Another Layer

It feels as though spring will never come. The cold and the snow just chase after me incessantly, as if sunshine and warmth would be a false representative of the cold misfortune that life loves to scatter in the road ahead of me.

I have many things to be thankful for. I have a new house, that will ultimately save me money, if I can miraculously avoid eviction within the first few months. It will be clean, it will be easy. I can not wait. As much as I love this beautiful spot, out in Tumalo, it has been killing me slowly with it's dust and it's trouble and it's broken down disfunction. Maybe it too closely resembles me, quirky and quaint but high maintenance and hardly worth it. So I will chase after something that in no way aligns with the rustic and dilapidated life that is mine: a new and comfortable existence, where I can pretend to be rich and stable and I can scratch out my survival in relative luxury.

I am in a place of examining, or reexamining, all of my values. Who I am, and what is important to me, and why. What I am willing to give up for something that I want more. Defining the things that define me. How do I want to live? Who do I want to be? So much is still unwritten, and yet the script is playing out daily like an out of control semi that careens destructively toward an unknown tragedy.

Once again I find myself bending the core of who I have become to embrace the new wave of change, perhaps the beginning of a new and different lifestyle, but then the bending starts to hurt, and I wonder if I have the flexibility to change or if the change will break me. Maybe I have become set in my ways and I can't be reformed to fit into someone else's mold. I am unsure.

I know what I want, I can see it, I can taste it, but I don't know how to get there from here, if there is a bridge, or if this tunnel I see before me will take me there or somewhere I don't want to be. I guess that is life. Determining whether the risk is ultimately worth it is the task at hand. Can I just enjoy the ride and see where I end up? Or will it come at great cost to me and my kids?

I am sad, I am bitter. I am frustrated and angry and I long for stability, and one night free of worry. I would love the chance to not worry about whether I will be able to pay the rent, or where I will work, or if I will be alone, or if I am not alone, if I will feel loved at all. And really, what is important? Is it the food on the table, or the smiles on the girls faces? Is is just survival that's important? Is it not bouncing checks, savings accounts and retirement plans? Is it passionate love and intense emotional experiences? What is it that makes this life worthwhile? Is it the day to day, the things that I still struggle to appreciate, the health of my kids, the realization that we have not gone hungry or homeless yet, in spite of the imminent threat.... Who knows? Certainly not me.

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I put on earrings. For the first time in years. I wore a skirt. I got dolled up. Ok. The hippie in me manifested. But I tried. And I swore I'd never do this again. Dragging the killjoys along who don't know. Don't understand. But here I am. Squished in with a Passell of 15 year olds and my friends are back against a safe dark wall. Rolling their eyes and pretending to be patient. Maybe next time I will make them pay for their own tickets. It's not like I expected them to understand. I don't. But I'm stupid enough to think that something that brings me so much joy would be fun for them. Wrong again. Story of my life. Always wrong. Oh well, maybe next time I will Remember why coming to shows is usually better alone. I was just tired of being alone. I still am. Alone and tired of it.

