Across the Great Divide

Shelter Report: I am a Security Camera.

Today it was too hot for the preschoolers to play outside in the morning, so they went to the rec room to burn off their energy. Apparently chalk was also involved.

After we got our charges down for naps, Greg and I went back to the rec room to mop the floor clear of body outlines, hopscotch grids and miscellaneous graffiti. (Our current pre-schoolers have no choice but to write graffiti-style. The ones who knew their letters just left for kindergarten.)

Greg mopped as I moved some mats and other obstructions off the floor. Through the second-floor windows, I could see a street drama unfolding.

Two sheriff officers and a woman with a name tag hanging from a lanyard were talking to a couple in the parking lot outside the shelter. Two children were crying and hugging their parents as the officers worked to get a third child into a car seat in a Subaru Outback. I think there was a fourth child, also quite young, but there was a great deal of milling involving the officers, the parents, two county social workers and a couple shelter staff. It was hard to follow from on high.

I felt like a security camera.

The mother was on the phone, moving back and forth while the father alternatively assisted and slumped on the pavement in despair. The officers managed the traffic as kids got in and out of the car. The staff waved observers back.

After the Subaru's passengers were secured, a similar pantomime occurred around a second car parked on the street. Officers, parents, social workers, kids, witnesses, sadness.

The father rubbed his eyes. The mother waved her paperwork in the heat. I watched from the window.

The doors on the second car closed. As he headed for his squad, a deputy patted the father on the back. The car pulled away.

The man sat beaten on a bench, listening to the woman. Then the two of them walked to the street corner. For a moment the woman covered her eyes with the papers. Then the light changed and the two of them walked south toward the Child Protection Services Building, conveniently three blocks away.

She was still on the telephone.

Shelter Report: Queen for a Day.

This morning I spoke with a writer about my volunteer commitments, what I do and what difference I think it makes.

I'm not sure how much I got across in the interview, but the gist of it was this: I spent years working with organizations to address their mission, leadership, fundraising, staffing and strategy issues. I still do some of that as a board member of The Playwrights' Center, and it draws upon my skills and experience as a business owner and a consultant to major corporations and non-profits.

The other part of my work—the part the writer was most interested in—is more like being a grandpa, except for kids I probably will never see after this year.

How do you explain this in a way that makes it seem valuable to society?

Coincidentally, the three threads all came together today. Interview in the morning, preschool at the shelter in the afternoon, followed by a meeting with a fellow board member.

As I've described before, I arrive at People Serving People as the children are finishing lunch. My main contribution to western civilization for the next two hours will be helping two to five preschoolers settle down for a nap.

Today I drew a restless girl who had already filled both her hands with liquid soap during an unsupervised moment of post-meal handwashing. She was quiet but fidgety, and we tried the usual back rubs, head rubs and foot rubs. Next, I put my hand on her cot, and she grabbed my arm and used my knuckles as a sort of kali hahapo headrest. But that didn't work either.

Finally, with all the others long asleep, I rested my head next to hers. She looked over, threw her arm around my neck, and konked out in about 10 seconds.

They don't teach this sort of thing in Harvard Business School.

Now free to move about, I considered the next problem. Before I arrived, the kids made and decorated crowns—sort of a yellow construction paper version of a wrestler's head gear—that they would be allowed to wear when they awoke at 2:30. I had missed the activity but figured I could make up ground by applying my prodigious book arts skills. The available scrap paper suggested something more mouselike.

I'm not sure what pressing social problem is addressed by a red mouse headband. The answer may not be discovered in our time.

After my meeting about issues to which serious people are supposed to devote their time, I cycled home along Third Street. Up ahead, I saw a family of five crossing the street and spotted one of the yellow crowns. A few hours before, I'd been doing mock ballet lifts with the wearer.

The Public Library lies a few blocks away but not much else is along that stretch of downtown.

I don't know where my little friend was heading.

I could only take some satisfaction from seeing that she still wore her golden crown.

Shelter Report: Finding My Inner Sleep Fairy.

For any parent who's struggled with getting one balky four-year-old down for a nap, the prospect of bedding 17 of them at a time in the same room might not seem like a fun way to voluntarily spend one's afternoon.

But it is. Half my job on the preschool afternoon shift involves the cultivation of somnolence: preparing kids for the nap, inducing calm, dampening distractions and disturbances, and doing chores during the miraculous time when everyone is asleep.

Sometimes it means I get to be The Sleep Fairy.

It's perhaps the only assignment for which I am professionally qualified.

The Sleep Fairy is a minor deity, equivalent to, say, an offspring of Santa, the Tooth Fairy and Dr. Seuss. (Yes, we were warned that such marriages would become possible in Minnesota after August First!)

S/he tends to visit following several days of nap anarchy. The teacher will prepare the class ahead of naptime, letting them know The Sleep Fairy is enroute but will only visit them if everyone is asleep—or at least remaining quiet with their eyes closed. Once the lights are turned down, periodic reminders are aimed at the young and restless.

And after all is calm, The Sleep Fairy goes to work, preparing treats and writing notes to the children. This week the fairy brought books and Starbursts and left personal notes like:

M----: Your superpower is sleeping!

-The Sleep Fairy

The technique works because it's employed sporadically. (Every day can't be Christmas.) The treat is given to the children only when the parents pick them up at the end of the day. The timing creates an opportunity for parental praise in support of a good naptime—and may suggest the use of positive reinforcement later when the mom or dad has three rambunctious kids of different ages up in their room that night.

It may. But dreaming's my job. After all, I'm The Sleep Fairy.