I remember the first day that Rosie came to our home so that we could “babysit” her for a few hours while her parents claimed to be repainting their apartment. These few hour visits became more frequent as time went on, eventually getting to the point where her parents would not pick her up for weeks at a time with varying excuses. Some time later, my parents had to remind her parents that they forgot to pick Rosie up on several occasions. A few times in particular, they had not responded for over a day.

When they tried to start getting her back more often, they were not properly caring for her. It got to the point that the Office of Children and Youth (OCY) was called by a nurse after Rosie spent over 12 hours in the emergency room due to being neglected and malnourished. At which point OCY determined that Rosie should be put in our care while they did an investigation of her parents. Since then, Rosie has never been able to be around food and not have some of it. If she did not get her way she would scream and cry until she did.

Not that all of our time with Rosie was undesirable though. In fact the opposite was true. Her smile could light up a room. She did like to get into things like papers we had on our tables or laptops, but she never ended up ruining anything. I believe it was mostly out of her curiosity. One time, I let her write on a paper with a pencil (with guidance of course). Mainly making sure she was not trying to walk away with the pencil because I did not want her to fall or trip with it in her hand.

Her favorite song to listen to by far was “Sea Shanty Medley” by Home Free. She would dance the best she could whenever we played it. We never had anyone babysit her because we were the babysitters. Anywhere we went she was with us. Whether it was to Conneaut, Ohio to celebrate D-Day, or just riding around town with my parents while they ran errands.

Just recently, on Wednesday November 9, 2022,  Rosie was returned to her parents. As the judge of her case decided that they had managed to fix their known issues and could not make a case on her parents for the things they were suspected of having done. We only had Rosie for a year but she will be missed.