Hope & Change

I am supposed to be finishing an assignment that is due in an hour. But somehow it just doesn’t seem important. Not when my 7 year old is throwing up on the bus en route to school, and I have awakened to another day of relentless unfinishable work, fighting kids, messy house, and a dog that keeps running away. I know that where I am in my life is a result of choices I made. Choosing to have children, choosing to divorce my husband, choosing to move to a town well removed from any semblance of a support network and scratch a life out of nothing. When I was a teenager I believed with all of my heart that I had been created for greatness. For adventure and excitement and world changing events. I believed it so much I asked god to send me to the deepest darkest place he could possibly find so I could triumph and serve him. He gave me children. And a crappy husband. God, what I would have given for a cannibalistic tribe in the jungles of Africa. Or an isolated outpost in the arctic frozen reaches of Siberia, cut off from warmth and love and civilization and cute jeans. But no. I had kids. A bunch. All of the isolation of Siberia, the cannibalism of Africa, the dark and deep abyss of bottomless struggle that motherhood is, I guess god did what I asked. I remember so clearly the burning passion in my soul to climb mountains and touch things all over the world that were as vital pieces of our past as I knew I was vital for our future as human beings. Now the burning is only in my lungs as my expediently aging body reminds me that I only ever made it 2/3 of the way up Mt. Adams, and really the most vital things that I have touched the world over would have to be the counters of a million McDonalds restaurants. Maybe I am bitter. Most days I feel like I am not. Until some struggling stay at home mom talks about how stressful her life is. …  Then it hits. If I am staying at home, it’s because I can’t get hired because the only skills I have to offer involve cooking spaghetti in bulk and cleaning up puke. If I am staying at home it means that the bills are piling up behind me like cars on 1-5 northbound to Tacoma at 4:46 in the afternoon. It means that now I can look forward to sweating bullets when the rent comes due and I am $800 short. It means that all of the latent anger at the derelict father of my children will come welling up in hot, furious tears when I see the ever shrinking child support check show up. It must be hard for him. Living on his own, supporting himself. I can only imagine how difficult that must be. Not that I have any personal experience having to take care of only myself. Yeah, maybe I am a little bit bitter. Why do we live this cycle over and over? Why do I get up every day, just to get up the next day and the next and never see any hope for anything better? I am raising four girls that I can see inevitably making the same mistakes I did and perpetuating the cycle. How do I stop it? How? I am 14 years in and it only seems to get harder. So I look at where we have come from. How things have changed. What we have accomplished. I am almost done with my degree. It’s only been 12 years of college. I was a firefighter and an EMT. Now I am fighting tooth and nail to reclaim those. More hours of classes, applications, begging and pleading just to be a volunteer. The kids are mostly healthy and well adjusted. Sort of. Halle is athletic and smart. She is ungrateful and whiny, but overall not a terrible child. MacKenzie is super smart, and just as sassy. Some times I actually think she has started to grow out of the pencil stabbing, teacher-hitting phase of absolute ridiculousness. But then again, maybe not. Natalee is a moody little thing, but intelligent and creative. She will make it. Aspen, well, she’s just Aspen. If I do nothing else I pray that I instill in my girls a sense of the absolute becoming who they are meant to be before they even consider procreating. Nothing makes me more sick than to imagine them having kids as young as I did. To see me as a grandmother before I am done mothering. I cannot imagine a worse fate. I suppose that sounds horrible and evil to many of the people I know – especially the people in my past. But it really terrifies me. If I could go back in time and project forward and see myself here I think I would have killed myself. The only reason I am alive now is the fact that there must be the smallest sliver of hope that keeps me going, thinking that maybe someday I won’t be living life this way. From day to day, just trying to survive. Knowing that offing myself is ultimately selfish. But why do I feel so selfish just trying to stay alive? I feel like a waste of oxygen. A waste of space. All I could contribute to the globe was four more consumers. Who will in turn produce more. We are a virus, humans. Eventually we will procreate ourselves to extinction. How proud I am to have done my part. But back up a minute. Putting this existence back on the micro scale that my life really is and I can almost tolerate it. I have a lukewarm cup of coffee (standby while I nuke it), my puke baby is rolling on the couch with an overweight hound dog watching the Lion King. Halle has a rugby practice tonight, from which I can ground her if she steps out of line. And I wouldn’t hesitate. We might not save any lives, solve world hunger or cure cancer today, but maybe we will find someone to make smile. I guess it all comes down to who I am as a person. Not on a global scale and why the human race exists at all, but me. Why am I here? And what am I supposed to do? Raising children is an obvious, and although I am reluctant, I will continue to do it. Badly, yes. Unhappily? Sometimes. But as well as I know how, absolutely. But in addition to, or in spite of, motherhood, who am I? Is there any chance that I will have an effect on the world other than through how screwed up (or not) my kids are? When I was younger people would say that being a mother was the highest calling – you can change the world with the kids you raise. It always made me so mad. It’s like saying my life isn’t worth anything but maybe you can help someone cooler do something good. I guess I am selfish. I want to be the worldchanger. I want to be the one that makes a difference, that gets remembered. If my kids are too, so much cooler – but that’s up to them, not me. And they have to decide how they want to change the world. It’s not my job to brainwash them toward a theology of world dominance and self-aggrandizing righteousness. If I could undo all of the programming they have already been subjected to, along with all of the propaganda that still poisons my mind, I would in a heart beat. I don’t want or need to be miss USA, or be able to bench press my buff fire buddies with one arm. I don’t care if I am the Sexiest Woman Alive. I do want to be loved. I want to be held. I think what hurts more than anything is the love that I see my kids missing. I wish I had it to give to them but I feel completely depleted of love and affection. It requires a concerted effort that is humiliating and exausting to reach out and give my girls the attention that the need, and deserve. This is where the failing as a mother kills me. I feel like I have nothing to give them but the disappointment and rejection that I have been fed. They are little sponges, seeking love and affection and I am a rigid, disaffected mother figure, withholding from them in my own weakness and stupidity. Why do I withhold? I want to give love. I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around someone and smother them with love. But not my kids. Why? Do I blame them, on some ridiculous level for the fact that I don’t have anywhere to get it myself? As if it was their fault for any reason that I am alone and perpetually rejected myself. Hurt people hurt people, right? How the hell can that be true between parents and children. Can it be that I am as abusive as the asshole who throws his kids through walls, but in a more silent and deadly fashion? Do I starve my children emotionally because I am emotionally starved? I feel like I resent the fact that they need love and nurturing when there is none to be had for me. How dare I? How selfish and small can a person be? I am the worst person I know. I should be stoned. How do I learn to give them love? God it’s hard. It feels just like when I was 13 and I had to be nice to Emily. Such a humiliating and maddening process. I must be the most unnatural mother in the world. Now that I have psycho analyzed my wretched soul, can I also prescribe myself anti-psychotic drugs?

