Solo Mother

My favorite charity.

by christina on November 2nd, 2006

Running a charity is a full-time job. When you ARE the charity, you unfortunately don’t get paid for the work you do.

I have a few dozen people to thank, and that’s just the first round:

Thank you to:

• My parents, who believed in me(even though they didn’t really know I could do it, they believed). And who are so wonderful with this little kid of mine, I get a joyful, laughing, brilliant boy back every time he spends the night at their house.
• To my father, who sat me down at lunch one day and told me he knew I was capable of great things. And to my mother, who didn’t cry for me too much, just rolled up her sleeves and helped every way she knew how.
• To my dearest friend, Kat, whose extraordinary energy, generosity, faith and phenomenally positive attitude gives me strength on the darkest of days. To her family, her husband, children especially, who have all taken us into their hearts, made us welcome, made us safe. And never once complained about six people sharing one bathroom… even invited us to stay with them again.
• To Renee and her son Dante, who took us in and let us live in their home sight unseen, trusting us on the strength of Kat’s friendship. Who have put up with the difficult task of sharing their lives with strangers: the seven in the morning crazies, the middle of the night cries, the wine and unexpected laughter, the constant chaos and exhaustion and joy. Thank you for giving us a safe place in which to learn the ropes, learn what it means to be a single mother, a fatherless son… they have been the net beneath the tight wire.
• To Kara for volunteering to take a look at my financials and make sense of the mess of it, for telling me I’d made it back to the woman I used to be.
• There’s this extraordinary group of women on the Web called Moms on the Hill. It’s a community the way neighborhoods used to be. Most of them have never met me, but they have given me their clothes, greeted my child in the park as though they’ve always known him, given us rides, picked up groceries, passed around resumes, given us furniture, hope, and love. It’s a long list of things and women to get through. I’ll just thank Laura for now, whose first e-mail to me started with, “I’ll be your friend!” and she has been as good as her word.

So truly blessed. It’s going to be such a big favor to pay back, much less pay forward.

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POSTED IN: helping out, money, parenting, sharing the load