Pat Bean's blog

Photo of Mount Lemmon taken from my youngest daughter’s backyard patio. I live 13 miles closer to the mountain and thus the overview is not visible, just like the lives of those less fortunate. — Photo by T.C. Ornelas .

“Many people … wake up one day and say, ‘Hang on. Who am I? Is this really me? Is this what I really wanted?’ – Kate Winslet

Who Am I to be so Blessed?

I’m sitting in my bedroom, barricaded in a comfortable chair with my computer on a table in front of me so I can write and my beloved canine companion Scamp can’t get on my lap and lick my face for attention.

I’m drinking cream-laced coffee, looking out the window as the day lightens. Between the tree branches, I watch as the sun dances among the peaks of Mount Lemmon. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.

Mount Lemmon from my living room balcony. — Photo by Pat Bean

I love mornings. They are my favorite time of day, before my mind forgets itself and goes about the business of the sometimes-chaotic day.

This morning, however, my little gray cells had a mind of their own. My thoughts considered a conversation a friend and I shared recently about not always having a bedroom of our own when we grew up.

We both bemoaned this very fact.

But as I wrote this morning, I thought about the fate of babies born in places in the world where they not only don’t have a bedroom, but no roof over their heads, not enough food to eat, and war raging outside their doors. I thought of women who can never travel alone freely across their country, who are married off at 11 or sold into sexual slavery.

Who am I to be so blessed with the place of my birth? To be comfortably housed, with plentiful food in my cupboards, to have the leisure to write, to travel, to read, to simply go to a movie when I want, and to sit here and enjoy my mornings?

Life is not fair. How could I ever have thought it was? I wish I could find a silver lining for every baby born into this world.

My thoughts have turned this bright day suddenly dark. I want to scream and yell and do something to change things. But what?

When I started this post, it was meant to be light and upbeat, but my fingers on the keyboard decided otherwise. It sometimes happens when I let the words just come. This morning I let them be. They needed to be said, even if they brought tears to my eyes.

I needed to be reminded how blessed my life has been, even if I didn’t always have a bedroom of my own.

Bean Pat: Dawn’s post:  http://dawndowneyblog.com/index.html/ another blogger whose day went awry.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.