Letter 1/ Dear Skipper: Even If You Hate Me, I Will Still Try to Love You

We’re in a pickle as legal guardians, caught between a rock and a jagged hard place. “Pickle” is putting it very, very mildly.

Superman was found by two farmers, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who adopted and raised the baby boy. Image from Superman: Secret Origin #6 (October 2010). Art by Gary Frank and Jon Sibal.

I won’t share the child’s name. (If you know us, I ask you please not to share it, either.)

She is a beautiful girl — a newly minted teenager, with all that entails, including a heightened interest in shampoos and skin cleansers. She is spunky, charming, talented: at singing in the shower, back flips, seasoning chicken breasts, concocting cocoa coffee drinks and caring for pets. She never met a dog she didn’t love; the bigger the German Shepherd, the tinier the baby Maltese, the better.

She has a smile that wins you over. I like to call her Skipper, after Barbie’s teenage sister. Her small black Vans remind me of Keds, which takes me back to my Barbie-playing childhood. (I wanted Skipper, sporty and cute, in addition to my Malibu Barbie, but never got more than that single doll.) Besides, we have our treasured older daughter, putting this one in the little sister slot. But that pretty behavior, those polite manners? They are reserved, almost exclusively, for those who do not live with her.

No. We, her legal guardians, who have drained battery packs of human energy and turned the hands on clocks and clocks of time to try…