Grateful and Helpless

The past week or so, I have loved waking up each morning. Fall is definitely on the way because where I live, we've been blessed with cool nighttime temperatures, and brisk, crisp, cool mornings.

I fall asleep wrapped in blankets, snug as a caterpillar inside a cocoon, and awake to birds chirping, and cool morning breezes blowing through the curtains.

And while I can't help but feel a certain joy in just being alive to experience the simple pleasures like that, and of enjoying a steaming mug of coffee in a cool kitchen, reading the morning paper, the spell is broken each day by the front page of the news.

Pictures of the devastation in New Orleans and Mississippi -- a week after the fact -- and thousands of people are still awaiting rescue and help and having to have gone another day without it. It is heartbreaking and horrifying, and if it makes me angry sitting in my kitchen reading and watching it, while enjoying a freshly brewed cup of Columbian Supreme, I can't imagine having to live through it each day.

And what's worse, is the sense of helplessness an ordinary person can't help but feel. I wish I had the financial means to do something. However, having recently bought a house, and with gas prices spiraling out of control, and winter on the way, bringing with it, higher heating bills than last year (estimates are 20 to 30% higher), the need for new tires on the car, and tax bills and insurance premiums, I honestly can't spare a dime.

Likewise, I don't work for an employer who would look kindly on my taking a sabbatical to physically do something.

For now, my thoughts and prayers are all I can offer, and I'm trying not to feel guilty when I get to enjoy the simple things these people have had ripped from their grasp for who knows how long.

Things like mowing the lawn and weeding, which I spent most of my Saturday doing, and then getting to enjoy the fruits of that labor on Sunday when I spent a couple hours on my porch, overlooking my freshly manicured lawn, while reading and sipping iced tea.

Or, taking a long hot shower after a hard day at work or after coming home from the gym from a long workout.

Hell, even doing laundry seems like a privilege when one considers these people have been wearing the same clothes for a week.

Yes, while my life is far from perfect, and not without its challenges and struggles and stresses (and believe me, I have quite a few!) something like Hurricane Katrina puts it all in perspective and has made me count and appreciate my blessings even more.

Even my friend L, whose husband recently lost his job and is now working at a lesser job making probably a third of what he did before, has said the same. While she too, worries about being able to pay their bills in the shadow of exorbitant gas prices and the approaching winter and heating bills and such, she said she realizes how it truly can, always get worse.

I'm just glad that relief is finally reaching these people and in a way, grateful for how it has made me, and several of my friends, realize that no matter how bad we may have things on occasion, or think we have things, we still have plenty to be thankful for.