It's just Life

That's my determination. That's just life. Isn't it weird? All of us going through the motions of every day life based on what we each think is important or what someone else has taught us is important.

I'm so grateful that my mother taught me it was ok to skip school to see the ice capades or go to the zoo, that it was ok to skip the dishes and go to the park, and how to wile away the days making snow angels or splashing in a pool or spend an entire day watching movies.

Unfortunately she also ingrained in me the absolute need for security and the feeling that security is based on money and money can only come from a good honest hard days work. Ok - not entirely unfortunate. At least I have the ability to hold a job. But that being said it's such a focus of my daily existence.

I've been here 13 years and don't feel that remarkable for having had the experience. Am I lucky? Depends on your point of view. I might just be inhibited - afraid to move on, unable to embrace my freedom as a thinking being feeling human. Poor girl, she doesn't have the courage to pick up and move on. Or, I might be the luckiest person to have remained employed for all this time at the same place, to have five weeks paid vacation plus holidays, to have a reasonable salary that I can live on, and even to have had enough money contributed by my employer into my 403b that it provided a downpayment on a house. Lucky me. Now I'm really inhibited.

But it is lucky and I'm a schmuck for not recognizing it 24/7.

Still it seems so ridiculous to spend so much of my life serving someone else's need solely for the purpose of being able to serve my own needs one or two hours of each day, and possibly several year at the end of my life. Every bit of the purpose of my life revolves around what other people need. My employer, my family, my classmates, my clients, other members of society.

Last night I sat in my three season room with my daughter looking out at the pool. We'd spent the evening painting trim, shelves, and closets. I said "you're so lucky." And it went on from there. She's so lucky that she gets to go to a private school where she's really happy and the teachers are not just teachers, they're your neighbors and your family friends and members of your church. She's so lucky that she gets to live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood and even has a pool! She's so lucky that the thought of not having "things" just doesn't enter her mind. She's so lucky that she has a mom and a dad and she's close enough to her Aunts and Grandparents that she just calls them up and chats whenever.

I told her about when I was young and my mom worked 7 day weeks and 12 or 14 hour days at a job she hated. When she had enough and picked us up and we moved to our family cottage where the heat came from a wood burning stove and there was no insulation.

When I was a kid .... we hauled buckets of water from a pump in the yard every morning. I would hurry and do it so that nobody driving by and no neighbors would see me do it. Then we'd pour it into pots and heat it for washing up. In the winter, if we hauled it the night before, it would sometimes be frozen on top by morning. When the social worker called to ask "does your mom have water in the house yet?" I said yes. I didn't lie - there was a bucket of it right in the kitchen.

When I was a kid .... mom traded in the wood burner for a natural gas space heater. In the winter we'd stand in front of it to get warm while we got dressed. We'd hang our clothes over it to warm them before we put them on and put our shoes right on the grille on the top because otherwise they were freezing cold. Eventually we bought an electric dryer so we could warm our clothes in it.

When I was a kid .... ice formed on the walls INSIDE the house and we sometimes slept with hats and coats on and hot rocks in the foot of our beds.

When I was a kid ..... i can remember a time when we had nothing to eat but home made bread and grape jelly. To this day I remember that time every single time I see grape jelly. I remember being envious of other kids and their bologna sandwiches and chocolate milk or soda. Thank God for hot lunch and the "free lunch program."

When I was a kid .... I made up stories about my dad to explain his absence. He's a fireman in Chicago. He's dead. or my personal fave.... "I don't have one, I'm a gift from God"

When I was a kid .... i was so embarrassed about where and how I lived that I NEVER brought friends home. I always found a way around it and met up with them somewhere else - even if I had to walk two miles to get there. Try dating and running that scam! Still I ended up relatively popular, having plenty of friends, just a few close ones, and learned to work an angle.

My kids never had to deal with any of this and they are so lucky. We are so lucky.