One of the hardest things in fostering - maybe one of the hardest things in parenting generally - is helping children decide what to do with their adult lives.
I remember way back when I was a volunteer helper at a youth club, there was a gang of five girls, all the same age who hung out together every time they were there which was most times.
I remember one was called Maureen, there was a Tina and one had a nickname something like Bibby. The other two I can picture in my mind but can't remember their names.
They seemed to like me partly because I was, back then, slightly cool, or whatever the phrase was back then. I was considered so cool that when Christmas came round the five clubbed together and bought me a bottle of whisky which they turned up at my flat to deliver on my doorstep because they were bright enough to know such a gift had to be given off premises, as a one-to-one thing between friends, not youth club volunteer/youth clubbers on youth club soil.
Part of the reason I remember them with great clarity is because of something that happened about a year after I moved on from their YC and never expected to see them again.
In my time with them we often talked about what they wanted to do when they left school.
One of them wanted to work with children, another with animals. One wanted to see the world, another said she didn't want to work so she was going to get married straight away and have a family. The final girl, the most solitary one, said she didn't care what she did but she'd quite like to do something in tennis.
I used to encourage them to have dreams, and have realistic aims and ambitions, and to realise that it takes hard work and a bit of luck to get what you want in life…that sort of mentoring talk.
About a year after I left I walked past our main Tesco which was in the high street. It wasn't huge, just five checkouts. The checkouts backed onto the huge windows so I could see the backs of the women (for they were only women then) on the tills.
Three of the five were unmistakably three of my five girls; the ones who had such very different ambitions.
Made me a bit sad.
But hey, there's nothing wrong with working in a supermarket, and how many of us ever get to fulfil our big dreams? And maybe they were all saving up for colege or to go travelling, who knows.
But there they sat, side by side, left hand on the conveyor belt, right hand tapping the till.
I guess it hurt because I'd shared their aspirations, even dared dream with them.
The thing is that life and work nowadays…it seems even harder to make it sing for our kids.
So from time to time I tell them that there's only one ambition worth chasing, and that's to be happy, and you can do that however you earn your corn.
On another note I went up to town one day, me and a friend had tickets for a tennis tournament. We got there in time for the first match and the place was almost empty as the big guns don't play til last. To my amazement, sitting alone in the stand was the solitary girl. I went over and we hugged. She told me that she had tickets for every day of the tournament.
I didn't ask her what she did for a living, it didn't really matter. She was doing what she wanted to do with her adult life.
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