Yesterday afternoon, as I began to think about what to blog about for today, I really couldn’t come up with anything. I wasn’t going to blog on the weather, as we’ve covered both tropical and tundra-like already this week. And every single other topic I came up with seemed nothing but trivial compared to what is going on down in Haiti.
Now, I’m not a news hound -- not at all. If anything, I’m hopelessly ignorant, and shy away from the woes of the world. And although I do agree with Gandhi that you must be the change you wish to see in the world, I don’t think I need to know about every body found in every car trunk to do so.
My saturation point with violence and tragedy is low. I’m not able to view very much before I’m overwhelmed, and in today’s world of non-stop, minute-by-minute live coverage that takes what, 30 minutes?
But the earthquake in Haiti has been an exception. It’s really gotten to me, and I can’t quite put my finger on why: loss of human life, of course, and poverty to the extreme now tested by near-total devastation, well yes. But I think what’s eating at me more than anything is the randomness of it all.
It was two weeks ago yesterday that I was sitting here in this very chair, going about my workday tasks, when the building creaked then seemed to shift, my framed photos shook, and the window blinds swayed like identical thin white plastic palm fronds in the wind.
An earthquake!
My coworker arrived at my door, and we somewhat excitedly exchanged, “did you feel that?!” and wondered if it was over, when it hit me….where are my children?
Holy mother of the cosmos, the older girls are with their father in LA!! Well, not technically in LA proper, but in Anaheim, home to Disneyland (and also home to way too many an active fault line).
.
Oh, shit, Disneyland? Please, please do not let them be on Space Mountain right now.
As fast as I could I checked the USGS website to find that, thankfully, the 5.9 magnitude quake took place in Baja Mexico, 21 miles from Mexicali (and there was minimal damage). My girls were safe!
But this was not the fate of too many a mother late Tuesday afternoon in Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in Haiti.
Too many mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons raced home to find nothing but rubble and twisted limbs. One article I read from an Australian news outlet told the story of a woman who escaped harm at the UN headquarters to race back to the hotel where she and her family were staying to find only her youngest, 2-year-old daughter still alive, sheltered from serious harm under the now limp body of her husband. Her two older daughters were not so lucky.
Ach. Poor mama, poor baby.
How come living and loving can be so painful?
I can’t even begin to guess at how many families have been affected by this completely random act of nature. Or how they’ll manage to cope and move on. But most will.
The whole event, the difference just a few minutes can make to millions of people, just goes to illustrate, to me at least, how much of a crap shoot life is.
It makes you want to squeeze your kids extra tight, and head into the bedroom with your husband. There are no guarantees, people, so let’s not forget to love each other and give what we can.
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5 comments:
you are so right Beth.
I have a friend whose brother and sister-in-law were on a cruise ship 2 years ago and chatted up a man working on the ship. They stopped in Haiti (where this man and his family live) and the man said that he had always hoped for his sons to have a better education in America.
Just like that, the couple brought the two teenage boys back to little ol' State College and enrolled them in high school. The now 19 yr old was already planning a concert for this Saturday to help an orphanage in Haiti, but life has changed. He is very lucky that his family lived about 3 hours north of the capitol, but he won't know they are safe until phones work again and he can hear from them.
His life has already had the ups and downs of poverty and then new opportunities and now devastation...and he is only 19. This concert is only the beginning of what I hope is long, sustained help for one of the poorest places on earth.
It is terrible, and terribly humbling. It will only get worse once they stop bringing people out alive. My kids are very into the news coming out of Haiti, and it's so hard to comfort and reassure them. I'm proud that their first response is to ask how we can help. I'm trying to figure that out myself.
Jacquie
It's hard to maintain hope in the midst of this kind of disaster. And it also makes me ashamed that it takes something this massive to get people (me!) to pay attention to Haiti, whose people are in dire straits every single day without the intervention of an earthquake.
I don't know if it's right or wrong, but like you, I try to stay away from the news as much as possible. I know that, one way or another, I'll hear about the important things, and hearing too much of the gore and grime weighs me down so much that I don't want to get out of bed. So I stick to the silly "news" like what celebrity has had plastic surgery, because none of that matters.
Oh this whole tragedy is just the worst. And the worst is yet to come; it always is.
Thanks, Beth, for your thoughtful words.
I'm hugging everyone tighter today...........
xxEllie
Beautiful post Beth. Mom C
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