Selfish

I move through my day, meeting the needs of my family and these 11 puppies and their mother as if there aren’t human beings buried beneath the rubble in Haiti. It’s what has to be done. We must move forward and we have immediate needs. The puppies can’t understand, but my children are old enough to know about this tragedy and devastation. As we talked about the situation, they got very uncomfortable at their inability to do anything immediately to save lives. They fidgeted in their chairs and finally had to get up and move around in order to work it out. I explained that the airport is damaged and the port is damaged and the roads are damaged, so that there’s not much of a way to get help into the country or move supplies around if they make it through. And that many people in the government are still missing, so coordinating the efforts to be effective is very difficult. They felt helpless. I let them struggle, like a puppy trying to get to his mother.

Then I told them that former President Bill Clinton is working to help and he said that the best thing for us to do right now is to donate money. $5 or $10 dollars will make a huge difference. We’ve made our donation.

But we’re also going to a hockey tournament and a basketball tournament and getting together with friends and feeding puppies. Because every puppy needs to eat and every person needs to smile.