I haven't said a real goodbye for quite a while now. Maybe I have been avoiding them. Maybe God has granted me respite from goodbye for a time. I said goodbye about four years ago to some very dear friends. They were in town visiting me and our mutual friends this weekend. Every so often we email too. When we get together it seems perfectly natural.
It is a lesson to me, that this is not goodbye either. And when you friends who pop in to read meet me across the way at fundynutter.com it will seem perfectly natural as well. A little...bluer, perhaps. But perfectly natural.
Please come see me soon! I am retiring from my time here at blogger and can be found from now on at:
fundynutter.com
Blisses,
Traci
Monday, February 18, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thoughts About Stuff
I got a phone call from a friend last night that buoyed up my writerly hopes. He said such kind things, including (without being prompted) that my story reminded him of my favorite author, and that I need to keep writing. Everyone could use a phone call like that, I say. And everyone could use a friend like him.
I think I may be growing up. (As this is just thoughts on things, this paragraph does not relate to the last one.) Yesterday I was very cold. I contemplated wrapping up in my bathrobe, under my blankies and having nap. I shocked myself by dismissing that idea, filling the sink with nice hot water and washing the dishes instead. Because I preferred to be warm and get some work done. Mature, no?
Related only in that it happened yesterday, Daniel and baby took a walk to buy a newspaper. The ladies behind the counter oohed and ahhed over the baby. (Okay, okay, she's a toddler.) And then, they engaged Daniel in a conversation about naming babies. Lucky guy! He said he was sorry I had to miss it. Oh wait, he really said he was sorry it was him and not me.
We had a sunny weekend. We played outside two days. We did not get wet. Norah had her rain boots on and stomped in puddles, but no rain fell on her head. We took two walks. We played on swings without having to dry them off first. I weeded and raked the front flower bed, where I plan to plant the vinca. We locked ourselves out of the house again, but we didn't have to huddle miserably in the car while Hero-Dad saved us. We played outside instead and pretended like that had been our plan all along. My heart was light like a young girl whose lover Spring has arrived. Oh please come soon Spring! I miss you so much.
Lucy (the baby cum toddler) is wellish now. Still a terrible cough, but her sister has one of those as well. Lucy has finished her course of antibiotics (She had a five day perscritpion instead of ten) and has been fever free since Friday.
We gave preschool more thought. More than anything, I wanted to find a way where I could give Norah the preschool experience (this is the competitive American in me) and still increase my giving to a dying world. Our current plan is to get her application in on time the day it is due, and then pay the monthly tuition with our Economic Stimulus Package Check. This gets our ESP money into the economic flow. We would have never spent it otherwise, having a car to pay off now as well as our retirement to anticipate. Actually using our ESP money on a purchase (of sorts) is an act of patriotism. And the best part is it frees up the monthly budget money we would have spent on preschool so we can increase our World Vision support, something I am clearly being called to do. What do we do the next year, when there is no Economic Stimulus Package? Well, Norah will be in free Kindergarten. And Lucy will only be three in 2009, so she wouldn't have to go to preschool yet. Anyway, it seemed like a good compromise to me.
Norah was naming her chess peices just now: Elijah, Joshua, Watermelon, Fruit Salad, Potato, Mary...
And my closing thought is how happy I am that Daniel began putting up our baseboard trim and how happy I am that he is having fun doing it.
I think I may be growing up. (As this is just thoughts on things, this paragraph does not relate to the last one.) Yesterday I was very cold. I contemplated wrapping up in my bathrobe, under my blankies and having nap. I shocked myself by dismissing that idea, filling the sink with nice hot water and washing the dishes instead. Because I preferred to be warm and get some work done. Mature, no?
Related only in that it happened yesterday, Daniel and baby took a walk to buy a newspaper. The ladies behind the counter oohed and ahhed over the baby. (Okay, okay, she's a toddler.) And then, they engaged Daniel in a conversation about naming babies. Lucky guy! He said he was sorry I had to miss it. Oh wait, he really said he was sorry it was him and not me.
We had a sunny weekend. We played outside two days. We did not get wet. Norah had her rain boots on and stomped in puddles, but no rain fell on her head. We took two walks. We played on swings without having to dry them off first. I weeded and raked the front flower bed, where I plan to plant the vinca. We locked ourselves out of the house again, but we didn't have to huddle miserably in the car while Hero-Dad saved us. We played outside instead and pretended like that had been our plan all along. My heart was light like a young girl whose lover Spring has arrived. Oh please come soon Spring! I miss you so much.
