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.

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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.