Today I sat for fifteen minutes in a waiting room at the downtown hospital where Natasha and I will be volunteering. I watched people filter in and out, caught snippets of conversation in Spanish, smiled when an old black man grinned at a toddler and said, "Hi there, baby." A Mexican woman brought in a tiny baby covered in tubes, and I was so enthralled with him that I didn't notice the first time the phlebotomist called my name.

I was one of two white people in the room. The other one, an overweight woman who covered herself with a faded jean jacket and a feathery pink scarf while she waited, clearly has a harder life than I do.

I might complain sometimes about the eighty hours of volunteering to which the hospital wants me to commit, and I might complain about having to make four trips downtown for tuberculosis screenings, and I might complain about losing my car on the roof of a parking garage while the wind chill was -11. But really, I can't grudge the people in that waiting room my time.

I'm very lucky.