Lucy (the baby cum toddler) is wellish now. Still a terrible cough, but her sister has one of those as well. Lucy has finished her course of antibiotics (She had a five day perscritpion instead of ten) and has been fever free since Friday.
We gave preschool more thought. More than anything, I wanted to find a way where I could give Norah the preschool experience (this is the competitive American in me) and still increase my giving to a dying world. Our current plan is to get her application in on time the day it is due, and then pay the monthly tuition with our Economic Stimulus Package Check. This gets our ESP money into the economic flow. We would have never spent it otherwise, having a car to pay off now as well as our retirement to anticipate. Actually using our ESP money on a purchase (of sorts) is an act of patriotism. And the best part is it frees up the monthly budget money we would have spent on preschool so we can increase our World Vision support, something I am clearly being called to do. What do we do the next year, when there is no Economic Stimulus Package? Well, Norah will be in free Kindergarten. And Lucy will only be three in 2009, so she wouldn't have to go to preschool yet. Anyway, it seemed like a good compromise to me.
Norah was naming her chess peices just now: Elijah, Joshua, Watermelon, Fruit Salad, Potato, Mary...
And my closing thought is how happy I am that Daniel began putting up our baseboard trim and how happy I am that he is having fun doing it.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Nanowrimo part the Seventh
CHAPTER BREAK
Mario studied business at the community college in Bend, Oregon. In the early 1980’s, as now, it was a highly respected school. And as in anything Mario did, he excelled. He chose to study business and accounting, with the plan in mind that he would be his own boss someday. To live, not in a barrio someone kept for workers, but in a real home.
His idea of real home was a confusion of glowing jungle images, blue waterfalls and vibrant Mayan hammocks in the shade. In a real home, it seemed to him, there was a madre who played with you and told you fabulous tales. And there was staff—someone in the kitchen, someone to keep their house, In a real home warm, moist air moved slowly through the windows--a slow breeze scented richly with moldering jungle weeds and blossoms turning to fruit in the mango grove. Of course, in a real home you could grow your own food to eat. It was the same in Oregon, in the plot of yard behind the house. His mother grew much of what they ate through out the year.
And there was more from Oregon in his glorious confusion of home. Wide expanses of sunset from the bedroom window. Great Evergreen trees in the distant hills.
People tumbling over themselves to be on your porch with you. Whitewashed fences a clear division of who lived where. And madre, mama, at the stove preparing your supper. Madre walking to school with you when she would help the Spanish speaking children learn English. This on days when she did not go away to the great farm and cook.
In a real home, there was a charming, dashing father. He was strong and bold and funny. He told amazing stories of traveling by boat across the great ocean to places where people lived in a land of cold fog, rather than the warm embrace of the jungle fogs. This was a real father. The substitute, this Dr. Gomez of America, reminded him of his father, but did not laugh or tell stories.
So Mario worked very hard with this goal in his mind. Not to return to Chiapas where a century can be turned to ashes in the rain forest. But here. To create the dream of his early childhood in this landscape.
He saw many things he wanted while he was in college. One of those was a stunning blonde, with long athletic legs. On a cool spring evening he saw her running, and so he charmed her into having dinner with him. As he was handsome, kind and known to be a great student, it wasn’t hard to convince her. At dinner he found her intoxicating. Her conspiratorial laugh drew him in deeply.
She laughed, first, at the team they ran their first meet against.
“Mario, I know that we are just a community college, But really. I expected some kind of competition. It was like running, well, like racing little school children who didn’t know where they were going.” She laughed and her eyes disappeared and her smile filled her face. She leaned back, laughing at how much she enjoyed winning, and she seemed to invite him to laugh with her. To be a winner with her.
“I know you understand what I mean.” She was quieter and leaning across the table, intimately. “I’ve seen your name on the dean’s list. Above everyone else’s. Odds have it that you’ll be valedictorian. Don’t you feel it in your classes? Like you are the only man working in a room full of children?”
Mario’s parents were terribly proud of their son the Valedictorian. He drove them to Bend for the Ceremony and took them out to dinner afterwards. Dr Gomez looked at his son, twenty years old now and admired him. A tall strong young man. Bright and hardworking.
“Today, son, you have given me a reason to smile. I am so very proud of what you have done.” Dr Gomez shook hands solemnly with his son, and then embraced him.
