reflecting

I like blogging, and playing with photography, but I'm finding it hard to do much of either these days. It seems somewhat self-indulgent, to take time out of the chaos to post, but then - perhaps then I'm not fulfilling my own needs?

There are two photos that were taken of me while in Peru last November that I've been thinking of a lot recently.


This is me in my element - on the beach, writing in my field notebook, thinking about my research and coming up with questions about science and marine biology.... Everything was so simple there, even though we worked 18-hour days, were attacked by evil ticks wherever we went, and did all our own laundry by hand! But my time was my OWN. I packed a lot into three weeks - full days of data collection, maintaining an educational blog nightly for Kieran's school, and delivering a huge donation to a local school - but every day we still had time to prepare healthy nutritious food, to read, to sit and watch the ocean, to chat. We had very little there. My room had a bed, a desk and a chair. Desert sand coated all my things by the end of each day. We had electricity only for lights, but mostly we used our headlamps for getting around. We had no fridge, no microwave, no TV, no laundry machines, and we went into town nightly for showers and internet.

While I was there, it was like going back in time, to when I could actually use my brain for what it was trained for. I was a real marine biologist again. I was getting by in Spanish. I realized that this, THIS is what I wanted to be spending my time on when I got back to Canada. I resolved to put aside at least a day a week to work on my own research. I resolved to start feeding my children the sorts of simple meals we ate in Peru. I wanted to instill in my children a sense of value and gratitude that they have SO much while children in other countries have so little.

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I really found this to be true when I visited the local school. Before I went to Peru, I realized I wanted to give something back to this community, that had hosted me some years before while I was collecting data for my Master's degree. I contacted my colleagues down there to find a local school that was in need of help. While some of the other schools in town were supported by the mine, the biggest employer in town, this particular school was made up of families from the other side of town - their parents were fishermen, motorcycle-taxi drivers, house cleaners, or unemployed entirely and living in shanty towns in houses they'd made themselves. They provided hot lunches for many of the kids each day, but they only received enough subsidy from the government for about 80 out of the 150 kids in need of lunch - typically, rice and beans, and for many of these children, the only meal of the day. So the school teachers told us they needed kitchen supplies most of all, as well as classroom materials.

I took this idea to Kieran's school, and the students and parents there raised $1,000 in one day! I was able to buy every single item on the school's wish list, in the market in Lima on my way down. We delivered the donated items on the back of our research truck, and it was piled high with massive pots, new plates and cutlery, all manner of classroom supplies, art supplies, games and balls of all kinds. When we arrived at the school, the kids all came out with signs with my name on them, thanking me for such a wonderful gesture.

When I saw the looks on the faces of those children, their teachers and the lovely cooking ladies in the humble kitchen, I realized it was one of my most proud moments ever. I could think of only two others - Liam's triumphant birth, and getting my first degree. And since then, I've been thinking how really easy it is to incorporate philanthropy into travel. As a family, we travel a fair amount, but how cool would it be to get connected with a local school or orphanage at each of our destinations, and find out what they need, raise the money and visit them with gifts from the blue? How valuable for my children to see this in action, to participate, to connect with other children around the world, and realize that they are all the same? How much more rewarding than sitting on a beach with an umbrella in one's glass, or listening to a tour guide, when we could be sitting in a school, eating tuna and beans and rice, next to the cutest 2nd grader ever?

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But here's the thing. Then I flew home. And the marine biologist / global children's advocate disappeared in a *poof*. I'm back to all my other responsibilities - organizing the kids' days, making lunches, taking minutes at school, researching projects for the school, coordinating play-dates, driving to karate, keeping track of library books, trying to hold onto my part-time job, facilitating a support group, balancing our personal finances, wrapping my head around our business finances, trying to provide my family with healthy food in spite of food allergies and picky eaters, keeping the house clean and maintained, folding the never-ending laundry, mending Kieran's uniform sweatpants that get torn every few weeks, convincing Liam to potty-train, convincing Kieran to wear his patch, keeping alive two cats, a fish and a lot of thirsty house-plants, listening to my husband's stresses about work, trying to be a good wife and mother and friend and daughter and auntie, and exercise? that's been shelved until further notice.

So how to balance all this? How do get to that place of comfort in my soul that I found when I was in Peru? I have no idea. But I'm working on it. And hoping that I can find time to blog as well. It does help me to at least vent, and hopefully as time passes I can start to find that place of balance. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. How do YOU manage? Or are you stretched just as thin as I?