I was sitting there, cold, huddled in a blanket, not feeling very well, a cup of coffee cradled occasionally in my hands to ensure my fingers would stay somewhat nimble on the keys of the computer, looking forward to my bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup.
But my heart was warm given the sweet, contrite voice on the phone.
Even better would have been those little arms wrapped around my knees (he’s short, I’m tall) accompanied by that conscience-stricken admission, but we’ll do that when I get home from work while my wife mans the fort.
It is not a reasonable expectation that children should demonstrate pin-drop silence behavior, especially at the end of the school day, any more than a high-flying, moon-passing, fast-moving sleigh led by a red-nosed reindeer is realistic either.
Truth be told, sometimes it’s chaos.
It’s jail break and we don’t have enough guards.
And speaking of cold and chaotic there’s this, published just days before Christmas a few years back:
“Roughly half of the 9,000 children in care in Washington are five years old or younger, and one-quarter of these children have lived in five or more homes, and annual state social worker turnover is approaching 30 percent in some areas.”
Even colder was this headline just last year of the grim statistic that “The United States Foster Care system is the nation’s #1 pipeline for child sex trafficking.”
“Here’s the ugly truth,” wrote Michael Dolce for Newsweek: “most Americans who are victims of sex trafficking come from our nation’s own foster care system. It’s a deeply broken system that leaves thousands vulnerable to pimps as children and grooms them for the illegal sex trade as young adults.”
It’s a rather cold, bleak future for our children and thus our families, communities, nation and world.
Or would be except for her who hands the phone to that little one and says, ‘you need to tell grandpa.’