“Look at you, our boy. There was a time you know, when we did not know if we would all live to see you grown.” Far from melodramatic, Sra Gomez eyes misted as she thought of those days. Those last days in Chiapas of waiting, waiting to see if their escape to America would arrive before the men of the Mafia did. Before the PLO sent in men to teach them what protection was for.
“Si madre. I remember those days of fear. We have done so much.” Mario drove his parents to a small family restaurant, one with good food and comfortable seating. Not fancy, but home like.
Dr Gomez spoke again. “Son, there are things that in Mexico you would have done and would have been. I am so sorry we have not been able to do that for you here. You have inherited a legacy of spirit, but no clinica in which to work. This is my sincere apology. But today, you have completed studies and I want you to know your mother and I will do everything we can to fulfill your legacy here. Son, it is not to late, would you like to begin a study of medicine?” Dr Gomez was sober, as always, and deep in thought as he spoke. Not until his son said to him “I have graduated!” did he really understand. For the first time in hundreds of years a Gomez son was not a doctor. He did not attend the ancient and revered Universidad Nacionale de Misiones in Mexico City. He was proud of his son’s hard work and yet disappointed that all of the hard work went to this small, junior college to study business.
“A legacy is a great honor for a son to hold. Thank you for offering me the opportunity. May I tell you what it is I dream to do?” They were seated around a table, near a fireplace with their mugs of coffee.
Timotea and Estefan exchanged a wondering look. There son had hopes, had plans. They were astonished that it had not occurred to them before. But here in America, in Clovis, all of hte Children planned their own future. No one arranged things for them, hoping they would think it was their own idea.
“There is a school in Portland where a man can learn to be a professional chef. It is a well respected program and difficult to enter. It is possible for the student of the culinary school to also attend the University in Portland—a real university and complete a four year degree. This is what I hope Padre, mi Madre. I hope to go to Portland now and attend the Culinary School and the University. When I have finished I can come home to Clovis and open my own Restaurante. Do you see what I want? I will have my own restaurante and work for no man.” Mario paused and assessed his parent’s reactions. He could see they were thinking, perhaps with mixed feelings.
“Padre, it is not medicine, I know. I have thought about medicine a great deal. About healing people. But I also think about feeding people, about having a place where people can gather together and celebrate or relax or eat when they have no where else to go. It is a romantic notion, I know. But a good one, I think.” He addressed his father primarily, as he was the hardest to read, the most closed with his feelings.
Sra Gomez responded first to her son. “This is a good wish. It is not medicine, but it is a kind of care. And it is honest work, something to be proud of. I think you have a gift in the kitchen son, and could be a very talented chef.” Tears glistened in her eyes. Her son dreamed of spending his life in their town. The town she had worked so hard to make home for him.
“Yes, This is honest work. This is something to be proud of son. No one would be ashamed of this for you.” Dr Gomez responded carefully. There came a time always when a son went his own way. If he had taken more care with his child’s upbringing then perhaps he would have gone into medicine. It was too late for this thought. What he had left to do was ensure his son did his best. Always did his best. There was never a time that a man should do less, Dr Gomez thought.
Mario relaxed a bit more over dinner. His parents hadn’t discouraged his dream. He didn’t tell them that he would have to work hard to pay for the school, work while he studied and that the restaurant would still be many years in the future. Indeed, he could see from the sorrow that crossed his mother's face now and then that they knew this already.
“Linda is going up to Portland too. She’s got a scholarship at a different school called the University of Portland. It is a good Catholic school. She’s studying accounting.” He grinned as he talked about Linda. He always did.
“That is very nice indeed. So you will be able to see a good deal of her then?” Sra Gomez had a new worry now, would they think it right to live together in the city? Her heart ached at the thought. Would they marry before they left instead—so young still?
‘We should be able to. The business school is a long course, she should take another three years before she has her degree. We’ll be in the same town, but she will be in the girl’s dorm at her school. I hope to find a room to rent near the culinary school. We should have weekends to visit each other.” He made a gentle point about their living quarters to assure his parents. To give them one less thing to worry about while he was away.
His two years of school turned into three as working made it difficult to take many classes at once. When he finished he had a bachelor’s degree in business management and a Culinary arts degree from the most respected school in town. The families, Linda’s family and Mario’s traveled to Portland to see both of them graduate. And to see them marry in the small chapel on the campus of the University of Portland.
