Life has been going pretty well for me. I’m lucky. My kids have always known a warm house, decent food, and they don’t dress to badly either. They go to the doctor when they need to (sometimes the odd creatures even want to…..I’m convinced my daughter is becoming a hypochondriac and goes to the doctor for every little sniffle). My son is finally working and we were able to get him medical insurance. Having never paid for medical insurance in my life, this was somewhat of a shock but we finally settled on something that will work for him and is affordable.

Anyway, my point is, life is good. Yet we never realize how good. I read a story yesterday about a 12 year old boy that died. His mom couldn’t afford dental and he had an abscessed tooth. The bacteria went to his brain. So instead of an $80 tooth extraction, we, and I do mean we as in you and I and every other tax paying citizen, paid $250,000 for surgeries which came to late, to late to save a 12 year old boy who deserved so much more. My sadness isn’t the money that we spent, my sadness is for a life that had just began and for a mother that couldn’t provide for her children. I realize it’s a system most of us are helpless to change, some of us probably feel it shouldn’t be changed and that people should provide for their own. I don’t know what the answers are. But I do know that I believe that every child, every grown adult, every senior citizen should be entitled to the same level of medical care and the same level of opportunities to grow old.

I think of my sister and my 17-year old niece who lives with her now. I think of her inability to provide for her girls, to provide for herself. I get mixed feelings. My sister could do more to better her situation. She’s great at whipping out a house cleaning in a quarter of the time it takes me, when I need a strong back and a helping hand she is there without second thought. The only one, to be honest, that is there to really help for no reason other than love. Some people help because they feel they have to, it’s expected. But she truly does it, I believe, because it makes her feel like she contributes and because she loves us, her family, she wants to contribute. But yet she refuses to change her life. It’s beyond my comprehension. I would be doing anything within my power to ensure my kids were given everything they needed to survive, including some damn good medical and dental care. I’ve probably errored on the side of giving to much to my kids. Of trying to compensate for something I found lacking in my own childhood. I watch my 17 year old niece trying to put herself through school (hey, I’m looking for a very cheap computer for the kid if you know of one) while working nearly full-time–sometimes getting up at 4:30 and walking miles through the cold (yes, I have a bike to bring her this weekend) to get to a job to make minimum wage.

I don’t know what my point is in writing this. Other than that it makes me realize all the problems I face on a daily basis seem trivial. It makes me wonder where my priorities in life have been. It makes me wonder how I, just ME, can make a difference. It makes me wonder if I would give up a new outfit or a 4×4 to provide the basics to an unknown child who so desperately is in need of help. I have given up things to provide for my nieces. At one point, I got both of them out of foster care and they lived with me for 6 years. I was a single mom with 4 kids then going bonkers nutty out of my mind. But my sacrifice wasn’t horrific. We had a home (hey, the son had to live in the rec room. Isn’t that sacrifice??). We always had good meals. Kids played sports. But what if something took true sacrifice. What am I made of? I think very few of us are made of what it takes for true sacrifice. And perhaps that is part of the way of survival. From the days of the caveman just making sure his own family got to feast now and then. I’m not saying it’s right or it’s wrong, it just makes me wonder how we, as one huge cave family, save a future 12-year old boy from a toothache?