On PMS

There comes a time, in every woman’s monthly cycle, when all things that were at one time sane and balanced are suddenly out of proportion and irrational. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I find myself looking in the mirror and wondering how it is that I can go so quickly from being on top of the world and sure of who I am, to a sniveling pile of insecure crabbiness. I know that the thoughts I think are not rational, and that in a day or two all will be well, and I will be responding to life appropriately, but right now: holy wicked tantrums batman! Even the simplest remark enters my hormone infused brain and twists itself into a stabbing insult. “Are you feeling ok?” From an innocent bystander becomes “You look like absolute hell – who beat you with an ugly stick and slathered 20 lbs of cellulite on your thighs?” in my head. Every little less than perfect event at home becomes a cataclysm of massive proportions: “What do you mean the dog just got into the garbage and it’s no big deal? Don’t you know we all could have gotten salmonella and DIED!!!! IDIOT!!” My poor kids are transformed from innocent, ignorant blunderers to intentional deviants that I can’t seem to punish harshly enough. For now I recommend to them that they hide out of sight. But make sure the garbage is picked up first. I hate how out of control I feel. I look at someone and fantasize about breaking their jaw with my fist simply because they won’t stop talking. Someone who certainly doesn’t deserve to be punched, regardless of how boring or stupid they are. Something I am not a good judge of at this point in time. Over the years I have learned that my best MO during this time is to avoid encounters, keep my mouth shut, and turn off my brain as much as possible. Tune out of conversations to prevent uber-snotty responses, hoping I place a non-committal nod or uh-huh semi-appropriately. As it stands I am staring at my geography weather and climate homework and taking it very personally. Luckily the 1 hour and 40 minute class allows me ample opportunity to watch the professor prattle on while I am off in nowhere land completely missing the reasons for convergent lifting and the difference between a cold and an occluded front. His plaid shirt and navy slacks are especially offensive to me today. For no apparent reason. And I am really angry that he needs me to reiterate to him the principal characteristics of monsoonal circulation in essay format. Doesn’t he already know this crap? So my day goes on, resisting the urge to shoot spit-wads at the skeleton women discussing their careers as personal trainers across the room, or draw angry epithets on the white board for my teacher to find later. I have learned, more so in the times that I am not a hormonal Frankenstein, that the ache in my soul right now is impossible for any well-meaning boy to soothe. He will inevitably screw up and his misconstrued means of helping me out of my emotional slump will be the undoing of any kind of relationship. To the poor bastard that wants to fix me: don’t. No, that’s not where it’s at, my remedy. It’s in the great funky song that a friend from far away dedicates to me when I say help. It’s in the giggling of my kids behind my back that reminds me that just because today feels like a total parental *^&* up, they will survive and I might have a chance to redeem myself over the next 28 days. My cure for the lady blues is in turning the harshly rejected advice of the idiot man who thought he could help into a challenge to disprove. Don’t tell me I lack style because I am insecure today. Not only do you risk your very life, but you become solely responsible for either an ill-afforded shopping spree or a complete rebellion to grooming aesthetic altogether. (You wanna see frumpy? I will show you frumpy. In your face.) So what if I wore my holiest sweats to class? Yes I am fat today, and yes this is a candy bar in my hand. Bite me. I bite back. I will drink all of this chocolate milk and claim it as the cure for my anemia. I dare you to argue with me. And if you say anything about my hair I will shave it off. Then see how you like it. Good lord. If I survive this month it will be a miracle. And it’s a dang good thing that kids are made out of rubber. 

