I got this e-mail from my mom...

"... It really feels like the end. Any day now a sheriff will show up to escort us off the property. I have an email into the lawyer to see if he knows the exact date yet...

This is such a nightmare... with no end in sight. I do not understand why God has abandoned us like this. Why have we become so cursed - I do not know what we have done to offend him so. We are days from becoming street people...

Physically I am feeling utterly miserable as I think the baby is having a growth spurt and to boot I have been forgetting to take my vitamins!

I don't know that there is any point to it - but please continue to pray for us. Daddy has worked so hard to pay the Dr for the baby - to save the money for the deposit and it is all for naught.... all for naught. He feels like such a failure. How can God despise us so much.... yet murderers like the terrorists have money to spend like wild fire on bombs and weapons - to kill women and children...

We feel so alone and so abandoned. I never dreamed in all my life that God would abandon us so completely... In a few days - we will most likely be unreachable as once we are forced to leave the house, we will have no means of communications. I'm sorry about that. We will possible try to set up the tent somewhere. This is all so overwhelming...
Love
Mummy"

A brief history - My parents have eight children at home between the ages of 13 and 1. (Two in college and me make 11 in all, if the algebra is giving you a headache) My mom is pregnant with number twelve. My dad was laid off from his job two years ago and has been trying to find a new one while running a business from home that never seems to quite get off the ground. They have gone through bankrupcy, but filed the wrong kind, it seems, and so will be evicted within 45 days. They are at odds with their parish for reasons too complicated to explain, and there seems to be no one left to help them.

I don't even know how to respond to an email like that. What can I possibly say? I swing between fruitlessly obsessing over how to save them, and getting mad and refusing to even check my e-mail for days because every check brings another crushing missive like this.

It's a refrain from all of my best loved friends...."You have to live your own life, you have to save yourself, because they'll only drag you down..."

And I know it's true, but I feel as if we've all jumped out of the Titanic, and I've just merrily hopped into a life boat and am waving them down to the bottom of the ocean, with the excuse that since I'm not strong enough to drag them all to safety, why should I drown, too?

I try to help in small ways when I can, but I feel so impotent about it all. And then I swear to eat only rice and peanut butter and forgo all of my small frivolities, so as to send more money home. It seems like the only right thing to do, but I suck at it, and begin feeling resentful and think - god, I'm in NYC doing nothing but working and it's not even making that much of a difference. Even my whole yearly salary wouldn't support them for more than a few months. So then I start going to the cafe on my street each morning for my tea and scones again, and buying the paper again, and going to movies or out for cheap food with my friends again. I really do live quite simply. I've spent a disgraceful amount on my halloween costume, and I can't bring myself to justify it - I'll just selfishly andpetulantly say - it makes me happy...

But this is all ridiculous. I feel each day as though I have to choose between being an ineffective martyr or a selfish cow, and I hate it. I'm not even going to try to be philosophical about this, I'm just going to vent, and do my job, and wake up each morning trying to do the best that I can. It's so simplistic and unsatisfying to say that - it's maddening. I feel like I am doing a really good job in my life right now. I have a million things I need to improve, but at least I can say, I have some great friends, I am excelling in my career and making it on my own in NYC, and rediscovering some precious things about my spirituality. But every time I think of my family right now I feel like a faliure, justified or not. Even the faith that is bringing me a lot of joy has no real answers for them.

I lost my faith in God completely when my life was falling apart. Somehow that seems so much less tragic than continuing to believe in a God who is deaf. And I can't explain to them - have no right to explain to them, even if I could, that it is largely their conception of what and who God is that has gotten them into this situation and is now causing them their deepest pain.


We found a baby mouse two days ago that my roomate accidentally knocked out of it's nest when she was cleaning. We kept putting it back and it kept falling back out. I made a bed of cotton balls for it and fed it a little soy milk and grade B maple syrup, dripped into his nearly invisible mouth with a q-tip, and fell asleep, expecting it to die by the morning. But it keeps fighting, and everytime I lift the facecloth expecting to find a cold little body, there is this blind, hairless squirming pink alien-jelly bean. I expect he will still die, but I am continuing to feed and warm him aslong as he's around to need it. He's fighting really hard. I know house mice are disgusting, but what else am I supposed to do?