Like a candle in the wind (cont)

I had come to live there because I needed to be away from the life I had been living. It was filled with way too much sex, drugs and rock n roll. I was in such emotional pain and my mind so blown by life that by the time I arrived there, I was a kind of walking zombie. I had been in unrequited love with someone for the better part of 2 years by then and I was so screwed up over that, I needed something completely different and Terri's home and the kids offered that to me. I don't know what I thought I was getting into, but it surely didn't turn out to be what I actually received in the end. What I actually received was far more than I ever gave or envisioned I was going to have to give.

Terri was seldom home, so it was pretty much Rachie, Ally and I, 99% of the time. I took them to school, picked them up, prepared their dinner, fed them, bathed them, read books to them, sang to them, played with them, rubbed their backs, scared off monsters in their room, let them come crawl in bed with me when they were scared, cleaned their house, did their laundry, mowed their lawn, fed and cared for their animals, took them off on little outings and was, well, their mother for all that time. Even their preschool teachers did not know I was not their mother (they had just assumed I was and after a while I gave up trying to correct them). I will never forget Rachie's first day in kindergarten. It was as if I was sending my own child off to school for the first time. And that was because I was. By then, she had become my own child in my heart and there was no taking that away from me.