The pen grip that broke me today

I was watching a kid in the intake room — eight years old, new to the system — fiddling with a pencil like it was a live thing. Not holding it right, not even close. Thumb curled over the top, fingers all wrong. I almost said something, then stopped. That grip? It’s the same one I used when I first learned to write, and I’ve spent thirty years trying to unlearn it. Today, for no reason, I remembered why: because my first foster child, a girl named Lila, once looked at my hand and said, 'You’re writing like you’re mad at the paper.' I still don’t know if she meant it as a joke or a diagnosis. B