Love.

1.13.11

How long has it been since I spent a day at home, with no place to be, nothing that has to be done, except the ever pressing cobwebs on the ceiling, the cracker crumbs in the couch cushions, the piles of  laundry and the dust bunnies in the corner? It is a good day to just sit and bask in the knowledge that just sitting and basking won’t get me any farther behind than I am already. To the contrary. Any movement at this point might just make more mess, cause me to spend more money or otherwise rock the boat of perfect contentment that I am floating in for a few minutes. The bank account is not overdrawn. The homework is not behind. The bills are (mostly) paid. Bailey just escorted Truck up to Aspen’s bed for a warm afternoon nap in the sometimes sunshine through the southern window. The wind is shaking the house and blowing away the mean gray clouds of rain faster than they can stake their claim on my sky. Even the muddy paw marks on the window in front of me, the ache in my back and the dishes in the sink aren’t enough to make me unsettled. A new song from Scooter. A sweet reassurance that my good friend HAsh will be allright. The comfort that having real people with big hearts in my life. All of these are reasons to love today. I don’t have tomorrow sewn up, or any day in the future, but today is good. I have a cat that talks, a house that tells stories and crazy wonderful kids that try for all they’re worth to prove me the best momma in the world. What more could I want? My favorite jeans and a new Sallie Ford T-shirt? A thick pair of pink socks that my kids gave me for Christmas (favorite present, y’all)? Ain’t too much to ask. Done, done and Done. I don’t have a nanny or a job or a man to rub my shoulders and tell me everything will be ok, but I got my girls, my pals, and the food for my soul that music and sunshine and a warm fire are. I might be the luckiest girl alive today. 

2010 and the Injustice of Life (1.6.11)

2010. How many colossal failures and disappointments does it take for a person to come to the end of cynicism and begin to hope and believe again? How many teeny tiny glimpses of light does it take to start to believe that this life isn’t just a huge waste of time? Can one swift act of paying it forward , a man in a grocery store covering the bill of an elderly couple, an old man bringing two carts to the front of the store, a little girl singing her guts out in adoration of her parent, can any of these be the impetus for a whole change of perspective and worldview, or even a change of luck and destiny? The last year was one of the worst on record for me. So many terrible, unmentionable things happened throughout 2010 that it made even 2009 look okay. Which is wasn’t. I started two weeks ago, looking back over the year for the good things, the things that made it worth living. I see flashes of kids in the back of the Tahoe, singing, pouting, hitting each other. Driving for miles and sitting on a stage in a casino. I see Halle bouncing off walls of a dark and cold cave, waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring from behind a stalagmite and terrify her sisters. I see ridiculous themed snowmen. I see the arms of my Avett friends and family wrapped around me, singing from our souls the words we know and love together. I see my family, rallied for one of the worst and dark times we have faced, but watch my youngest brother suddenly become a man. An uncle, a brother, a soldier. I am curious to hear from the years to come whether it was basic training with the navy or Emily’s wreck in 2010 that changed him most of all. I see wee morning hours leaning on the bar of the Whitebird, long closed, with my sweet sweet friend. I see miles and miles of sun soaked highway stretching out before my Tahoe, my arm flying in the wind out of my window, the mountains all around me, and the music feeding my soul. I see people fall in love. Grow to love more deeply, and realize the importance of the love they share. I see people smile in the face of my cynicism and run headlong into the unpredictable arms of affection and marriage. I see nets spread out underneath me like a blossoming flower just the minute that I lose my grip on the last thread of stability. One job ends, another catches me on my fall down. Insurmountable deficits in my bank account magically disappear and are replaced by a lazy float down the Deschutes river, tied to 4 floating and fighting girls, some are shivering and some are trying intently to pretend they have no association with the bobbing island of hot pink and bungy cords. I see beer of every glistening shade and color, frosting up big pint glasses and little tasters. New friends that are like old siblings, teasing and sharing and relentlessly egging each other on to bigger and better adventures. I see my dog, sleeping, always. But like a big wrinkly sun bear just waiting to be annoyed. For all of the terrible things that happened this year, I have only two regrets: as ridiculous as it sounds, they are that I didn’t go to Merlefest when I was supposed to and took a $400 loss on the ticket, and worse yet, an immeasurable loss on the experience; and that I didn’t go to Pickathon, again, an immense loss. But these regrets steel my resolve to make sure that the things that make the year glow in my memory are priorities. That they take precedence over looking good in someone’s eyes, or being “financially prudent” in a world that has no remedy for the financial woes I face. Money comes and goes, but experiences stay with us and make us the rich and interesting people that we are. If I teach my girls anything, I hope they learn this. Would we be any worse off now financially if I had gone to the shows I missed, on the trips I cancelled? Heck no. We’d still be scraping by. I have made countless poor decisions in recent years. I will continue to do so. To the person who doesn’t: god bless your simple and regretless life. I don’t really envy you. I plan to go ahead into 2011 expecting love. Expecting the joy that staying one step ahead of survival brings. Expecting good things. Sure the bad things will come and beat me down, just like in 2009 and 2010, but the man in the grocery store has reminded me that it doesn’t matter. For all the bad, there is some good still. I hope that when I find myself with $45 in my bank account I will gladly put it toward the bill of someone who simply can’t pay. Lord knows I have been that person many times, putting things back on the shelf from the cart, rationing drops of gas. Paying for milk with nickels and pennies. Which I stole from my 7 year old. I know desperation. Maybe desperation makes us better people. More empathetic. More sympathetic. I have wondered often how I can work so frigging hard and still be desperate. It seems so unfair. I blame the kids, or god, or my ex or my parents, but really, it’s life. Life is to blame for the injustice. Life is unfair. The beauty of life is that the injustice swings both ways. From time to time we get unfairly blessed. Where you were born, or to whom, or where in the birth order you lie; the opportunities presented to you and the courage you have to accept them: these are all numbers in the roulette wheel we call life. Having the wit and the tenacity to tag the right numbers is only part of the game. But it’s a big part. I intend to keep playing. At least for now. 

