Welcome … Always Welcome

 

As I type this, the sound of girls’ voices singing drifts up the stairs. Every now and then I hear my son’s deeper voice.

It’s after 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night, and we didn’t plan for my son to have friends over. But they drifted by our house, with vague plans to maybe go on somewhere else, and since they’d walked over he invited them in for a drink of water, and they stayed.

Once it seemed like they might stay a while, I offered them cookies, which they ate. Then I offered them soft drinks, which they drank.

I was planning to spend the evening in the living room, watching Netflix and catching up on a sewing project, but instead I came up to my office so my son and his friends could hang out and chat downstairs with some privacy.

It’s important to me that they’re here. It’s important that he likes bringing them here, and that they like coming.

We don’t have a big house, or a fancy house, and we don’t, and never would, offer them alcohol, but they still come and seem to like coming. Which kind of flies in the face of the idea that teenagers want to be entertained all the time, and presented with stuff to do, and that they won’t hang out anywhere they can’t drink.

I think – I hope – they come because they can tell we genuinely like having them here. I hope they feel welcome.

Because if they’re here after dark on a Saturday night there are so many other, worse places that they’re not. That my son’s not. And that’s so, so important.

I always tell all of them they’re welcome here any time. If it’s the first time they’ve been here, I say “Now you know where our house is – you are always welcome.”

If it truly takes a village to raise a child, I want these kids to know this is a place they can come if they’re ever in any kind of need.

And, sure, when they show up, sometimes offering them cookies means I’ll have to bake a whole new batch the next morning. And, sometimes, they get the last cold drink out of the fridge.

But I always think of it this way – what if this is the cookie that makes the kid feel welcome, that makes them decide to come here, and be safe, instead of going somewhere else?

If that cookie, or that drink, or having the free run of our living room on a Saturday night, makes them happy and secure, then it’s worth it every time.

And they have beautiful singing voices, so that’s an added bonus!