I became an orphan on January 17, 1997. I was working in the North African country of Tunisia at the U.S. embassy at the time.

My brother called to tell me that our mother had passed away suddenly in her sleep, in the house she and my father had built before my brother and I were born. She had been a widow, continuing to live in that house since I was thirteen and my brother twenty.

On the trip back “home” to Tennessee, the plane passed over the Mediterranean to Europe, than over the Atlantic to North America. I had time to reminisce over a fortunate upbringing.

As the world seems daily to fall into more chaos, I become aware of the favored circumstances a lower middle class family at that time could expect.

Despite modest incomes, we had adequate medical care. Even after our father died, my brother was able to finish college, and I followed.

Whatever advances this country has made are tarnished by knowledge that working families on modest incomes no longer live with such blessed possibilities.

We cannot, nor should we, want to return to earlier days. They were far from perfect, with racial and other injustices. My mother may have lived a blessed life, but many women did not.

Somehow, though, our present time, if more enlightened in some ways, has failed in others. The rightful entry of women into the work force has given them power to ease the needle toward more equality.

But we have neglected to take care of other needs like responsible child rearing, adequate education for all, and basic healthcare.

Perhaps in my children’s time we will find the right combination?