"Please dont steal from us..."

"Please don't steal from us, Thank You-3A."

That's what a page haphazardly stuck to my classroom door reads. Not "Welcome to 3A" or "Hello, come in" or even "Knock Please."

Nope, none of that.

My door has a straightforward black and white sign,"Don't steal from us!" It orders, in the clumsy script of a child.

why?

Because, the past week has seen 5 classrooms in our block targeted for their window handles. The brass/cooper handles had been cut off from every window in the class, over night. Beside that, a few months back, two classes reported that the teachers desk had been ransacked. And before that, laptops from the school computer room had been stolen.

The saddest thing for me is, who exactly are they robbing? Who are they stealing from?
Their own children? Their own future? The future of their community?

I would assume that if you steal cooper and brass to sell as scrap metal, you do so because you need the money, you don't have a good education so you don't earn well...
So you steal from the very institution that is educating the future of your community?

Those windows have now been wired shut temporarily, depriving little kids of good ventilation while they learn.

Same with the laptops, the computer room now seats less children so some are deprived of their chance to use a computer once a week!

And so, my classroom door clearly says..."Please don't steal from is!", so far, its worked!

5 more minutes...

That first little muffled sound in the morning...a little noise, that lets you know that tiny cute feet are about to hit the ground!

Do you groan? Thinking about all the task you were hoping to complete before they got up?
Do you mourn that cup of tea you were hoping to enjoy in peaceful solidarity before you faced the day?
Do you mentally beg for 5 more minutes, to do whatever you were about to do?

That was me as I closed the bathroom door...I just needed 5 more minutes and I would have been all set for him to wake up. But instead I barely had one as I rushed knowing the wailing would begin the minute I couldn't be found.

But, then I stopped...I paused for a minute remembering something I had almost forgot. Instead of thinking of 5 minutes more, I though 'Shukaar Alhumdulliah' that I'm hearing that little sound...

I remembered my paranoid thoughts the night before, when he went to drink bath water and inhaled a little instead...my panicked thoughts as everything I had read about dry drowning flooded my mind. How I worried silently, checking on him during the night, praying as I so often do, that everything must just be all right.

An innate part of motherhood for me, I have found, is paranoid, worst case scenarios that often haunt my mind. Fervent prayers of protection for the little life I hold more dear than my own.


So, instead of wishing for 5 more minutes to complete my task...I said  'Shukaar Alhumdulliah' for that 5 minutes EXTRA I got, when that first little sound, alerted me to the tiny feet that was about to hit the ground!