Twinges and Tingles

It’s Monday morning. A week before Christmas Day. The weekend went well, but all the time, I had a kind of an uneasy feeling. I’m not sure what it was, and even now have a feeling that something just isn’t quite the way it should be. But there’s nothing concrete I can pin down and there’s nothing even floating “out there” that I can see. So I guess I’ll have to chalk this one up to parental intuition that needs to be sent to the shop for a re-calibration.
Those of you who are parents know what I’m talking about. Your parental antennae begin to twinge just a bit, and if it continues, there’s kind of a tingle that’s just always there, keeping you on the alert. As you continue down the parenting path, you learn to hone the skills of listening to and interpreting the signs and signals. When they say that Mom has eyes in the back of her head, they are more right than not.
The work we do is similar to that of parents in everyday life. The problem here is that we invite girls into our home that are already confused and on the wrong path, and we have very little time to adjust our antennae to their signals. They need help now, and we don’t have the luxury of taking our time to get to know them or having them in our home for several years while we learn all about them.
We also have more than one or two. We’re expecting a sixth right after Christmas Day this year and have room for yet a seventh. So I guess I can understand how occasionally the trouble receptors need to be cleaned and fine-tuned.
And you stay tuned as well. There may yet come something that vindicates the tingling going on even as I write this at 6am and all the girls are yet in bed (with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads). I wonder if any of them has a clue what a sugar plum is.