The Only One Watching

She didn’t need entertainment. She needed someone to stay. Someone to watch.

I met my first CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) child about six months before COVID. She was six years old. She was the loneliest child I had ever met.

She had biological siblings, scattered in different foster homes. Her parents’ rights had been terminated. She lived in a therapeutic foster home for children with severe behavioral needs. In reality, the home felt like something out of a Netflix child-abuse documentary. The foster parent was cruel.

The child told me the foster mother dropped her off at school at 7:00 a.m., an hour and twenty minutes before it opened, because she didn’t want to make two trips to different schools.

The child sat outside every morning.

In the snow.

In the rain.

In the cold.

Waiting.

The foster mother said she was fine because there was a picnic pavilion where she could sit. When the Guardian ad Litem was told, the practice stopped.

The foster parent said the girl was difficult.

The child said, “She hates me.”

When I visited, the foster mother transformed. Her voice turned syrupy sweet. She praised her loudly. She tried to hug her. The girl stepped away.

Before COVID, we spent time together. We went to lunch. We fed ducks at the park. I watched her play. She had an extraordinary imagination.

She directed everything—where I stood, where I sat, what I was allowed to say.“If you’re going to play,” she said, “only do what I tell you.”

She created entire worlds—dragons, castles, adventures—and acted them out for hours. And I played the parts she directed me to play.

Then COVID hit.

Visits stopped.

School stopped.

The teachers who were kind disappeared.

She was trapped in that house, twenty-four hours a day. I had been a constant in her life, and suddenly, I was gone.

She was stuck in her room, but she had a tablet and Wi-Fi.

We read together on a shared app. She learned to turn pages forward and backward so I could reread her favorite parts. She practiced reading with me.

Then one day she asked,

“Can you just watch me play?”

We switched to FaceTime.She propped up her tablet. I propped up my phone. And for hours, she played.

I watched her build Lego towers,

line up stuffed animals,

and act out entire worlds

that existed only for her—

worlds where she was in charge,

where nothing was broken,

where everything made sense.

I carried my phone into the kitchen while I cooked. Propped it beside me while I worked. Every few minutes, she glanced up.

“Are you watching?”“Yes,” I’d say.

Eventually, she was matched with an adoptive family. The adoption failed. She went back to the same foster home—the same misery.

Later, a single mother from out of state came forward.  

The prospective mother started daily video calls. She became the one who watched.

After six months, she visited. The connection was real.

When the girl was told she was being adopted, she called me.

“I was scared. I didn’t know who was going to adopt me,” she said.“When I found out who it was, I couldn’t believe it. I had wished for it.”

She’s a teenager now. She still occasionally calls or texts.

Five years later, she and her mom adopted another child, a little boy. His mom put my number into his tablet so it matched his sister’s.

Sometimes he called me—this little boy I had never met.

Last year, I visited her state, and we met for lunch. She hugged me like I never left.

I met the new little brother. He hugged me again and again.

My CASA child rolled her eyes.“She’s not your CASA,” she said. “She’s mine.”

The boy was confused.“I want a CASA.”

“You don’t need one,” I told him. “You have a mom and a sister.”

He thought.“

She didn’t have a family. She just had a CASA?”

Yes. For a long time, I was all she had.

To protect resident privacy, identifying details in this story have been changed. The situations described reflect real issues encountered in long-term care.