March 2005: Low-Income Child Care

Last week, I distributed the snack food that my loyal volunteer, Tiffany R, collected to several low-income daycares in Morristown, NJ. It was an unusually bittersweet experience, having just shut down the childcare center in December that we had started to raise money for expanding our programs.

Well, recently I've been a bit down about Focus America. Financial donations are hard to get from people. In many ways, charities are expected to do so many good-will activities but no one wants to pay for them. We run this charity, Focus America, as a volunteer-group, and, since our inception, I have encountered debt upon debt because I believe in this cause. I'm tired of receiving bills that cannot be paid and tired of listening to my husband complain about how I'm trying to save the world. Christmas 2004 burned me out with lots of work and stress, not to mention the overwhelming disappointment from a volunteer from the Illinois area who collected over $800 to purchase beds for a poor family in Michigan...beds that never arrived and the money is MIA although I suspect I know who's pocket it went to. I had disappointments in some people I had considered friends, too...friends who begrudgingly offered to help families but only after they complained that "these people should be given birth control and not hand outs."

There are some dear friends and family who are close to me encourage me the best way that they can. My greatest champion, my mother, always reminds me to focus on the lives that I have touched and not the negative experiences I have encountered. I try but, there are days that it is hard. This is a line of (volunteer) work that doesn't come with a lot of accolades or appreciation.

However, on the day that I delivered the snack foods, something happened that was so wonderful...it turned me back on track.

The director from the one center, Children on the Green, welcomed me with a big smile and praise for all that we do. Then she said, "Come, see Austin! See how big our little boy has gotten." It took me a minute to truly understand what she was saying.

I looked around the childcare center, searching the faces of the children. Who was Austin and why, on this miserable, raining day, did I care? But then I saw him and I remembered. There stood little Austin, his big blue eyes sparkling and his blond hair in gentle waves around his ears. Oh yes, I remembered. I remembered everything that I had blocked out from the horrible experience of running that childcare center...the stress, the tears, the debt, the disappointments. But then I remembered that in blocking out the bad, I had blocked out the good. I had blocked out Austin.

Dear little Austin was born with a terrible physical handicap (and the name of it escapes me right now). He was small at birth and didn't grow properly. He had to have a feeding tube inserted into his belly and he carried a backpack at all times so that he was basically getting 24x7 nutrition this tube. At the time we met Austin, no other child care center would take him. We took him. Or, rather, I took him. My staff didn't want to really have him in their group...understandably so because we were starting out and his "illness" was scary. What if the tube popped out? What if another child pulled the tube out? What if we were sued? But, we did take him because he was a little boy that needed to have friends and socialization.

He was a darling boy and I fell in love with him immediately. But, his time with us was short. His condition was taxing on my staff and, after his tube DID fall out and we rushed him to the hospital, I was even a bundle of nerves. But we worked with his mother, a courageous and lovely young woman, and I pulled a few chits to help expedite his inclusion with a larger daycare that could help him and his mother in more ways than we could...especially since we were so small and new.

Yes, I had blocked out darling Austin. But it came flooding back. And wouldn't you know it? That child remembered me! His face lit up and he danced up and down, clapping his hands. I rushed over to his side and talked to him, my eyes searching his. He wasn't wearing his backpack anymore (although he does still need it). And he was beautiful...a regular little guy with friends at this new center.

Yes, after 7 months, this child remembered me. And surely I remembered him. He was the good...the one true thing that happened with that experience that, as my mother would say, proves that we can make a difference in someone's life. In front of me was the little, living proof.

Oh yes, I remembed Austin and I couldn't talk anymore. The tears came and I rushed out of the center, so choked up that I could not say goodbye to the director. I was crying for so many things...the things that were, the things that should have been, and the things that I truly want so much for the future. Bittersweet thoughts and tears for certain.