On the eve of Christmas eve...our little family present

It was one of those windy, old country roads that got lost over the past 60 yrs. You know, the kind that has ancient scraggly, trash trees hovering over the edge of the road. With branches all gnarled as if arthritis has overtaken their limbs. And as I moved along from one corner to the next on the road, dark shadows followed me, with little lighted lines every so often where a weed got through the black top.

I was nerve wracked. The last 2 hours I had hastily zoomed down our little home on the mountain, through the endless freeway construction from our county into the next. Where, I soon discovered that I was to be greeted by more local, city construction. And finally a turn off of State street and onto that back street that would take me to meet him.

I had sincerely been contemplating this idea for a while. And when Seingine had been in hospital for such a long time, (2 weeks) or what seemed like forever to a mother wanting her "baby" home, I knew when I saw Singe hobbling around like a hunched-over, old man that it was exactly the right thing to pull off for a Christmas surprise, on the eve of Christmas eve.

When I pulled into the parking lot, which really wasn't more then one of those graveled side of the road rectangle boxes, I was a little taken back by the small, slightly dilapidated, gray cinder- block building. "Okay", I thought, "this is a place of rescue." "It's a little sketchy looking, but I'm here to just get the boy and get out." "It's just a temporary place for him." But I was also being to question whether finding him so easily and quickly, had been a little bit to good to be true.

As I walked in the old, aluminum screen door, I knew to watch out for the back swing, since that was the same old type of screen door I had at an old 1950's rental home a few years back. And I felt nervous, I really did....this had all transpired the night before. I knew what I wanted, but I wasn't sure if I would find it when I first started looking on the internet. But within a few minutes of searching I had found this place and I had found him. However, it had been late into the night and there was nothing I could do to get more information on him and to be quite honest with you, I kinda put it on the back burner until I got a bee in my bonnet and did something about it. And you know how that goes, when you get that burst of energy to get something done, you go get it done.

It took a couple minutes for the girl, in her early twenties, to come back to the make shift of sorts desk. The ceiling was really low and it had a wet dog smell about the place. I introduced myself because when I called her a few hours back, she knew to expect me. It was strange, I don't know why but I guess I was having one of those "I'm really a mother, doing motherly things" realization at that moment. The girl moved to a back door and I followed her outside to a narrow concrete slab that ran parallel to another smaller building, while its path moved along to the side of the two structures as well. Again, she opened another door, even smaller this time and I followed her it mimicking ducking into a cave with the low ceiling as it was. And so here we were to meet for the first time.

Unfortunately, yet fortunately, a family had asked for their child's family birthday party to be held in the small building earlier in the day, and so the tenants now, were not completely in a socializing mood. But, right in front of my eyes, there was my boy....at least I kept hoping he was mine.