Family does not mean people with the same last name or the same DNA. It means people who care about you, who you trust, who you care about--people you can count on.

I think sometimes I think too damn much. I worry about this and that and everything else and then I wake up and four more years have slipped right out the back door.

Once," Balinda begins softly, "when I was in the emergency room with my mother they brought in a murderer who had been shot and was dying, right there in front of us. I watched as the nurse touched his face and reassured him and I could not believe they were being so nice to him.""What happened?" Jill asked."My mother rose up, took my arm, gripped it as if she was a weight lifter and said, 'he was a beautiful baby once and his mother loved him'.