And what of Domingo?  He dismounts from the federally-funded daycare van at 7:00 AM and immediately slumps into my body.  He melts, clings and attaches at the hip.  This is very unlike him as he is 100% boy and usually upbeat and energetic to the extreme.  But today is Monday and he is exhausted from a weekend of no respite for mind or spirit.  In tears, he describes his weariness.  How can I console him?  Which words should I select?  I rest my hand atop his shoulder and tell him I wish he could have stayed at home, snuggled in his bed, munching Pop Tarts and watching Scooby-Do cartoons.  The make-believe scenario seems to soothe him but his reality is that he has no place of his own for a weekend retreat.  He is regularly tossed about by family like ocean debris and come Monday, washed up worn and weary onto the shore of a school where he is invisible until he makes trouble.
     By Tuesday his deep exhaustion has been replaced by a more familiar aggression and hyper-inattention.  He clobbers a fellow classmate at 8:00 in an argument over who gets to shut a cupboard door.  He spins out of control on a recess sidewalk and at 2:30 his teacher reports that his eyeballs have literally rotated in their sockets all day long, incapable of focusing anywhere or on anyone for more than 3 seconds.  He is known for arriving at school in forty degree temperatures wearing nothing but a thin, short-sleeved tee shirt.  Never a hoodie, a sweater or an insulated vest.  He shakes, rattles and rolls from the rapid-fire traumas of home neglect and emotional abandonment.  The only semblance of emotional tenderness surfaces on a Monday when he signals a need for comfort, too wiped-out to whisper his own name.