I suppose an introduction is probably in order

     I didn't really even have time to think yesterday.  I just kind of mentally and emotionally regurgitated into the screen and let slip all that was on my mind.  I never really spelled out what was going on, though.
     We just became foster parents.  Like, for real this time, not just a respite placement because we'd been cleared through FBI background checks and were certified as not-horrible people.  For anyone who's unfamiliar with foster parenting, let it suffice to say that the process from a no-obligation orientation session to licensure and the placement of children in one's home is one of the longest and most grueling processes in which I have ever been involved.
     Time is a part of it. There continuously seem to be more steps, more sets of steps, more "last" steps, and even a few different "just one final" steps.  What looks like about a month (if you are wildly diligent and never miss a training session) on paper will easily turn into six months or more. Since my wife and I are beyond wildly diligent when we want something, we and one other couple in our training group managed to shave that span down to five months.
     Another part of the process involves turning the structure that is your home into an institutional facility compliant with the vast number of regulations set in place to ensure safety within government buildings.  I know that sounds a little over the top, and perhaps you have images of sterile, grey-white walls, tiled floors with drains set in the center of the room, and an automatice sprinkler system.  It isn't quite that bad.  But there are things in our house that, if you really paid attention, you'd think, "Hmm.  Never seen that before."  For example, since we bought our home thirteen years ago, I've always heard that a smoke alarm on each floor is sufficient to warn the occupants of impending danger.  Maybe you want to put one in the kitchen, as well, in case fried chicken night turns into fried kitchen night.  So what, three alarms in a two-story home, tops, right? Wrong.  We have six. One in every area a person sleeps and one in each passage common to those areas.

Fire Extinguisher in a "normal" home
(photo courtesy of WalMart)

     Most fire departments recommend that you keep a small fire extinguisher or two in the house, too, right? Maybe one in the kitchen and one in the garage.  We have three.  And there ain't no small about it, either.  Our extinguishers are five pounders with all-purpose chemical retardant so that we can turn it on an electrical fire, grease fire, person (God forbid!), or whatever needs puttin' out. The images I've included here don't really do the size difference enough justice, either.  The little white one to the right, like the one we had in the utility room closet when I was kid, is a one-handed little thing.  You can hold like a pistol in the handof one outstretched arm, stand back, aim, and shoot.  The big red suckers (below) that we've got are definitely two-handed jobs between the sheer weight of the thing and the fact that you've got to activate it with one hand on the ginormous trigger and aim the attached hose with the other.  We mean business.  No fire's going to rage unmolested in our home.

Fire Extinguishers in our Foster Home
(photo courtesy of WalMart to whom
we paid a large enough sum to actually
own these things that I hope they won't
mind me using their images)

     Most fire departments also recommend, in PSA's and in schools when they go out to visit kids and teach about the dangers of fires in the home, that families sit down and make an evacuation plan so that everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency.  When our bio kids have come home from school with this topic foremost on the list of responses to "What's the most interesting thing you learned in school today, dear?", we've sat at the dinner table and discussed ideal routes and meeting places with the children.  The "what ifs" usually drag well into clearing the table off and doing the dishes.  We have a lot of pets, so the kids obviously ask about the plan for the animals.  We have two stories in our house, so the stairs have always come up.  But we have never, ever sat down to the computer, made a near-scale map of our home, and filled in arrows to demonstrate all of those possible contigencies.  We now have two of these emergency evacuation plans mounted in our home.  One upstairs and one downstairs.  So if you ever visit us, you'll know the quickest path to safety in case of emergency.

Farley Family evacuation plan

     And all of that was just to meet one inspection by one entity through which we needed to be cleared for licensure.  I'll spare you the health inspection, the home study, the installation of handrails in our teeny 1930's stairwell at recommended OSHA distance from the stairs, the fingerprinting for the aforementioned FBI criminal records clearance, and all of the rest that we've had to DO to in order to meet the standards set for government facilities.
     Because what I'd rather do, at this point, is tell you that after our first twenty-four hours with our first official placement, it was all worth it.  The work.  The travel for classes.  The time, whether it was hours of paying attention, days of filling out forms, or weeks of waiting for the next last step.  You see, forty-eight hours ago, there were two very young children in trouble somewhere.  They needed a safe place to go.  Thirty-six hours ago, they were both scared witless as a strange man came into their home, packed their things, loaded them into his car, and drove them away from all they'd known to God knew where.  Then he left them in the home of two different strangers and went away leaving them to a totally unknown future.  Twenty-four hours ago, they were waking up from their first night in this new place and embarking on their first day with the strangers.  And twelve hours ago, after they'd spent an evening laughing and playing with newfound friends - their new sisters, for now, at least - eating tasty pasta dropped off by even more strangers who had the same love in their eyes that this new family seems to have all the time, and getting into clean pajamas after a warm bubble bath with toys, they slept the sleep that only known safety can allow.  They slept all night.  They weren't exhausted from the trauma or from a terribly late hour.  They just knew, to the extent that their small ages will allow, that these people were okay, that they loved them, and that they were safe.
     Our home is still as beautiful as my wife has always made it.  The evacuation plans are in coordinating picture frames and a third coordinating frame awaits our official license (as promised early on, we opened our home to children before "the ink was dry on the license").  And like I said before, you have to really look to notice that there are more smoke alarms and other safety items than you see in most homes.  But then, if you're really looking, what you'll see is love.  It's all over the place.  It's on our bio kids' faces.  It's in the joyful mess of toys left behind by an almost-two-year-old too busy at any given moment to bother looking back too much.  It's in the dishes sitting in the sink because those can wait until the kids are asleep and have had all of the care and attention they need so badly.
     My friend Joe says that there are no blessings on this earth.  Only gratitude for what we have.  It's an interesting sentiment and a thoughtful one, but I continuously beg to differ.  These little ones who have come to stay for a while or maybe longer are surely a blessing to me.  They've opened my eyes again to the love that has always filled our home, but that I may have begun to take for granted.  They've made me grateful all over again for all that we have.  And they've reminded me to appreciate everything every day.
     When you arrive at that point, you have to wonder what greater gift one person could give to another.  I can't think of anything.  I already have so much.