, rich kid and Woodstock grandbaby. Whereas I, a middle-class professor, sixteen years her senior, was a Marxist of the old school and a dyed-in-the-wool militant, and therefore I scorned crazy chic in all its permutations and was uncomfortable with the phenomenon calling itself magic realism, so fashionable at the time, because I considered myself far removed from the superstitions and miracle worshipping of those around us, of whom Agustina was the prime representative.

Car crash,” she says on a sigh. “A rich couple from a few towns over collided with her after they got drunk at a party. Their last name was Carlyle, I believe. They orphaned their own daughter with that wreck, and killed a damn good woman who was just trying to get home to her kids after a long day at the hospital.

On Charles Dickens: Seriously old guy, dead, and a foreigner. But Christ Jesus, did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over. And nobody giving a rat's ass. You'd think he was from around here. (Appalachia)

But it’s more than an absence of spouses that complicates caregiving and companionship later in life. People are having fewer children, if they have children at all. This, in combination with marriage trends, has increased the number of older adults with no close family ties—a group of people whom sociologists call “elder orphans,” “solo agers,” or “kinless.” Researchers estimate that one in five older adults is an “elder orphan” or at risk of becoming one, a figure that is likely to grow in coming years. Like marriage, having children isn’t a surefire insurance policy for caregiving. Adult children might not live close to their parents, or their kids might not have the capacity to help. Daughters, historically the country’s default caregivers of aging parents, can’t be taken for granted as a source of uncompensated caregiving these days. Far more women are in the paid labor force and would jeopardize their economic security or their family’s if they quit their jobs to take care of their parents. (Nevertheless, on average, daughters spend far more time caring for their aging parents than sons do.) Because Americans are having kids later in life, it’s common for children with aging parents to be raising children of their own at the same time; these are members of the so-called sandwich generation. Unable to manage both forms of care, these adults may focus on their kids and outsource care for their parents.

She’d fooled herself into thinking this was an adventure when it was just an elaborate prison. “Sorry to disappoint,” she replied, her tone perhaps a little sullen. “But you picked someone who knows the least about anything. I’m not some high up leader who makes the decisions and knows every secret about Beta. I grew up in the base of the city, with barely enough food and water to survive. And then even less when I was orphaned and sent to live with all the other kids without families. Trust me. If you wanted secrets about Beta? You should have picked someone else. I’m a nobody, Arges. I know nothing useful.” Perhaps her words shocked him. He stared at her with wide eyes, like she’d told him that the humans were planning on setting the entire ocean on fire. But it was the truth.

Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That’s what the big world thinks it’s worth, to save the white-trash orphans. And if these kids grow up to throw punches at washing machines or each other or even let’s say smash a drugstore drive-through window. Crawl in and take what’s there. Tell me how you’re going to be surprised. There’s your peanut butter sandwich back. Every dog gets his day.

There’s a collective script for that situation that we can follow. But losing a kid, there’s no social mechanism for dealing with that. Nothing to prepare you for it, to help you cope. There’s not even a word for it in the English language. The child who survives is an orphan, like I said, but the parent who survives? Well, there’s nothing for that.

They're bartering for costumes. Grace has a big heart. She lends costumes to those who can't afford the full rental price. Kids repay her with candy, after they've been trick-or-treating." Bartering? This he had to see. He walked toward them, only to stop by a rack of capes. He squinted between hangers, staying hidden. He recognized the children. Each of them lived with single parents or in a foster home. For all of them, money would be tight. Most couldn't afford a cool costume.

Well, good night," he said. "I'm off to the elephant with my kids. On the supposition that you should need me some night, you'll find me there. I live on the second floor. There is no doorman. You should ask for Monsieur Gavroche.

That’s how they pay you at DSS. Old Baggy has been at it so long she’s got no more reason to live, working two shifts a day, going home to her crap duplex in Duffield owned by her cousin that gives her a break on the rent. If you are the kid sitting across from her in your caseworker meeting, wearing your two black eyes and the hoodie reeking of cat piss, sorry dude but she’s thinking about what TV show she’ll watch that night. Any human person with gumption would have moved on to something else by now, the military or selling insurance or being a cop or even a teacher. Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That’s what the big world thinks it’s worth, to save the white-trash orphans.