It was a beautiful ceremony though long. Much of it was new to Linda’s parents but they accepted Catholicism if it meant that polite hardworking young man would take care of their daughter. And keep her as close to home as Clovis. It was such a relief not marrying her off to a Portland boy.
What was left now to accomplish his dream was to learn how a restaurant really works. And to make some money to open their own place. Portland seemed the best place to do all of that.
The rented a studio apartment not far from the river, in an area called Hawthorne where the hippies and artists lived, for the same reason they did. It was cheap. A local credit union hired Linda right away.
Mario studied business at the community college in Bend, Oregon. In the early 1980’s, as now, it was a highly respected school. And as in anything Mario did, he excelled. He chose to study business and accounting, with the plan in mind that he would be his own boss someday. To live, not in a barrio someone kept for workers, but in a real home.
His idea of real home was a confusion of glowing jungle images, blue waterfalls and vibrant Mayan hammocks in the shade. In a real home, it seemed to him, there was a madre who played with you and told you fabulous tales. And there was staff—someone in the kitchen, someone to keep their house, In a real home warm, moist air moved slowly through the windows--a slow breeze scented richly with moldering jungle weeds and blossoms turning to fruit in the mango grove. Of course, in a real home you could grow your own food to eat. It was the same in Oregon, in the plot of yard behind the house. His mother grew much of what they ate through out the year.
And there was more from Oregon in his glorious confusion of home. Wide expanses of sunset from the bedroom window. Great Evergreen trees in the distant hills.
People tumbling over themselves to be on your porch with you. Whitewashed fences a clear division of who lived where. And madre, mama, at the stove preparing your supper. Madre walking to school with you when she would help the Spanish speaking children learn English. This on days when she did not go away to the great farm and cook.
In a real home, there was a charming, dashing father. He was strong and bold and funny. He told amazing stories of traveling by boat across the great ocean to places where people lived in a land of cold fog, rather than the warm embrace of the jungle fogs. This was a real father. The substitute, this Dr. Gomez of America, reminded him of his father, but did not laugh or tell stories.
So Mario worked very hard with this goal in his mind. Not to return to Chiapas where a century can be turned to ashes in the rain forest. But here. To create the dream of his early childhood in this landscape.
He saw many things he wanted while he was in college. One of those was a stunning blonde, with long athletic legs. On a cool spring evening he saw her running, and so he charmed her into having dinner with him. As he was handsome, kind and known to be a great student, it wasn’t hard to convince her. At dinner he found her intoxicating. Her conspiratorial laugh drew him in deeply.
She laughed, first, at the team they ran their first meet against.
“Mario, I know that we are just a community college, But really. I expected some kind of competition. It was like running, well, like racing little school children who didn’t know where they were going.” She laughed and her eyes disappeared and her smile filled her face. She leaned back, laughing at how much she enjoyed winning, and she seemed to invite him to laugh with her. To be a winner with her.
“I know you understand what I mean.” She was quieter and leaning across the table, intimately. “I’ve seen your name on the dean’s list. Above everyone else’s. Odds have it that you’ll be valedictorian. Don’t you feel it in your classes? Like you are the only man working in a room full of children?”
Mario’s parents were terribly proud of their son the Valedictorian. He drove them to Bend for the Ceremony and took them out to dinner afterwards. Dr Gomez looked at his son, twenty years old now and admired him. A tall strong young man. Bright and hardworking.
“Today, son, you have given me a reason to smile. I am so very proud of what you have done.” Dr Gomez shook hands solemnly with his son, and then embraced him.
“Look at you, our boy. There was a time you know, when we did not know if we would all live to see you grown.” Far from melodramatic, Sra Gomez eyes misted as she thought of those days. Those last days in Chiapas of waiting, waiting to see if their escape to America would arrive before the men of the Mafia did. Before the PLO sent in men to teach them what protection was for.
“Si madre. I remember those days of fear. We have done so much.” Mario drove his parents to a small family restaurant, one with good food and comfortable seating. Not fancy, but home like.
Dr Gomez spoke again. “Son, there are things that in Mexico you would have done and would have been. I am so sorry we have not been able to do that for you here. You have inherited a legacy of spirit, but no clinica in which to work. This is my sincere apology. But today, you have completed studies and I want you to know your mother and I will do everything we can to fulfill your legacy here. Son, it is not to late, would you like to begin a study of medicine?” Dr Gomez was sober, as always, and deep in thought as he spoke. Not until his son said to him “I have graduated!” did he really understand. For the first time in hundreds of years a Gomez son was not a doctor. He did not attend the ancient and revered Universidad Nacionale de Misiones in Mexico City. He was proud of his son’s hard work and yet disappointed that all of the hard work went to this small, junior college to study business.
