"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

I was asked that so many times and answered it too, with a set of answers that showed how limited my understanding of the question was.  And now the truth of the answer is finally beginning to dawn on me:

I may never really achieve "grown up".  It used to be a satisfying goal that I'd reach when everything would be My Way, when I had learned and was qualified to Be Something and Do Something.  I'm definitely old enough, patently old enough and then some, to be a GrownUp but there has been no arrival at a base where I'd unpack my suitcase and believe I'll be here from  now on.

In court on Friday,  Social Services will request that the children return to their mother's home with the condition that her mother be living in the home.   She
has promised to be installed by Friday and the social worker has
advised me that she expects the case to be decided  in half the
day that had been reserved for it.

Friday also will mark the end
of the fourth month the children have lived here.  Four
months;   I'd thought it would be for a week when we stopped
to pick them up on the way out of town for my brother's funeral. 
They hadn't been told they wouldn't be going home afterwards. 
None of us had a clue of what was in store for us.

And I won't
say I'm not looking forward to life getting back to "normal", or more
normal, anyway.   It  will be more simple; that I
know.  But I worry about those kids and the "normal" that they are
going back to.  They are troubled, though they hide it well and most of the world
doesn't see it.   I worry about how they'll manage to live "normal"
lives when they grow up.  I know their home doesn't take care of
them.  Perhaps it can't, perhaps their mother can't or  perhaps she
won't, and perhaps the grandmother will remain in their home and
perhaps she won't be able to bear up under the strains of dealing with
her daughter, whose mental health makes her (or does the excuse allow
her to?) be unpredictable, unreliable, and alternately overly-nice and
frightningly hostile.

The younger girl came home from her mother's yesterday in a black MOOD that
she took behind the slammed bedroom door and wrapped in a blanket on
the bed.  She wouldn't eat dinner, she wouldn't talk to her kindly
aunt who went in to check on her.   The MOOD developed
tear-shined eyes and then the words came in puzzling monosyllables,
then two monosyllables together, and finally three-and-four word
phrases.   She was troubled and no one would
understand. 

I used my best approach with her.  Here are the tools:

Sit down.  Don't get up, even if the other person isn't talking to you.  Just stay.
Ask questions and  don't answer them for the other person.

Don't be afraid of silence.  It can take a while to think.
Check
your understanding of what they might be saying.  The garble can
be pretty confusing and the point can be hard to find.

Bfield Weather

Today: Rain and wind. High 49F.

Winds NW at 35 to 45 mph. Rainfall may reach one inch.

Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.

I should have picked those lilacs yesterday while they were still there.

The hearing that was scheduled--with great difficulty--to last all day lasted about ten minutes. 

The children and their mother got their wishes and they are once again living together.  The mother's mother has moved in with them, a condition of the county recommending their reunion.   It seemed important to me to set the schedule of their move-out and we came directly home so they could pack and the mother came to pick them up promptly.  She looked a bit overwhelmed with the amount of paraphenalia they had to tote back to her house.

After my nieces and nephew left, so did Parker and his dad to go bring Jean and her things back from school.  A couple of hours later I got an email:  Eric will be home tonight.  And there are beds for everyone and no one will be sleeping on the couch, displaced by someone else.

And me?  I'm cleaning up after one group, getting ready for the next one.  Despite the work, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  Tomorrow I intend to do nothing I don't really want to do.

Four months' cares will take quite a lot of self-indulgence to work off.

The call from the children's mother rambled on for forty minutes this morning.

She's very happy.  The children are happy too.  All is perfect, except....

She's not sleeping.  The older girl got into major trouble the weekend before.  The younger girl reported that the boy had his girlfriend in his room after prom Saturday night.  This means that the younger girl was awake at 3 AM while the mother slept.  The mother's mother called her on Mother's Day, which tells me that the mother's mother isn't living with them, as required by the county.  The older girl made the mother a collage that made her cry, it was so beautiful, the girl has so very much to offer the world.  That girl has been in so much trouble, she hadn't wanted to tell me, she wasn't going to tell me now.  Everything is going to be JUST FINE.

I am unconvinced.