Here is a picture of my husband with his daughter this week My stepdaughter who is twelve has been visiting us from
Germany for the past two weeks.
My
children are all grown so it’s been awhile since I’ve had a pre-teen girl in
the house.
Well let me tell you it
brought back some memories and not all of them were fond LOL.
It was great watching the action from the sidelines
though and being the stepmother I’m the nice parent which was kinda fun.
I’m sure my children would say that I wasn’t
so nice when they were growing up LOL.
Watching my husband interact with his daughter brought me back to my
childhood and even when I was raising my own children.
Things you wish you would have listen to or
things you wished you would have said.
I realized a long time ago that I really should have listened
to my mother and my grandparents more when I was growing up. Someone once told me that the longer you live
the more you learn. When I heard this, I
thought well of course dummy everyone knows that. What I now realize is that no matter how much
schooling you have or how many books you read in your lifetime you may acquire knowledge
but acquiring wisdom is a completely different skill. Let me explain. If you ask google for the definition of
knowledge it says this, facts, information and skills acquired through
experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. The definition of wisdom is, the quality of
having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being
wise. So, it seems that having wisdom
involves more than just having knowledge it involves using your knowledge in
such a way that would be considered good judgement or wise. I think I can finally say that I’m at a point
in my life where I have acquired some wisdom, not as much as my mother has but
certainly more than my children have.
There are so many things I could list as things I should have listened
to my mother about but for this blog post I’m going to focus on one area. It’s not really something she tried to tell
me that I didn’t listen to or follow it’s more something she tried to explain
to me and until now I really didn’t have the knowledge or wisdom to understand.
I grew up most of my life as an only child and my mom was a
single mom. She remarried when I was in
my late teens and adopted two little girls but for most of my childhood it was
just me and mom. From my perspective we
weren’t rich, but I didn’t consider us to be poor either. I had a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in,
clothes to wear and most of the things I wanted. I say most things because there were two
things in my childhood that I always wanted but never got, the first is a
hamster. That never happened because my
mom does not like rodents at all. Like
she can’t even look at a picture of them.
The second thing I always wanted was the big box of crayons. You know the 64-crayon box with the sharpener
in the back. I always wanted that, but I
never got it as a child. I think was I
was almost 30 years old my mom finally got me the 64-crayon box and to this day
I still have it hidden away in my closet from my grandchildren. It was probably one of the best gifts my mom
ever gave me. It’s kind of like the
running joke between my mom and me. I
used to tease her all the time about my creativity being limited because I didn’t
have all the crayon colors.
Besides not having all the crayons I had a great life as a
child. My mom and I had and still have a
special bond. I watched how hard she worked,
and I was very aware of the fact that she worked and made money and that’s how
the bills got paid. From a very young
age, sometime in elementary school I can recall sitting at the dining room
table with my mom once a month because she only got paid once a month. Once a month she would go through all the
bills and put the money into separate envelopes. That was her budget system and it worked well
for us because I can never recall a time where my basic needs weren’t met. I didn’t understand everything, but I knew
enough to know that my mom needed that job to keep things afloat. I think one of the most traumatic things for
me as a child was the day that my mom came home from work and told me that she
quit her job. I was a young teenager at
this point and I remember feeling horrified.
My mom seemed so happy and calm and inside I was freaking out. I recall asking my mother why she quit her
job and at the time I didn’t understand but I recall her reasons being
something like she wanted to do more with her life, she wanted to find herself. I was thinking to myself, well how are all
the bills going to get paid? For the
first time in my life I felt insecure but maybe it was foolish of me to feel so
secure in the first place. Anyway, we
survived, we never slept in our car or anything like that. Things changed a bit, but we made it. I have always attributed that experience to
my inability to take risk. I’ve never
been interested in any job where there wasn’t a base salary. I had to know what my income was going to be
on a bi weekly or monthly basis.
Fast forward to now and why this childhood experience is
relevant now. In 2017 I took an early retirement
offer from my job of 27 years. I loved
my job and I’m way too young to retire but something was pulling me away from
that corporate American life. It wasn’t
my husband in fact I made the decision to take the early retirement the week
before I met him. The offer came in Sept
2016 and I made the decision to accept it in Oct 2016 right before my trip to
the Dominican Republic with my daughter Jennifer and that is when I met my now
husband. The retirement package that I
took gave me an 18-month payout instead of a lump sum. At the time 18 months seemed like a long time
to figure out what would be next for me.
Well now it’s month 16 and I’m getting a little anxious about what’s
next. It’s like that feeling I had when
my mom told me that she quit her job BUT it’s different now because I
completely understand now what she meant when she said she wanted to do more
with her life and to find herself. As I’m
nearing the end of my payout I too feel like I’m not sure returning to corporate
America is where I belong. I feel like
there’s something else that I am supposed to be doing with my life. I also
have a strong feeling that being here in the Dominican Republic now with my
husband is a part of me finding my way to the answer. Over the past two years I’ve been doing
things to set myself up for something else.
I completed a Chaplaincy program which allows me to be a volunteer chaplain
for one of the local hospitals in my hometown.
I also completed a course and have my certification now as a Certified
Recovery Specialist. I also recently
started a non-profit organization called A Blessing For you. We provide blessing baskets to new mothers in
need. I haven’t quite figured out how all the pieces
fit together yet, but I know there’s something bigger out there for me. Bigger not necessarily from a monetary perspective
but bigger from an impact perspective. So,
stayed tuned as I continue on my journey.
My birthday was on August 20th and my husband did a great job pulling together a wonderful celebration for me on the beach. I love the beach and he tolerates it for me. One of the many reasons why I love him. This was the first time we were together on my birthday and I had a wonderful time spending the day with my husband, his family and our friends here. I did miss my family and friends back home though terribly but they called, texted and sang to me as usual so all was well. Although I'm not very excited about my birthday anymore, that tends to happen after you reach a certain age. The one thing I always look forward to my mom's happy birthday song. I really need to record her singing that song. You know I love pictures so here's a picture of us from that day. I have no idea who that hat belonged to but it was being passed around and everyone took pictures wearing it.
