abandoned child.....

ok, so i just read about this on cnn.com.....

BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) -- Authorities appealed to the public to identify an abandoned 3-year-old girl who says her name is Courtney, she's from Brooklyn and she wants her mommy.

her dad left her with stranger so he could 'cash a money order', and he did not return.......no idea where the mother is........9 years ago, i would have read this tale in disbelief......no reasonable parent does this kind of thing.....but that would have been before i met my third child's birth mother, birth father, associated social workers, foster parents, half-siblings, new husbands, et al...........somehow the term et al seems eerily out-of-place.........there is another world out there of people whose dysfunction goes beyond any lifetime channel made-for-tv movie.....and this dysfunction is something that daily love and attention by basically decent and caring people cannot erase.......my child's birth mother once attempted to give her half-brother away to a couple she met in the drivethru window at mcdonalds........had it not been the the vigilance of her social worker....the daughter of our child's original foster parents.....who divorced after we adopted.......he and his new wife are in our bookclub.....(his new wife ( a lawyer) is a friend of the lawyer who did the adoption case for us pro bono )got it? this is pretty convoluted stuff.......anyway.....we have seen abandonment, remorse, abandonment, remorse......so many times......and yet...we still allow our child's birth mother to have contact (we would allow the birth father contact, but he assured us that he had no......not worth going there........ ) because we know that it is important to our child to know that even though her birth mother has 'problems' she has not totally abandoned her.......and we have full expectation that when this child turns 18 she will try to live with this birth mother.........just because she will be legally able to do so.....ands she must then discover for herself that this is not a realistic option........we have 7 more years until this fateful day.......i try not to think about it......anyway.......i really feel for this child, found in baltimore......from brooklyn.......may she find peace........