by Vanessa Cobb

Created on: June 17, 2008   Last Updated: February 08, 2009

It's an involuntary reflex. I can be lazy about anything else, find creative ways to avoid housework and bill paying, but show me a child in need and the knee jerks uncontrollably.

Whether they apply to everyone is another matter but the function of parental instincts in my life is beyond doubt.

He's not exactly a child, this one, at least technically not. But of course he is; passing that milestone birthday doesn't strip a boy of vulnerability, nor rid his friends of compassion. Any mother would have done the same, would have said: "yes, but no noise and just for tonight." Hence another random youth sleeps in my attic as I write.

It's a small thing really. Sixteen years of motherhood extends the urge to protect, so stay he did, given that the lad would otherwise be homeless tonight, technically. He lost his mother some months ago and now his father, driven to despair in grieving, won't speak to him. Small for me it may be, but for that young man, this timely gesture may be enough to reverse the swing of his fortunes. I can hope so.

I keep a mental list - two, in fact: first, the names of children I know and trust, children who are welcome to stay when suitable arrangements have been made; and second, the conditions upon which that circle of trust must be widened, and emergency provisions made.

The problem with the second list is that it applies to all of the children I've met - even relative strangers - even those whose names have been crossed out because they once got drunk and threw their clothes out of the window. That young man's first visit was highly memorable and momentarily, I hesitated. But when circumstances listed on that second sheet occur without warning at ten thirty at night, that's the moment the parental instinct surges forward into action.

A mother is a mother, and for a boy who has lost his own, another mother can be a valuable commodity. Yet for each tiny gesture of goodwill, often there follows a raging storm of responsibility. Save a life and they owe you. Visit a website and the cookies land in your hard drive. Give a lad a safe place to stay and he offers to wash dishes and plaster that hole in the porch wall. Such a debt of honor can be wearing upon the creditor.

I think the copper pot could be the solution. I might ask him to empty his pockets of pennies and leave it at that. The copper pot began as a small thing too, and at last count there was 11.58 in loose change biding its time until Christmas, making ready to be packaged for the Cats Protection League, nestling in a hamper of Felix. That's the good part about karma. One small thing will lead eventually to another, even if a beat of its wing does raise a tidal wave along the way. But there again, that hole is a bit of an eyesore.

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