When you’re a kid,” he said, “time lasts forever. You’re immortal. When your grandparents die, it’s not real. Not yet. Then your parents go, and … well, it’s like there’s no more insurance. You’re next in line. You’re that guy!” He laughed. “The last one standing. The one everyone wants to make sure to see at Christmas, because you never know. You never know. I can see them grieving me even while I’m still here. And there’s a comfort in that. A love. So maybe that’s what you’re giving your father by being here. Even if he doesn’t know it in his brain, he knows it in his cells.” Her throat was dry, and her eyes burned. She folded her hands, staring down at the ridgeline of her knuckles. The man said, “What?” She cleared her throat. “The mourning, it sucks, yeah, but no one tells you…” He kept his gaze steady on her. She forced out the words. “No one tells you how hard it is not to get resentful.” “Accept it,” he said. “If you accept life, you accept all its rich, awful complexities. Because if you think about it, what’s the alternative?” She thought of pork-belly sliders and dude-bros thumbing their phones over dinner and the sweet bullshit promise of demo-targeted advertising. She took the man’s hand, skin draped over bone. “Thank you.

The definition of “chutzpah”? A kid who kills both his parents and pleads to a judge for leniency because he is an orphan.

Evan flashed on Peter sitting on the couch in his dead father’s dress shirt—I don’t have anyone to be proud of me—and the image about wrecked him. How could a kid that fundamentally good ever have to wonder if he was good enough for someone to be proud of?

That was what kids were supposed to do: say how they felt and have fun and create joy before life wore them down and dulled their clarity. Joey had never had that chance, and neither had Evan.

IT WAS SO SMALL that it felt like everyone in town knew us: the Loring Center kids. Orphaned, disabled, or delinquent. Our abandonment scared people, as if it might be contagious.

Rozot. Jennifer the failed suicide, Greg the orphan by force, impoverished Manuel, and her, Sarah—they’ve all been robbed of heedless childhood and that’s why they’ve been chosen, their precocious adulthood acknowledged. All kids want such glamorous knowledge. The darkness of it. The hardness of it. The realness of it. The cold fact that life really is fucked. And Sarah, with her Morrissey T-shirts and her unfiltered Camels and her sleep deprivation and her willful compliance with sexual hungers, she’s been asking for this awful dispossession, with one mind she’s been hot on its trail, and now that she’s got it she longs to go back. If she could only go back, and eat the sandwich her mother packed her, with its thoughtful tomato.

Christ makes clear that Christianity is not a path to more comforts, higher status, or greater ease in this world..Here are the days when holding fasting to the gospel, actually believing the Bible, and putting it into practice will mean risking your reputation, sacrificing your social status, disagreeing with your closest family and friends, jeopardizing your economic security and earthly stability, giving away your possessions, leaving behind the accolades of the world, and..potentially losing your life..it is not possible to love the poor and live in unabated luxury..authentic tolerance doesn't mask truth but magnifies it, showing us how to love and serve one another in view of our differences..we spend the majority of our time sitting as spectators in services that cater to our comforts. Even in our giving to the church, we spend the majority of our money on places for us to meet, professionals to do the ministry, and programs designed around us and our kids..Jesus' main point is not that going to a funeral is wrong, but that his Kingdom will not take second place to anyone or anything else..Even more important than honoring the dead was proclaiming the Kingdom to those who were dying..Jesus knew that as great as people's earthly needs were, their eternal need was far greater..the ultimate priority of his coming was not to relieve suffering..his ultimate priority in coming to the world was to sever the root of suffering: sin itself..He came not just to give the poor drinking water for their bodies but to give people living water for their souls. He came not just to give orphans and widows a family now but to give them a family forever. He came not just to free girls from slavery to sex but to free them from slavery to sin. He came not just to make equality possible on earth but to make eternity possible in heaven..If all we do is meet people's physical needs while ignoring their spiritual need, we miss the entire point..We testify with our lips what we attest with our lives..giving a cup of water to the poor is not contingent upon that person's confession of faith in Christ..it is in addressing eternal suffering that we are most effective in alleviating earthly suffering..This commission is not just a general command to make disciples among as many people as possible. Instead, it is a specific command to make disciples among every people group in the world..Jesus has not given us a commission to consider; he has given us a command to obey..it seems that Jesus knows as soon as this man returns to his family, the lure to stay will be strong..It is not uncommon for the lure of family love to lead to faithless living..Following Jesus doesn't just entail sacrificial abandonment of our lives; it requires supreme affection from our hearts..I can slowly let indecision become inaction..delayed obedience becomes disobedience..If I'm walking by a lake and see a child drowning, I don't stop and ponder what I should do. Nor do I just stand there praying about what action to take. I do something..My purpose in putting these realities before us is not to cause us to collapse under their weight. To be certain, God alone is able to bear these global burdens..proclaim the gospel not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ.

