Pie in the Haitian Sky

Sometimes, you can be sitting at your kitchen table nicely minding your manners and planning your  dinner menu for the week, and BOOM!  Life hands you a banana cream pie.  You weren't even thinking you wanted pie.  And if you HAD been thinking about pie, you would have picked french apple, not banana cream.   But there is no french apple pie in sight, just that  banana cream sitting right there in front of you, so close you can see the little flecks of seeds in the banana slices on the top.  And then you think about the 54 reasons you should not eat ANY pie right now.  You think about how you really need to get that menu planning done, so you can go shopping with a list and a budget and not blow all your food money  on Oreos and diet pepsi.   And honestly, you shouldn't be eating any pie, period.  You just had cheesecake last night. You think about how you haven't worked out in ages, and holy crap, there must be 500 calories in one little slice, and you've been trying to cut down on sugar.  So you put your head down on the table and try to think about sensible things, like grapefruit and sugar snap peas.  But when you look back up, that pie is still sitting there, just waiting for you.  And even though you probably shouldn't, you snatch it up and eat the whole darn thing.  Let the crumbs fall where they may.  One banana cream pie never killed anybody, and if you wait for french apple your whole life, you may never get any pie ever.

And that is why I'm going to Haiti.

For nine days in October, with a group of doctors who put on a medical clinic twice a year.  I'll be working in the pharmacy, which is really just a little tiny shed in between two tents where they have the clinic.  I'll be working 12 hour days with my favorite pharmacist, sleeping in a tent with bugs and snakes.

So. Haiti is not exactly at the top of my list of places to visit before I die.

The timing is not great for me to take off and leave my kids for nine days.

And I can't exactly afford to go.

But I think I need to. Trying to explain why comes out sounding corny.

But right after the earthquake, when Haiti was all over the news, I wanted to fly  over there RIGHT NOW and adopt a kid.  I just wanted to get one kid, just one little kid, out of that sad mess.  We even checked into it a little bit.  Found out it was an expensive, years-long nightmare of paperwork and heartbreak.  I decided we had too much on our plate  to even try, so we never really pursued it.  But I remember thinking that if we ever did adopt a child from there, that would mean that my child (and in my  head it was always a girl) my daughter- was over in that awful place right now, maybe living on the street, maybe with nothing to eat and no one to take care of her.  Once I started to think of one of MY kids being over there, it put a whole new perspective on things.  How could I just sit around in my warm comfy house with my full stomach and do nothing  while my child was over there suffering?  I would do anything to get my kid out of there.  It made me feel sick and panicked.

And I never did anything about it.  Not one thing.  I didn't even text SAVEHAITI to the Red Cross to donate a measly $10.00.  All I did was think about what I wish I could do.

I still think about it.  I think about who would have been our child if we had pursued it, and where she is now.   Chances are, we would still be waiting for her, if we even would have gotten that far.   And  let me be very clear: this trip most definitely does not have anything to do with wanting to adopt.  We are not in a position to even think about such a thing.  Not even on the radar.

But I never did anything.  Not one little thing. But I still want to.  And there sits this chance, right in front of me.  And I know I need to take it.  Maybe only for me, I don't know.   I do know that the work that needs to be done in Haiti is still overwhelming.  And there are some incredible people making some really good things happen over there. More on all of that later though.