The 5-year-old boy in the green shirt with “Cool Little Bro” written across the chest had just thumped 81-year-old Mary Steele in the nose with a balloon. Steele, who was baby-sitting the excited child for his foster mother, stopped fast and flashed a look of mock surprise.
EASTHAMPTON — The 5-year-old boy in the green shirt with “Cool Little Bro” written across the chest had just thumped 81-year-old Mary Steele in the nose with a balloon. Steele, who was baby-sitting the excited child for his foster mother, stopped fast and flashed a look of mock surprise.
“Now, you have to give me a kiss right on the nose,” Steele said. The boy, clearly happy, did not consider this a chore.
Laughter and smiles have not come easily to the child, who was removed from his biological parents a year ago because of domestic violence and substance abuse.
But now, engaged and embraced, he is part of a pioneering social project called the Treehouse community, a 60-home village built from scratch nearly a decade ago in a broad former meadow near Mount Tom.