I’ve heard people say that you never stop worrying about your children, no matter how old they get. I suppose that’s true.

But what’s been keeping me up nights these days is not worrying about my children, I know where they are. I'm worrying about other people’s children; specifically my sons’ friends.

You know the kids they played with when they were little. The ones they played league ball with and hung out with through middle and high school.  I’m talking about the kids who were always the extra mouths to feed at our dinner table and to whom I tossed an extra pillow and blanket many a nights as they curled up in a makeshift bed on the family-room floor after the guys had stayed up all Friday night playing video games. The same kids who piled into my car for a ride to the movies, the mall or a high school football game.

I got close to those boys. I care about them and they know it. Every time I bump into one of them in the store or at the gas station they wrap me up in a giant bear hug. They are all big now.  When they were in my house I grilled them about girls, study habits and about what they had planned for their futures. I gave them advice about college and jobs and being careful about driving. I told them, just as I told my own children, to stay away from drugs and alcohol. But you know you have no say in the choices they ultimately make. And you really never know the dynamics of their home life and how that will affect them down the road.

I lost contact with most of my oldest son’s friends after they graduated from high school. I do know that some went off to college. Last I heard, a few of them have since dropped out.  Others went into the military.  A handful got minimum wage jobs they are still working and that’s fine. I’m glad to see them working.

But there’s one young man, a friend of my youngest son’s, who I worry the most about. A neighborhood kid only 17, who spent a lot of time at our house the last five years.  He’s a little older than Jordan but they hung out a lot; sometimes at his house, and sometimes at ours.  I know he and his dad would but heads often and through high school he often stayed with a foster family that lived a few towns southeast of us.

 I never really knew what went on in his house or why there seemed to be a problem. I only knew that whenever he was in my home he was very well mannered — yes mam and no mam always.  The week that Jordan’s dad died, he came to the house to keep Jordan company, and gave Jordan a really nice black leather coat that he’d outgrown. Jordan wore that coat around the house for weeks. I think he slept in the thing as if it were his security blanket.  He still loves it and said he could hardly wait until it got cold again so he could wear it.

About two weeks ago that young man called the house about 1 a.m. and woke me. When I answered the phone he told me he had been sleeping on the street because he was homeless and on this particular night he was cold — temperatures had dropped a good deal — and he had no place to go.

“Why can’t you go to your parents’ home,” I asked. He said, they wouldn’t let him in.

“Are you using drugs?”

“No mam.”

“Are you drinking?”

“No mam.”

 “OK, come on over.”

My heart wouldn’t let me say no. How could I pull my blanket over my shoulders knowing this young man, who’d eaten at my table and played with my son, was shivering somewhere in the cold?

I woke my son  and when the young man came in, I chatted with him for a few minutes to make sure he was sober and then directed him straight to the hot shower. I put fresh sheets on a bed.

I must say I was a little worried about what his situation was and wondered if he might do something criminal in the house, not that he'd given any such indication, ever.

I couldn’t sleep. I got up and checked on him and checked on my son several times that night. All was fine. The next morning I made waffles and turkey bacon for the boys.

My son stuffed a heavy blanket and towel in to a brand new army surplus backpack he'd recently bought, and gave it to his friend. The boy didn’t have a coat so Jordan gave him one we had in the house and a hooded sweatshirt to keep him warm.

Jordan was heading to school and I off to work, so the young man had to go on his way. I thought I’d hear from him again. But we have not. And we don’t know where he is.

 Here at Thanksgiving, I can’t stop thinking about him, wondering where he’ll have Thanksgiving dinner. Every time I hear some troubling news story about something happening to a teen my heart jumps until I check the name to make sure it isn't him. I just wish he would call so I could set a place for him at our table.