Although my family is still walking through fire, life goes on. We have soccer try-outs three nights this week, our regularly scheduled reading times for my elementary kids, and appointments and obligations that must be met.

I just took a dozen children to the dentist for their semi-annual check-up. The three that I have raised since their birth, now 7, 10 and 11 were all cavity free. The cavities were found in my two youngest kids, especially one son who came here two years ago with his teeth capped with silver. 60 Minutes TV show once ran a story on how Medicaid is bilked in south Texas through this practice. The dentist explaining to me today that this young man’s teeth will need a great deal of care, he is developmentally dentally challenged all due to poor nutrition during his first four years of life.

Nowadays he eats several cartons of yogurt for snacks each day and milk with each meal. He loves it, drinks it with gusto and never, ever sees a soda or kool-aid in our house as is evidenced by most of my other kid’s great dental reports.

Next Tuesday I’ll take another load of children. It took me four hours today, start to finish, as I was going back and forth between the schools, not wanting anyone to miss much time. Academic challenges abound here as well.

I’m fortunate that we don’t have any dentist phobias, our family dentist is young and nice, extremely accommodating to a family like ours. He sees several other large adoptive and foster families in our county. I know his mama; always an important qualification in the rural South which must always be capitalized, especially amongst older folks like me.

While I am still weighed down on all sides, everyone wants to eat supper every night as usual, I need to have it cooked and on the table before five as I don’t want to take hungry kids to the soccer field.

I am trying to contain and work through my shock and resentment at the way I perceive I’ve been treated lately by people that I went to for help. Having a poor attitude doesn’t help my family any. Last night most of them just sat by the pool pouring their feelings out to me rather than swimming. It was interesting to listen to my 12 and 13 year old daughters describe life, they’ve given me permission to share some of it and I plan to do so. I’m glad they explore these thoughts with me.