so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

-william carlos williams-


i love this poem. it's one of my all time favorites and i couldn't tell you why. maybe it's the sheer simplicity of it. maybe it's the rain. i'm a sucker for the rain.

LF never wrote back. s/he's not going to. tonight that sits heavy on my chest, weighing me down a little more than i would like. i made this move, i chose the direction, and now i am living with it. i'm not regretting. but just because i was the one who chose doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, just a little. i learned a long time ago that, with some exceptions, love lost living hurts farther than love lost dying. i did love LF. but there is a point when you protect your own heart. so tonight i suppose the weight is simply the shedding of pounds of a friendship that is no longer what it once was.

rough week. but in the midst i choose to focus on the amazing things--wonderful conversations with relatives who were involved, passionate, and wanted to come back into kids' lives. parents found. adoptions finalized. completing a case and closing it, only to get back some of the sweetest praise and most heartfelt thank yous i have ever gotten. the voices we speak for are often mute. sometimes they want to speak but don't know what to say. other times they have shouted themselves hoarse and have no voice left at all. still others are silent by choice. i am unendingly proud of the caseworkers i work with; at the end of the day i can imagine that they too are hoarse from all the shouting to make these children heard. yet they come back each morning and start again. why, you may ask? are you all masochists or something? is struggle and pain fun? well, because we have to, absolutely not, and not usually.

i think what it comes down to is this: there are so many opportunities for people's passions to come to life. and so many jobs where what you do directly impacts a person's worst day for the better. i know for me that i work with kids because they need advocates. what it is, where it lies, is in the simple fact that if i could not hold myself accountable to make even the smallest changes, if i could not ask that commitment of myself, if i couldn't find it in myself to put my heart and head and hands into this work, how could i possibly ask anyone else to do so in my place?

it is a selfish commitment at times; it is certainly enjoyable to tell others that you work in child welfare and have them shake their heads, grimace, praise you. i could never do that. it is a small badge of pride to wear on your sleeve, a strength movement that you get to be a part of.

it is also a selfless commitment at times; there are mornings where you wake up and think, i can't do this. you're always wrong, of course. you can, and you will, even if it's a hard day or a hurt day, even if you go in and end up having the best day yet. there are the angry phone calls that rattle your confidence, the saddest news that breaks a little part of you down. and those are days to face, deal with, and funnel away until there is nothing left of those tiny sacrifices. because, compared to our families, anything we deal with at work is tiny.

i have peppered the walls of my little cubicle with pictures of "my" kids outside my work world. i don't have all of them, but i'm getting there. i love being able to see them. besides the fact that my coworkers tell me they're all so beautiful, which they are and i should pass along to their parents(!), they act as a constant and calm reminder of why i work here. because every kid deserves to be as happy as that.

so maybe why i love that poem so much is that, in it, the littlest things matter immensely. i do the littlest things. and while they don't--and shouldn't--matter the most, they are invaluable to the cases. baby steps, i suppose.

in answer, an echo to answer mr. williams' poem:

so much depends
(said william carlos williams)
on that which is known to us
on two plus two equaling four
on waking following sleep
on breathing in and breathing out
on the brilliant exploding passage of time

he forgot though
that so much depends
on that which is unknown to us
on the song in breaking waves
on the mutter of hope in humanity
on small footfalls carrying grace
on tomorrow, and each day after.

-vera penn-