Can't Kids just stay Kids?

As I was driving Goose home from school today he announced with great gusto,

'Mummy, today we had a drill!'

'Oh, my kind of drill?'

I responded, my mind more on the snowy road than the actual conversation.

'You know, a drill in case somebody comes to the school to take us or kill us. We had to face the cubbies and be very quiet; it was fun.'

What.The.Hell.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry.

'Nobody's is going to come and take or kill you, Goose'

I answered quietly. Firmly.

'But Mum, somebody did, they came to a school and-'

I didn't let him finish. I couldn't. I don't think anyone will ever forget those poor babies, but I won't bring them up here.

My Goose is six years old, he has brown hair, blue eyes and loves to run. He's always telling me I am the most beautiful Mummy in the world. He's six years old. Six years old.

The world has a way of encroaching  on our lives without us realizing it; I knew I couldn't protect him from the world forever, I just thought I had more time.

The soul does not surrender to despair without having exhausted all illusions

"L'âme ne se rend pas au désespoir sans avoir épuisé toutes les illusions." ~Victor Hugo

"The soul does not surrender to despair without having exhausted all illusions."

I haven't read 'Les Miserables' since grade nine, but over the past two weeks found myself pulling out my tattered old copy and revisiting it. I was an angry young person and it suited my mood at the time; nobody made me read it, and I learnt to read in French before English so it only made sense that I would read it in its original form [that, and I was a terrifically pretentious Goth girl].

Something about Tom Hiddleston's visit to Guinea really touched a nerve, as I'm sure it did with alot of people following his blog posts. I've spent the better part of two years, though only five months on this blog, complaining and wailing to anyone who would listen how hard my life had become. I did it over, and over again, like some kind of bad country song...first we lost the job, than the car, than the house...

But I never really stopped to think about anything other than what was happening in my little corner of the world; I never realised how selfish I was being. Now, this isn't about to turn into a 'He changed my world' type post, but something has changed and I'm not sure if I can quite put my finger on it. I have come to the realisation that I'm not putting enough good into the world; I want to give more.  I've spent the better part of ten years working at the Big Green making mounds of money for one man. My unit alone pulled in nearly half a billion dollars last year. Half a Billion Dollars...for one man. When I think of all the things that money could be doing I feel ashamed. I want my time and energy to matter, to mean something. Something other than a bottom line in somebody's ledger.

So I'm going to dig deep and see if I can make some changes. So I'll end with the words of another great man: " If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make that change". ~Michael Jackson