01.9.11

Seven year old rockstar. Aspen. The pantsless wonder. No matter how many pairs of jeans I buy her, without fail, every morning it is the same pitiful cry that she has no pants. Finally, after what seems like hours of endless back and forth trans-story hollering, she emerges downstairs with what appear to be more holes than clothing on her bottom half. How can such a small child make such large holes? Or sometimes it’s a whisp of tulle vaguely masked in the guise of a tutu, over the remnants of what must have been once a pair of tights, but have obviously lived through one too many easter egg hunts before they crawled out of Grandma Donna’s basement and into Aspen’s undie drawer. The odd swirls of grass stains and mud and what is questionably some sort of melted candy can almost pass for tie dye. But not quite. Every few days I go upstairs to the wreck that is a bedroom and see if I can find something for her to wear before I am overtaken by the chaos. I can usually retrieve two or three pairs of at least semi clean pants off of the floor from underneath Kizzie’s pee-chee collection or a contraband stack of cups that have been missing from the kitchen for three months. I stuff as many salvageable articles of clothing as I can in her drawers and reemerge for air. This is the child that I knew would never walk out my door. The one who goes to school with a rat’s nest on the back of her head exactly where her pillow was stuck when she woke up that morning. The one with last night’s chocolate ice cream high on her cheekbone, obviously from the rim when one licks the bottom of the bowl, still worn proudly on the bus the next day. The child that I wake up in the middle of the night in a panicked sweat, realizing that it has been at least two weeks since I last asked her if she has showered lately. It breaks my heart at times, because she’s such a pretty little thing, even with her missing teeth and raggedy clothes, to know that people look at her and shed a little tear for her sad parentlessness. This poor child. I remember in my early days of parenting, when everything would be sunlight and roses and my children would always have combed hair and color coordinated outfits. Now my youngest in conveniently coordinated with all of the furniture, draperies and the 8 foot braided rag rug on my living room floor. And she did it herself. I couldn’t be prouder. All the ideals of the fairy tale life that I was to have. The shining princesses and dreamy castle like home that is now a silly jerry rigged little hovel that Halle delights in because of it’s similarity to the Weasley’s Bourough, if you will excuse the HP reference. I have relinquished all visions of sparkling windows and fluffy pillows and bury my head in the cleanest bedding I can find to catch enough sleep so I can face another day of missing the mark. Days like this when I have a head cold and feel like I can’t pull my brain out of the fire safe that it’s locked in are extra hard. Just getting out of bed at 6 20 something to get the girls on the bus is confusing. Getting clothes on myself and remembering where I am supposed to be is extra tricky. Yesterday I was standing in a store staring blankly at an aisle of something, when slowly I turned my head to see a clock on the wall come rushing up at my face and crowing loudly at me that it was 20 minutes after I was supposed to be at work. In the five minutes it took me to process this reality, I think I must have stumbled out of the store (hopefully with no unpurchased items, but I don’t remember) and called one of my supervisors. I must have made up a semi-passable excuse because nobody yelled at me later. These are days when my kids are lucky that they get to eat, if I remember dinner. In this case it was apples and peanut butter and popcorn, which they gallantly made themselves when they realized I was a total basketcase and probably not gonna get around to it until the next morning sometime. They are troopers, these girls. They don’t have the worst life ever, but it isn’t cake. I watch the younger ones eat up any one on one attention they can find and feel bad that the hours I have to give to them are poor quality and unfocused. But they’re doing alright. They have their little niches and they keep plugging away. And so do I. and we keep on forging our little world of mayhem and color. And Aspen still has no pants. 

