I am an avid NPR listener. When I moved a lot, the first thing I looked for on the radio was for an all-jazz and classical music radio stations. So when I moved to Dallas I immediately found 88.1 and 101.1.
And then at work a woman whose intelligence, wit and humor I admired, Joyce, mentioned 90.1. Since then, I’ve made of NPR my constant driving companion. I cannot say I know about politics or politicians, but I’m guessing NPR tends to be more of a liberal then a conservative radio station. So be it, I thoroughly enjoy their reporting and the human slant they give to their stories and their tendency to be inclusive of all peoples.
So, lately I hear a lot about the imminent “sequestering” and the immigration reform. The other day I heard that this sequestering deal will impact “everything,” even things like the Head Start program whose vision is “to be the untiring voice that will not be quiet until every vulnerable child is served with the Head Start model of support for the whole child, the family and the community.”This is something that for always will baffle me about this great country and its generous people. I’d like to know how is it that the most powerful country on the planet still has these basic questions and indecisions about how to care and provide for our children, who in my mind should be our top priority? And let’s add our elders to that mix, can we?
I know economic problems and issues, inflation and crises will always come and go. Debates will always tend to divide us instead of uniting us. But in my silly mind, our children and our seniors should be a topic we should have solved a long time ago. At least that is my thinking (perhaps of no value).
I guess I’m thinking as a mother and as a daughter. Since I became a mother, everything I do is oriented towards providing for my daughter to the best of my abilities. Most of the monies I make are thought in relationship to her needs and wants.
My mother was a widow shortly after turning 49 and never remarried. From my father’s Social Security fund she began receiving less than five hundred dollars a month as soon as she qualified to claim those benefits. She is now 80 and that is all she gets. I think she is amazing in her mastery to make do with that.
As her daughter I feel an obligation to help her. But it’s an unmet obligation, given that I do not have any monies assigned to her from my monthly income. I feel I should, but my own commitments make it hard to do so.
I believe being born in a Latin American country has to do with this feeling of commitment toward her. In my culture you are taught that somehow you are indebted to the two people that gave life to you. I seem to take that seriously and since I can’t really fulfill that debt, it’s a source of guilt.
I find comfort in having a bedroom that is my mother’s, with lamps, a night stand, a dresser and a mirror, a nice walk-in closet, and that there’s no doubt whatsoever that if anyone stays the night there, they’re sleeping in Marga’s bedroom instead of a fully furnished guest bedroom. And that atlong as she is in my house, she’s in her house and that I will cover her needs in the best manner I can, no questions asked.
This is a source of a small comfort for me.
But as a nation, where do we find comfort when so much is at stake by this new word, sequester, being thrown around in the political realm?
So that is why I wonder how this powerful country still rethinks on how to care for its children and seniors. Shouldn’t at some point all that power serve minimally for this purpose?
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