I am the mom to three wonderful adult children. I adore them now and I even adored them when they were surly teenagers, challenging toddlers, and when all three of them had chicken pox at the same time. Yikes!
Our oldest son was born the year after we got married and we were both in college. Can you imagine? It was an interesting time filled with learning experiences for all three of us!
We worked at all kinds of jobs during this time that kept us in school and kept food on our table. My husband loaded trucks at UPS from 2-6am, then worked an 8am - 5pm job and went to school two nights each week. I stayed home with our son, worked at a ‘bottle club’ on weekends, and went to school the other two nights each week.
Let me explain what a bottle club was: an after hours club that sold drink set-ups, like colas, ice, ginger ale, etc. They did not sell alcohol but the patrons were allowed to bring in their own bottles of liquor and they typically opened around midnight. It is a weird concept that doesn’t exist anymore, thankfully, but I made tons of money because our clientele were drunk when they arrived. It was definitely a disgusting job but I could easily make $200 in tips every weekend. In the 1970’s this was a ton of money and I could stay home with our son and still pay for and go to school.
We didn’t have medical insurance or dental insurance because we couldn’t afford it. We had one car that we shared. We didn’t have air conditioning because we lived in an ancient rental house. We didn’t have a computer because home computers hadn’t been invented yet. We went to the library, when we could, to do research and used their typewriters to write papers.
Perseverance, grit, and just plain hard work are what got us through, plus substantial student loans. When we graduated we were close to 100K dollars in debt which is by today's standards close to 250K. But we just kept on working hard and eventually paid that off when we were about 41 years old.
Our middle child, our daughter, was not born until almost eleven years later. So, yes, we had a middle schooler and a baby at the same time … but wait, there’s more …. Three and a half years after that we had our youngest son. So we now had a 15 year old high school student, a toddler, and an infant. If that sounds crazy to you, you’d be correct! I wouldn’t change anything about that arrangement but it was something!
Fast forward to 2020 and we have been through a thousand highs and lows. There have been more highs than lows that often seemed contradictory, especially when they were happening: we worked long, miserable hours to put ourselves through college and then were able to put our own three through college; we watched the tragedy of 9-11 then saw a country return healthier than ever; we’ve lost all four of our parents but become in-laws and grandparents, adding to our family; our youngest son deployed with the US Navy (an experience that is both terrifying and fills a parent with pride) and then we went to his college graduation recently; today we are watching a virus sweep across the world and seeing a coming together of people that gives me hope.
I tell you all of this to say that this virus is simply ‘another thing we all have to get through.’ Awful as it is, it is simply what we have to do right now. I absolutely hate it because I see the difficulties for every family, I see small businesses (including mine) struggling, and I see people dying. It is painful and has made me cry on more than one occasion.
But after I cry, I pick myself up, and get through it.
I get on with the business of life and hope.
I get on with whatever I can do to help from texting my siblings and children to checking in on my neighbors to ordering carry-out from local restaurants.
No act of kindness is too small.
We will get through this and we have to be hopeful that each day will bring us closer to the cure and bring us closer together as a family of humanity.
P.S.: Today, all three of these wonderful humans are doing good things with their lives and making the world a better place. I couldn’t ask for anything more!
P.S.S.: How are you coping? What is helping you right now? What will you learn from this?
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