While on theBus earlier today, I had to wipe my tears while reading The Advertiser.
First there’s the coverage of the devastation in Haiti. On the front page is a photo of two women who just saw a little girl being lifted from the rubble. The cutline doesn’t say if she were dead or not, but the anguish of those women stabbed me so deeply in my heart.
Children are important. They are an investment in the future. They deserve every chance in life possible. It is very hard for me to understand how one can give birth and be indifferent to their offspring.
Before we started a family, I couldn’t care less about kids. There is now a huge space in my heart loaded with love for children. I think it’s because I had three miscarriages before my two girls were born. Honestly, you start making deals with G*d to become a mom. You never give up until you do.
So now the globe has thousands of orphans wandering Haiti, the world’s poorest country. We have to have hope that few if any fall through the cracks.
Which leads me to another story in the paper about a child: Cyrus Belt, the toddler tossed onto the H-1 Freeway like some useless rag doll by a neighbor. The outlook for Cyrus’s life was probably grim. His mother tested positive for meth less than a week prior to his death. His parents were divorced and his care by family and neighbors was haphazard at best. He’d often be brought home after wandering his busy neighborhood. Life should have been better for him. Instead, he existed with a plethora of substance abusers, people beaten down so much that they cared little for themselves let alone for him.
His father and aunt have filed a lawsuit against the neighbor, Cyrus’s mother, and the state Department of Human Services. I don’t think we can conclude that Cyrus’s father and mother were better of character than his mother, but I do think they’ve got a good point regarding the state.
If DHS is so overwhelmed that it cannot follow up on social service cases involving children, then does Hawaii have a crisis regarding their safety? If there aren’t sufficient funds to take care of social services, how can life get any better? It hurts to think about it.
Look out for each other and don’t let the kids wander around.
I usually don’t know where the blog will take me, and this was a surprising turn. If you saw me carrying two cups from Starbucks today, I’ll confess. I’m a skinny, no-foam, sugar-free, green-tea latte fan from way back. But marketing has affected me and I got myself a tall skinny cinnamon dulce…coffee. I like it. Plus, it warmed my chilly hands this morning on my walk back to HMSA.
Lavagal 