Truly Blessed

So, I said something to my mom tonight when we were at the nursing home.  My dad left to bring her stuff to the car (because she's coming home tomorrow) and it seemed the right time.  I said, "Mom, you have to stop being so mean to him.  He's really trying and I know he gets on your nerves, but you're being really mean to him."  She almost started crying and admitted that she knows she is and that she's trying.  I said, "You chose to stay with him, so you need to deal with this now."  She kept agreeing with me and then I didn't say anymore.  It was uncomfortable for me to say that, and maybe I should have left the second part out, but sometimes it gets on my nerves when she acts like a martyr, as she could have left him if she had wanted to a long time ago.  The thing is, I think they really do love each other, but have a lousy way of showing or not showing it.  She said that my dad doesn't even get along with his own kids, and I said I'm getting along with him just fine.  She agreed and I bit my tongue.  I wanted to say that my brothers don't get along with him, because she's always ragging about him to them.  I just left it alone at that point and changed the subject.  Sometimes, less is more, if you know what I mean.

We were watching the news and they were showing the terrible drought in Africa, videos of little children starving to death.  I couldn't watch it - it makes me crazy to see people starving to death - especially children - and there's not a thing I can do to change it.  And there was no where for these people to go, to sleep, to eat - they had to resort to sleeping out in the open.  I can't wrap my mind around that.  I have been blessed beyond measure because I've always had food to eat and a place to stay - always.  Even when I lived in dumps, and I have lived in dumps - at least it was a roof over my head.  My old apartments would probably look like palaces to those people.  And the free government cheese I got didn't melt, but it was food and it filled our bellies.

When I was pregnant with Jason, the apartment I lived in was roach-infested and the neighborhood was very dangerous. One day, while I was walking my dog down the street, it was about dusk and I happened to turn and look across the street right at the time someone had apparently jumped out the window, killing himself. I wasn’t sure what I saw and heard, because it was getting dark, but the sound his body made when it hit the pavement was a crushing, weird sound and it stopped me in my tracks. The next thing I knew, a woman came running out the door of the same building, screaming and looking around, asking me if I had seen what happened. I couldn’t really see it, but I certainly heard it and saw a dark form falling to the ground. The ambulance came soon after that, but I never got the details on it, as I didn’t want to know.

My apartment in this neighborhood, and in fact the whole building, was roach-infested. One night, I thought I would out-smart those roaches and I decided to spray all the kitchen cupboards and cracks before I went to sleep and would see them all conveniently dead in corners by morning. Well, my bed was basically in the same area as the kitchen, and the crib sat next to my bed, as it was a very small, studio apartment. After spraying, I turned the lights off and laid down on the bed. It was a garden apartment, and so the lights from the street would come in through the windows and cast a glow in my apartment. As I was lying on my back, I started noticing dark lines creeping across the ceiling and I couldn’t make out what they were. I flicked the lights on and to my great dismay, armies of roaches were crawling out from the cupboards, up the walls and across the ceiling and falling onto my bed and the crib! I totally freaked out.  I took the Raid can and sprayed and sprayed and cried as I sprayed as it was a very gross scene indeed. I never did get rid of the roaches because they would just travel from one apartment to the next. 

One night, some very stoned guy came banging on my door in the middle of the night trying to get me to let him in. I was petrified, as he almost broke the door down. I called the police, but they took so long to get there that he had already left by the time they came. The Chicago Police have a very nasty reputation, and they generally live up to that reputation. One night, driving home from my boyfriend's mother’s home, the police stopped me on the highway to interrogate me, because they wanted to know why “a white girl was in a black neighborhood.” They made me get out of my car in pouring rain, off an exit in the middle of nowhere, and they sat in their car, leafing through my wallet, looking at the pictures I had in it and mocking me. I was too young and naive to know at that time, and it took me years later to realize that they could have easily hurt me without anyone finding out.

Needless to say, I moved out of that neighborhood as soon as I could, especially after Jason was born because I couldn't stand the thought of a roach crawling into his crib.  But even a situation like that, can't compare with what those people in Africa have to deal with.  My heart simply goes out to them.  Just when we think we have so many problems or life hasn't been fair or somehow we've gotten a raw deal -- there is always someone worse off than you or I.  Always.  It's just another reminder to be thankful every day, because the bottom line is that we all are, truly blessed.