The last week:

Www.caringbridge.org/visit/creachfamily.

I feel guilt. I feel guilty for feeling. I feel guilty for feeling guilt. Who am I to have feelings right now? Feelings that aren't empathy, sympathy, compassion. How can I feel my own feelings and not hate myself? This is a new level of guilt for me. Maybe it's a good thing I'm nor catholic. Yet.

Sent from my iPhone

shoulder

I don't have one to cry on, beloved audience, and so, for tonight, you will be mine. How can my oldest girls teachers assign them huge online homework projects, assuming that every household has unlimited computer and internet access. I have so much homework to do, and every hour they spend, diligently searching "environmental news stories of 2004", is an hour I spend panicking about my late assignments. This world, here in beautiful central oregon, has complete disregard for the single mother on a less than crappy income. The state will help me with childcare after I jump through 100 hours of relentless hoops that land my kids in a pedophile infested daycare that I have to drive them to at god awful pre-work and post-work hours. How does that help??? I don't qualify for foodstamps, so all of you self-righteous right-wingers can rest easy, the money that I make that barely covers the rent will keep us in rice and beans and your hard earned tax money can be spent on someone more deserving. what the hell. I am angry. I don't expect a free ride. I am working ridiculous hours trying to support five people, and pay a nanny that I can't afford. But I need help, and there is no help for someone like me. If I quit my job I would be immediately eligible for all kinds of amazing things. I could stay home and make quilts, maybe even get an A in a class again. Wouldn't that be wild? Of course, I would be severely inconveniencing people like, oh , me? who pay taxes. God bless America, and save me some space in Canada, because I am high and dry for medical insurance, a policy for me would be more than my car payment, and my kids barely qualify, because I am making so much. Do they not know what rent is, and what it costs to feed 4 kids, to feed Halle? And where is their father? Wouldn't we all like to know. Well, don't worry, he's paying child support. Less than his minimum, but enough to make us ineligible for any help. Right on. Who made this system up? The same cop that pulled me over for not using a turn signal and took me to jail? The idiot who invented the lie that the lord opens and closes the womb and we should just have as many babies as we can possible crank out before our uteruses turn into quivering masses of escape-artist caliber stealth. Where are you now, you lofty purveyors of righteous charity and provision of the Lord - he always pays for what he orders, doesn't he? That's why there are babies starving to death all over the world. God loves them. I am angry and the religious right, the religious masses, religion in general. You told me that these babies were god's will and here I am, failing them miserably. God doesn't give you more than you can handle - which is the reason for 80% of suicides. I am tired. Tired of fighting and trying and working and hiking and struggling and paying and wanting to do the right thing, pull my weight, pull the weight of five, no six people, since the father of my children can't shoulder his own. To all of the people who told me I would be blessed with my full quiver: where are you now? Don't chide me for my shortcomings. Congratulate me that the five of us are still alive and relatively healthy, in spite of you. God, let me raise my children to be wiser than I. You gave us minds to reason, bodies to use and govern, and hearts to care. Let me impart this to my children, if I give them nothing else.