TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY

I guess I'm not the only foster mum with a twenty-four hour house just now.

Computer games are best played with other people and if players can find themselves a group who are up late all the better.

The social group in my house is based in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, South Carolina and Aspen Colorado.

Brilliant!

This kind of stuff is nothing worse than humankind moving itself to the next level, you know; one world etc. Hope John Lennon is watching with that lovely crooked grin.

You get unexpected shakedowns. For example, I woke up this morning and smelled bacon. Lovely. My other half had got up and gone down ahead of me so obviously I was in for a surprise breakfast, something a bit more special than the usual dry toast. I got downstairs to a frying pan upside down in the sink and a blackened empty saucepan on the stove.

Other half was horizontal on the sofa, football is back and he was re-watching the highlights of a game he'd watched the night before.

I poured some hot water over a teabag and said;

"Bacon for breakfast?"

He replied;

"I thought that was you…"

We had a moment. A nice moment. The pans were still warm. It had to have been eldest foster son.

He'd cooked himself a proper breakfast. Scrambled eggs and bacon. A first. He'd never done such a thing before, never asked how to do it. But he'd done it, and taken himself off to his room with it on a tray, I bet it tasted as good as anything he'd ever eaten.

Before we could talk about what a great thing it was that he was reaching out for independence we heard his steps coming down the stairs. He brought the tray and his empty plate. He said;

"Morning you lot! Alright?"

And as he spoke he placed the plate in the sink and slid the tray were the trays go.

The insensitive person would have no idea why this felt so fantastic, but we were all of us on a different planet. Eldest foster child was reaching across the bridge they talk about between parents and children. He was making plans to cross it and become one of us.

So many children who come into care never find the impetus to go forward, we had our doubts about his guy, but here he was, wanting to get into the world.

He announced that he was exercising his option not to go into school it was a waste of time and went back to bed to sleep until about teatime.

Not before informing us we were going to be watching the second of the Marvel films, the one after Thor! later that evening.

All this, probably due in no small part to the turmoil of the pandemic and the shake-up it's caused that has worked for some people.

I made myself a second cup of tea and settled at the sink to scrub thick black scrambled egg off a saucepan that's probably beyond saving.

Who cares? This fostering keeps bringing happy tears to my eyes, truly.