“A legacy is a great honor for a son to hold. Thank you for offering me the opportunity. May I tell you what it is I dream to do?” They were seated around a table, near a fireplace with their mugs of coffee.
Timotea and Estefan exchanged a wondering look. There son had hopes, had plans. They were astonished that it had not occurred to them before. But here in America, in Clovis, all of hte Children planned their own future. No one arranged things for them, hoping they would think it was their own idea.
“There is a school in Portland where a man can learn to be a professional chef. It is a well respected program and difficult to enter. It is possible for the student of the culinary school to also attend the University in Portland—a real university and complete a four year degree. This is what I hope Padre, mi Madre. I hope to go to Portland now and attend the Culinary School and the University. When I have finished I can come home to Clovis and open my own Restaurante. Do you see what I want? I will have my own restaurante and work for no man.” Mario paused and assessed his parent’s reactions. He could see they were thinking, perhaps with mixed feelings.
“Padre, it is not medicine, I know. I have thought about medicine a great deal. About healing people. But I also think about feeding people, about having a place where people can gather together and celebrate or relax or eat when they have no where else to go. It is a romantic notion, I know. But a good one, I think.” He addressed his father primarily, as he was the hardest to read, the most closed with his feelings.
Sra Gomez responded first to her son. “This is a good wish. It is not medicine, but it is a kind of care. And it is honest work, something to be proud of. I think you have a gift in the kitchen son, and could be a very talented chef.” Tears glistened in her eyes. Her son dreamed of spending his life in their town. The town she had worked so hard to make home for him.
“Yes, This is honest work. This is something to be proud of son. No one would be ashamed of this for you.” Dr Gomez responded carefully. There came a time always when a son went his own way. If he had taken more care with his child’s upbringing then perhaps he would have gone into medicine. It was too late for this thought. What he had left to do was ensure his son did his best. Always did his best. There was never a time that a man should do less, Dr Gomez thought.
Mario relaxed a bit more over dinner. His parents hadn’t discouraged his dream. He didn’t tell them that he would have to work hard to pay for the school, work while he studied and that the restaurant would still be many years in the future. Indeed, he could see from the sorrow that crossed his mother's face now and then that they knew this already.
“Linda is going up to Portland too. She’s got a scholarship at a different school called the University of Portland. It is a good Catholic school. She’s studying accounting.” He grinned as he talked about Linda. He always did.
“That is very nice indeed. So you will be able to see a good deal of her then?” Sra Gomez had a new worry now, would they think it right to live together in the city? Her heart ached at the thought. Would they marry before they left instead—so young still?
‘We should be able to. The business school is a long course, she should take another three years before she has her degree. We’ll be in the same town, but she will be in the girl’s dorm at her school. I hope to find a room to rent near the culinary school. We should have weekends to visit each other.” He made a gentle point about their living quarters to assure his parents. To give them one less thing to worry about while he was away.
His two years of school turned into three as working made it difficult to take many classes at once. When he finished he had a bachelor’s degree in business management and a Culinary arts degree from the most respected school in town. The families, Linda’s family and Mario’s traveled to Portland to see both of them graduate. And to see them marry in the small chapel on the campus of the University of Portland.
It was a beautiful ceremony though long. Much of it was new to Linda’s parents but they accepted Catholicism if it meant that polite hardworking young man would take care of their daughter. And keep her as close to home as Clovis. It was such a relief not marrying her off to a Portland boy.
What was left now to accomplish his dream was to learn how a restaurant really works. And to make some money to open their own place. Portland seemed the best place to do all of that.
The rented a studio apartment not far from the river, in an area called Hawthorne where the hippies and artists lived, for the same reason they did. It was cheap. A local credit union hired Linda right away.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Tuition or Hope
My littlest girl is fighting off bronchial pneumonia right now. I want to write it on the side of great buildings, like a Joey Harrington billboard. So the whole world will pray for her and she will be better already. And yet right now she is *better* she is just not well yet. And last night she was much worse.
