In fostering you need little "oasis" moments.
One of mine happens around 10.00am weekdays.
I'm up a tad too early for my liking, we're a two-dog household at the moment, and the pair of them gang up to ask for breakfast earlier and earlier.
Our second dog is technically temporary, we're 'looking after her' while a relative sorts themselves out. Blue Sky always do a check-up on pets in foster homes. Our retriever underwent a cursory psychology check with our vet, but our second dog is hamster-size, 13 years old, half blind and toothless so she was waved through as safe.
Mind, 4.45am isn't my idea of time to be up, my body clock goes a bit haywire. But that's when the dog's start asking to be let out, then breakfasted.
From that moment on, each morning, It's nose to the grindstone. There's always a few more jobs want doing. You know the sort of thing; a peanut butter knife left in the sink, crumbs on the work surface, a pedal bin needs a new bin-liner, a shopping list gets started; jobs jobs jobs.
Then everyone else is stirring, hangdog for another day at school. I have the radio on for time checks and try to jolly everyone awake, the best trick is to ask about last night's reality TV, or the latest FIFA football manager results etc.
Then… they're gone. Silence; apart from the DJ still prattling that it's "Eight thirty seven, thirty seven minutes past the hour of eight o'clock and we're going on with Taylor Swift…"
I generally turn the radio off at this point, and crack on around the house, pulling beds and duvets into shape, collecting debris from bedrooms, quick hoover round.
Then; 5 hours after getting going, I get my oasis moment.
A cup of tea served strong with soya milk and no sugar.
Sweetened by nature's most natural sweetener; peace and quiet.
I sit sipping at the kitchen table, often fiddling with the shopping list. Sometimes wondering what people who don't foster - but could foster - do with their days.
My partner and I first got approval to foster back a few decades ago, shortly after marrying. Besides meeting each other, and having children of our own, fostering has become the biggest and the best thing we've ever done. When we're alone and together we talk about little else, always amazed by the satisfaction and pleasure it brings us.
Don't get me wrong, I don't sit there patting myself on the back, no. I find myself doing a spot-check on each child and coming up with strategies to help them feel better about this that or the other.
My uncle likes to bet on the horses every Saturday. He says that the joy is in trying to solve the puzzle of each race; some you win some you lose. Whatever the result, he says, you're always onto the next race, the next puzzle to solve.
I tell him that's how it is in fostering, the joy lies in solving the latest challenge.
It might be a pure fostering thing; such as a child whose older sibling is resentful of us (the child's foster parents) doing a better job than the child's real parents, or a child who feels 'different' at school. Or bog standard things such as whether a child needs new school shoes or can make do with the current pair until the end of term.
My "oasis' moment every weekday morning is more than a watering hole in the desert with a couple of lonely palm trees, it's a thriving casbah, a carnival of the things that make life really worthwhile.
The things fostering gives us.
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