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The Shelter

April 18th, 2012 by mica
Last night Ronan’s sadness was heart-breaking.   As many of you know, Ronan loves to give gifts.  He spends a great amount of time and energy putting together packages for friends and family members.  I’ve been looking for other outlets for his love of gift gifting and found a local women’s shelter that would gladly receive kits of snacks and toiletries.

He was so excited today to assemble the packages.  We put in pens, notebooks, bus tokens, toiletries, chocolates, on and on, and little handmade cards.
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A focused boy at work!
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He eagerly drove with me over to the shelter and was so excited to tell everyone about the gifts he had brought.  He would enthusiastically ask every person he met, “are you a guest?  Are you a guest?”  And when they answered “yes,” he quickly ran back to his stash and handed them a package.  He was sure to always say his name and spell it out.  There were many moments of reciprocal joy, evident by the enormous grin on his face and the sweet and appreciative comments of the ladies.  

About four packages into the process, one of the supervisors called me over and told me that it was the organization’s policy not to allow small children at the shelter and that we had to leave immediately.  I explained to Ronan that we had to go and he could not understand why.  Last night he spent a good while crying and sad and with questions.  He wanted to be at the shelter giving packages out and didn’t understand why there would be any rule that a child couldn’t be allowed that.  And fascinating to me, he was indignant that the supervisor didn’t tell him the rule and went to me instead.  He almost couldn’t get the words out, he was so upset by this.

It was really heartbreaking to listen to his questions and to see his face.  Poor guy just loved giving his packages away and didn’t want to stop.  I don’t blame him.  That same night he asked me to write a note to see if I can change the “bad rule.”  I was touched by many things– the purity and joy of his encounters with the guests, his awareness and anger around how the supervisor communicated the message, and his desire to not give up until the rule had been changed, to name a few.  Sometimes I wonder if he can really only be four years old.

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