because we can

I'm writing from the playground today, because, well...we can. 

The ridiculous number of beautiful, safe, fun things we can do, freely, in this country are no joke.

After living in a land for so many years--raising our children there--without...I will never take for granted that somehow there is a huge and beautiful park down the street where anyone can come and play and someone is cutting the grass.  I'll never take for granted that there is a water fountain next to me, clean water. Free, clean, accessible for anyone, clean water. That which life utterly revolves around at home--getting clean water to drink--is standing empty and cool and shiny and free beside me. I'll never take for granted the ginormous, well-kept, literal acres of soccer fields behind me...most coveted in our Haiti culture.

I'll never take for granted that we drove here on a paved road. A smooth road. Two miles in five minutes. With traffic lights. I'll never take for granted that if Sofie falls from the monkey bars, I can call someone to come help us. I can take her countless places and get GOOD, trusted medical care. And follow up. And I don't have to know someone at the hospital, or pay a bribe, or travel hours, or pay in full before I'm allowed to leave. I can get insurance and payment plans and assistance to help me pay for it. I'll never take for granted, after calling the police dozens of times in Haiti every.single.time.to.no.avail, that if there were people setting fires and throwing bottles and threatening us and our students and friends in front of our homes with machetes today, police would come. Total strangers would come help us, though they didn't know me. Without negotiating a price first.

I won't even get started on dishwashers, drive-throughs, grocery stores, electricity, running water, affordable and required education for all our children, food programs, public bath rooms, public trash cans, air conditioning, trash service, mail.

We've never had these things.

My children keep looking up from them, trying to find someone to THANK.

Millions and millions of people around the world do not have these things....and these things I grew up not even noticing are NOT. Small. Things.

Writing from the playground today because I CAN.

What I CAN'T do is stop thinking about all our brothers and sisters and all their precious children who have never, ever had these options...and as things continue to somehow decline at home, and in many countries around the world, perhaps they never will.