She was lingering in the 103F range with that peculiar hacking cough accompanied by very shallow breathing. And rasping. And misery. We went to bed together on the couch around 2:30, desperately hoping that the ibuproferin would counteract the warming from our cuddling. She was just so sick.
And now I am just so tired. Because, of course, that was the second long, late night with the poor baby. All I want is to sit with grown-ups, drinking coffee and talking about things not related to phlegm, rasping, antibiotics or infectiousness. But of course I can't do that. Because of the infectiousness.
************************************************************************************
And so this will have to be my grown-up conversation over coffee. Would you like a piece of banana bread? I made it yesterday. I yearn for a lighthearted chat. I thought that I might talk about my craigslist wish list. What things I plan on buying if I can find them at the right price. But I am too moody for that right now. Too blue and tired and serious feeling.
I want any of my friends who read this to know that it is weighing heavily on my heart--so heavily that I have to talk about it. I don't want to come across as judgmental. I really am a relativist at heart and know that each family has to make decisions based on their own set of circumstances. So please keep that in mind. This is about what is right for me and my household, my conscience.
I'm contemplating preschool. I have the paperwork all filled out. Norah would really like to got to school next year. And the one we have designs on is lovely. It's just about my idea of a great preschool. It's not the immersion Spanish Early-Learning Heaven that costs more than we spend on groceries a month, but very nice nonetheless.
It does cost something as there are no freebies in our town. I think it may cost too much, even though I can make the numbers work. You see, it costs three World Vision Children a month.
At preschool, twice a week for two and a half hours, Norah would sing songs, practice her ABC's, manipulate various objects, exercise her gross motor skills, socialize with her peers, do arts and crafts, learn a few words of sign language.
In Zimbabwe three children would get enough nutritious food to stave off the effects of chronic malnutrition, to keep from dying. And orphans, whose parents have died of aids, could go to preschool and be loved by a lovely woman who will play with them and read to them and sing to them and feed them this nutritious food. At home they have no one to read, sing, or play with them or wash them and no food to feed them.
At our house we have a TV with educational programing plus movies, a CD player to for music and dancing. A drum full of instruments, shakers, recorders, xylaphones. A spinet piano. We have one of those big red balls you sit and bounce on, roller skates, two rocking horses, a bike, two swings, two slides and a yard to dig and run in.
We have so many books we are risk being crushed at the next earthquake. We have playdough, moonsand, watercolors, finger paints, crayons and regular pens and pencils. We have paper too, to use all of those on. We have baby dolls and stuffed animals.We have a bathtub and fresh clean water--so much fresh clean water that my husband washed the car (one of our three cars) while it was raining yesterday.
And food. Every meal I throw away half of what they have been served, there is so much food. Almost all of it richly nutritious. I don't like buying junk food when I am not craving it myself. They even have vitamins. And for the poor baby who has plenty of medicine for her bronchial infection I also have Organic Italian Soda, you know, to keep her from dehydrating.
That's a lot of stuff we play with, learn from and eat. But does she get time with her peers? Yes. Norah has Sunday School for 3 and a half hours every Sunday morning and AWANA for and hour and fourty-five minutes every Wednesday. And of course we have playdates about once a week.
And then there are the tap dancing lessons... And the toddler busy book, which has given me really great learning ideas that the kids have loved...
I was reading the World Vision update magazine while my children took a bath the other day. I couldn't hold back the tears. My children, whole and hale, in the bath because it sounded fun. The children in the pictures, who may not have a chance to develop properly because of the terrible drought that depleted their land. They are victims of a cycle of horrifying poverty. Their parents who had survived abject poverty to live in a subsitance world, and yet a world full of hope, because they had their subsistance. Then it was all swept away in the hot wind as they waited helplessly for rain.
I turned the page and read the same heartbreaking story in Haiti. Their enemy is corruption, rather than drought but they starve all the same.
I know what I have to do. I think. And then I think about telling Norah she won't be going to preschool and I cry again.
How dare I cry about that? How dare I be sad that Norah will be healthy and grow and learn in her own safe and comfortable home with a mother and a father who are well and strong?
I hate to deny this thing to my child, this thing that I thought was a natural part of growing up and that I know she will love.
She would love the amazing immersion Spanish school too. But I look at my monthly income and I know beyond a doubt that the cost for that is too high.
My monthly income is the least of things I should judge by. There is money for the other preschool. But when I learn what else that money could do for children I know this cost is also far too high.