It brought Duran back to his childhood, where he’d seen a lot of things kids weren’t meant to see and some stuff beyond that. It had been like a tour of duty, his childhood, a state of mind to be endured. His senses had been alive then, that was for sure. So much unrealized potential, so many dreams of who he could be and what he’d do when he got there.

he doesn’t approve but will deal with it later, “is that what they’re doing? Asking for handouts?” “They just want to be treated fairly,” a kid in the back says. “But what does that mean? And where does it end?” another kid asks. As others join the conversation, Megan turns in her seat and squints at Molly, as if noticing her for the first time. “An Indian, huh. That’s cool,” she whispers. “Like Molly Molasses, right?

You have no idea what I am now,” she told him. “You have no idea what I’ve become. You never knew the first thing about me! You people just locked me up and trapped you in there with you, and then you acted like you were the boss of me, like I was just some stupid kid. But I told you, didn’t I? I told you right at the start that I’ve killed before, and I’d kill again.

the Loring Center kids. Orphaned, disabled, or delinquent. Our abandonment scared people, as if it might be contagious. Upon meeting any of us for the first time, people were amazed if we had our faculties intact, as so many did not, and shunned us regardless. In our city, the word “Loring” was synonymous with “retarded.” “Isn’t he Loring?” or “You look so Loring!

The thought that being a mother will complete a woman has ruined the opportunity of thousands of orphan kids getting a home, a family.

I know nobody’s going to take care of me. I have to make sure that I’ve got things in place. Who will speak for me when I can’t speak for myself? One sister has her own grief. The other I simply do not trust. I’ve thought about bribing my nieces and nephews, who are in my will. Let’s not kid ourselves. Making plans that assure our elder years are managed to our liking and fit within our budget is more crucial for those without children. We know we can’t count on offspring to oversee our dotage. There’s even a name for what we may someday become—elder orphans. “Aging seniors face all sorts of uncertainties,” writes Susan B. Garland in Kiplinger’s Retirement Report. “But older childless singles and couples are missing the fallback that many other seniors take for granted: adult children who can monitor an aging parent and help navigate a complex system of health care, housing, transportation, and social services.” Perhaps we can push planning aside for a while, but then our care may fall to an inattentive relative, acquaintance, or potentially nefarious do-gooder to make decisions for us when we can’t make them ourselves. If we’re really in a jam, some judge will appoint someone to manage our affairs. No one wants to face the fact, but none of us is getting out of here alive. Some steer clear of making plans, procrastinate, or remain in denial that their day will come. Even partial planning risks chaotic consequences. -—-—-—

Intuitively, we know that neglect is not good for a child, and abundant evidence from neuroscience helps explain why: neglect during early childhood reduces the frequency of serve-and-return interactions and produces deficits in brain development that are hard to repair. A landmark randomized study of Romanian orphans who were institutionalized at an early age found that extreme neglect produced severe deficits in IQ, mental health, social adjustment, and even brain architecture.

In Bach’s time, the point of music was to praise God. But he had suffered. He was an orphan by the time he was eleven. Then he had all those kids and over half of them died. His wife, she died young too. He knew about loss and despair. Just as he knew about getting pissed and into trouble. So his music is halfway between man and God. It’s how man becomes divine. It’s like tripping.

There’s a word if you lose your parents. You’re an orphan. But there isn’t a word for when you lose your kids. I think that’s because it’s unspeakable.

Foster care can be one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, experiences you will ever encounter. To welcome forgotten kids into your home and love them as your own children showcases the heart of Jesus in a powerful way.

A “poor = lazy” mindset blinds us to the needs of vulnerable children. These kids did not choose poverty, but they live in it every day, and many have no hope of getting out of it. If we claim to care about orphaned and vulnerable children, we can’t dismiss the poverty that is rampant both on the other side of the world and at our doorstep.

Kids from loving, stable homes, with a bed to sleep in at night and food on the table, look at the world and see fun, adventure, and opportunity. But children whose daily reality is hunger, abuse, and neglect look at the same world and see threats, danger, abandonment, and hopelessness.

If you were an orphan, and I was a billionaire, I wouldn’t adopt you,” I tell him. “I’d take every other kid off the streets. And then once that’s done, I’d drive past you in my orphan party bus and flip you off.

Every memory I saw was of Willy. I watched the two of us slowly morph from poor orphaned kids from South Carolina into warriors under the firm hands of men who’d been through countless fights like the one I’d just survived. Just like the one that had taken Willy’s life.