For the Love of Family

I have my days. Thankfully not too many terrible ones. Mainly because I try hard not to allow them to happen. And sometimes it’s because I don’t have time for them.

Being a wife, parent, grandparent, friend, sister, and niece are all roles I am blessed to enjoy. I am no longer a daughter because my parents are both deceased now.

Almost all of the roles require energy!

We recently decided to locate to an area 20 miles from my youngest daughter’s family. Which happens to also be 240 miles closer to our oldest daughter’s family.

When you are young and haven’t accumulated much, moving is easy. Not so much in later stages.

Most of our early moves were done and paid for by the military. This one was totally on us.

Had we not been left alone in Augusta, Georgia by our youngest daughter, we’d still be there. But her divorce had a ripple effect, and so here we all are, basically in the same town again.

I will admit that my two youngest grandchildren being here were the biggest bonus of the move. Maybe the only one, except that with my husband and I in our aging years having our daughter, the nurse, close is a huge bonus, too.

Now, we have a new son-in-law and three bonus grandsons to be thankful for.

The road to this point in my life has, at times, been littered with glass shards and I have had to tread ever so lightly.

My daughter’s are somewhat alike, but vastly different. It’s sometimes exhausting to mother them. And, a lot of times, is a thankless job.

I, like many other moms, have changed my plans to accommodate my children’s plans. I forget that it’s not only my plan that gets changed; but often times, it’s our plan, mine and my husbands, that gets changed. He’s usually a lot more resentful than I am about it. In most marriages, there’s always one parent that feels left out or unappreciated. Thus the walking on glass shards....

In the scheme of things, if I didn’t change the plan, or deviate from it in some way, it would never come into fruition anyway. My husband is notorious for changing plans, not following through on a plan, and in general being a person you can’t count on to do what they say. This being said, I am not sure what the problem is when I alter a plan.

It’s exhausting being so responsible for so many people all of time. I am trying to find a way to balance it all. It’s a process that sometimes has me wanting to run away to a beach somewhere to recharge my batteries.

How did I get to this point in my life? Stay tuned, it will start with a childhood that cumulated in a failed marriage before 15 and my current, almost 47 years of marriage.