September 15, 2005

Okay, so I’ve been a blog-slacker. I know it! And I have little excuse. But I’m back, and I want to share a story about something that happened during my month’s hiatus (which included completing a manuscript, getting my children back into school, orienting our new au pair [a 22-year-old young man from Brazil ], and being attached to the news and Web during the Katrina disaster).

August was a slooooow month for my household financially, for various reasons, but when the Katrina disaster occurred, my husband and I of course wanted to help. We donated money to one of the charities, and also some clothing and household goods, but I wanted to do more.

When my friend, Dr. Debra Holland, who is a psychologist who has worked in crisis situations in the past, wanted to go to the New Orleans area in the wake of the hurricane, I wanted to help sponsor her. But we were even tighter money-wise than we had been a week earlier. (My husband is a piano tuner, and when everyone’s watching the news in the wake of such crises like hurricanes, terrorist attacks, elections, nobody’s thinking about getting their piano tuned!)

But my husband and I discussed it, and we decided we would send some money to Deb, because we thought her effort was selfless and beautiful, and it would also be nice to know exactly how our donation helped out.

So on a Wednesday morning, I sent Deb some money via PayPal. Not a lot, but something that would help alleviate her expenses.

And Wednesday afternoon, miraculously enough, I received a completely unexpected check for the exact same amount of money we’d given away that morning.

Talk about validation.