She was lingering in the 103F range with that peculiar hacking cough accompanied by very shallow breathing. And rasping. And misery. We went to bed together on the couch around 2:30, desperately hoping that the ibuproferin would counteract the warming from our cuddling. She was just so sick.
And now I am just so tired. Because, of course, that was the second long, late night with the poor baby. All I want is to sit with grown-ups, drinking coffee and talking about things not related to phlegm, rasping, antibiotics or infectiousness. But of course I can't do that. Because of the infectiousness.
************************************************************************************
And so this will have to be my grown-up conversation over coffee. Would you like a piece of banana bread? I made it yesterday. I yearn for a lighthearted chat. I thought that I might talk about my craigslist wish list. What things I plan on buying if I can find them at the right price. But I am too moody for that right now. Too blue and tired and serious feeling.
I want any of my friends who read this to know that it is weighing heavily on my heart--so heavily that I have to talk about it. I don't want to come across as judgmental. I really am a relativist at heart and know that each family has to make decisions based on their own set of circumstances. So please keep that in mind. This is about what is right for me and my household, my conscience.
I'm contemplating preschool. I have the paperwork all filled out. Norah would really like to got to school next year. And the one we have designs on is lovely. It's just about my idea of a great preschool. It's not the immersion Spanish Early-Learning Heaven that costs more than we spend on groceries a month, but very nice nonetheless.
It does cost something as there are no freebies in our town. I think it may cost too much, even though I can make the numbers work. You see, it costs three World Vision Children a month.
At preschool, twice a week for two and a half hours, Norah would sing songs, practice her ABC's, manipulate various objects, exercise her gross motor skills, socialize with her peers, do arts and crafts, learn a few words of sign language.
In Zimbabwe three children would get enough nutritious food to stave off the effects of chronic malnutrition, to keep from dying. And orphans, whose parents have died of aids, could go to preschool and be loved by a lovely woman who will play with them and read to them and sing to them and feed them this nutritious food. At home they have no one to read, sing, or play with them or wash them and no food to feed them.
At our house we have a TV with educational programing plus movies, a CD player to for music and dancing. A drum full of instruments, shakers, recorders, xylaphones. A spinet piano. We have one of those big red balls you sit and bounce on, roller skates, two rocking horses, a bike, two swings, two slides and a yard to dig and run in.
We have so many books we are risk being crushed at the next earthquake. We have playdough, moonsand, watercolors, finger paints, crayons and regular pens and pencils. We have paper too, to use all of those on. We have baby dolls and stuffed animals.We have a bathtub and fresh clean water--so much fresh clean water that my husband washed the car (one of our three cars) while it was raining yesterday.
And food. Every meal I throw away half of what they have been served, there is so much food. Almost all of it richly nutritious. I don't like buying junk food when I am not craving it myself. They even have vitamins. And for the poor baby who has plenty of medicine for her bronchial infection I also have Organic Italian Soda, you know, to keep her from dehydrating.
That's a lot of stuff we play with, learn from and eat. But does she get time with her peers? Yes. Norah has Sunday School for 3 and a half hours every Sunday morning and AWANA for and hour and fourty-five minutes every Wednesday. And of course we have playdates about once a week.
And then there are the tap dancing lessons... And the toddler busy book, which has given me really great learning ideas that the kids have loved...
I was reading the World Vision update magazine while my children took a bath the other day. I couldn't hold back the tears. My children, whole and hale, in the bath because it sounded fun. The children in the pictures, who may not have a chance to develop properly because of the terrible drought that depleted their land. They are victims of a cycle of horrifying poverty. Their parents who had survived abject poverty to live in a subsitance world, and yet a world full of hope, because they had their subsistance. Then it was all swept away in the hot wind as they waited helplessly for rain.
I turned the page and read the same heartbreaking story in Haiti. Their enemy is corruption, rather than drought but they starve all the same.
I know what I have to do. I think. And then I think about telling Norah she won't be going to preschool and I cry again.
How dare I cry about that? How dare I be sad that Norah will be healthy and grow and learn in her own safe and comfortable home with a mother and a father who are well and strong?
I hate to deny this thing to my child, this thing that I thought was a natural part of growing up and that I know she will love.
She would love the amazing immersion Spanish school too. But I look at my monthly income and I know beyond a doubt that the cost for that is too high.
My monthly income is the least of things I should judge by. There is money for the other preschool. But when I learn what else that money could do for children I know this cost is also far too high.
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