#kidsilove

I never really know how to feel on camp. It's interesting. At the staff meeting the other night someone talked about Mondays [pick up day] I said "I'm glad I wasn't on pick up day this wk, nothing messes me up as much as seeing where they live does..."
I never knew I thought that way but its true.
You spend two, sometimes four weeks with these kids and later you can forget their filthy language, bad attitude and behavior

, the violence the exchange between themselves- that draws blood and leads to the emergency room. The hurt they inflict on each other, while at camp, which must have some lasting effect...

But I can't forget the smell of their house or the look of their father or step dad or "mums friend joe" and his beer gut, and him dressed in his best underwear at 2pm and how the sun reflects off his bald head as he slurs his words and asks me to read out the questions because the daylight is too bright, for him to read the form. And he makes excuse about why the kids clothes are in a garage bag instead of a suitcase like "the cat had kittens in the suitcase or ferrets ate a hole through it- YES FERRETS.
And as you walk away that child clutches your hand and wish that smell would stay with the house but it follows you in the garbage bag and you think to yourself "there must be more i can do!!"
Because you know that what you're walking away from is what this kid is coming back to...and that's only your experience at the front door."