judith viorst writes books.

they are prose and poetry rather than novels.

”alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’ is my favorite.

it’s a kid’s book, but one of the ones with way more to it than a kid could ever get.

those are the best ones anyway.

he has trouble with singing, ice cream, sneakers, his dentist, his brothers …

when they stop at his dad’s office, he has trouble with his elbow.

honest, his elbow.

that bit goes like this:

“when we picked dad up at is office he said i couldn’t play with his copying machine, but i forgot.

he also said to watch out for the books on his desk, and i was careful as could be except for my elbow…”

my elbow gave me similiar trouble this morning.

shattered a glass full of water all over the low end of the kitchen.

so as i’m balancing on my toes, not wanting to get dripping wet shards in my knees

i felt the stress of needing to get every little sliver up to protect the soft skin

on the bottoms of my kids’ feet

it hit me that there must be a lot of broken glass near the children in haiti today

glass and other horrors

that whomever is left to protect them can’t possibly keep from them

due to the lives they were born into,

surely they have much tougher feet than the kids i know

(it was here my eyes welled up adding tears to the already wet linoleum below me)

“God, please.  the children.  please…”  i managed to sob

and i meant all of them.

mine, the haitian babies, the abused or abandoned in our very own proud country.

hours later i am feeling more composed,

but still somber

and wondering if there is glass in haiti at all.

do their homes even have ‘windows’ as defined by what we would call ‘windows’ here?

i am able to feel so very protected in my home,

and whether they felt that way before or not, only those with deep, daily faith do now.

no, they do not have homes and they do not feel safe.

i am left pitifully award of just how pitifully unaware i am of what hard living is.

not the ‘terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’ kind

the ‘endlessly hard being all you know, all your family knows

and all your neighbors know’ kind.

and knowing that i don’t know leaves me feeling a bit weak in the knees

and a bit nauseous deep down inside somewhere.

because as much as i don’t know, they don’t know any different.

‘faint’ taken from 24:10 of the book of proverbs.