As New Year’s Eve approached, I was having my usual conference with myself. What, pray tell, would be my big resolutions in 2023? How was I going to reshape myself into being a better, more aware person and, as usual, a slimmer person?
Every year I commit to so many things that, by mid-January or early February, the weight of it all becomes overwhelming. Then I feel bad that I have failed or am headed to certain failure.
I like this comment: “My last year’s resolution was to lose 20 pounds by Christmas. Only 30 pounds to go.”
So, I decided not to set any goals for 2023. None. I am going to roll with the punches and, if it happens, the paunch, too.
But there are things I would like to see, and it all became clearer to me recently.
In an earlier column, I mentioned that a number of my friends and I took our annual trip into family houses across Baton Rouge to reach out to high school students in need, hoping to make their Christmas better with financial gifts.
The recipients smiled, cried and laughed that day. That day! But now I wonder, what are their situations this week? What about next week?
One friend in our group went into a home he initially thought was abandoned. He was deeply affected by the experience. He said our effort is good, but he knows something larger, a real program of assistance, needs to be formed to truly make a difference. He wants something done.
Here are instances of what we have witnessed over the years that will provide a picture of the pain few see up close:
- A house where the oldest person at home was a 20-year-old sister. The parents were incarcerated. How many houses are like that that we don’t see?
- A grandmother who fell to her knees in tears to see the financial gift because she said she would not be able to provide her grandson anything for Christmas.
- The pregnant 10th grader who was living in tough quarters with a relative. Then, to see her break down into tears looking at her gift. We would later discover she did not finish high school.
- There were the two brothers who slept in a bed in the front room of a small house where an adult relative slept on a sofa in the same room.
- And the little girl we wanted to take a financial gift to who lived in a motel room with several family members. We had given her Thanksgiving food. Unfortunately, we were warned by school officials that the adults would take the money away the moment we left.
These situations are a microcosm of the terrible, and largely invisible, living conditions of so many of our children. They are swimming in a pool of poverty where the water is getting deeper and the distance to the bank is getting farther and farther away. There are no rescues for them.
You hear constantly about wonderful programs where people are invited to come to a community center to talk about their needs, or to discuss initiatives that will help the needy. Those are great, but I hope that the city can go into the neighborhoods where our invisible young poor are, knock on doors and see how to develop an aggressive winning program.
In one of the families we visited a few weeks ago, the mom had no vehicle and worked at night. In fact, there were no cars in the apartment complex parking when we visited. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
The bigger question is, what is happening during the rest of year? What kind of frustrations are building in those houses on a daily basis?
On second thought, maybe I don’t have a resolution but I do have a wish for 2023: It’s that we help our invisible children who need us.
Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.