Looking back on my life, I have determined that I had three unwitting goals: 1) to make every place just a tiny bit better for my having been there, 2) to find and provide roots, for me and my family, and 3) to find a way to be useful.
Goal #1 happened over time and in different locations. I joined churches and sang in the choir. I taught children's Sunday School. I worked as Youth Director, then later became a choir director. I was on church and school committees. I became the Indiana Coordinator for an amateur radio disaster network for a major faith-based charity. I was a Girl Scout leader. I was in community theater productions, musicals, and church cantatas, and even directed a few plays, myself. All the while, I was keeping a full time job and raising a child, plus step-parenting two others, while maintaining home duties--cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, laundry, shopping, paying bills. (I'm exhausted just thinking about it!) I did it all because that's what I thought all people should do. I wasn't a hero. What I found out, years later after introspection, was that I always found ways to make myself the caregiver of everyone else. Even when I should have been receiving care from others--or when they were quite capable of taking care of themselves--I would find ways to twist things to put myself in charge of taking care of virtually everything. To this day, I don't know if I was martyring myself (although I didn't really complain to anyone), or if it was a control thing. It was easy for me to see it in others, but I never saw it in myself. All I know is that after my divorce, I had one less person to worry about, and the relief was enormous because my nurturing ways totally fit into my then-husband's manipulative ways. It became a co-dependent, spiraling system that made me crazy!
Goal #2 wasn't even something on the surface of my consciousness. In my early childhood, we were a military family. Always one the move. Sometimes more than was even required. For instance, Dad was stationed in Danville, IL, once. We moved there from California, into a rental home that was soon sold...so we moved to another rental home, essentially in a slummy area that kept my mother unhappy...which gave way to our having a pre-fab house built in a new subdivision. Three home moves and three different schools in the same community in less than four years! And just as I had made my very first best friend in all the world, we were sent to Japan, never to look back.
When we were sent back to the States as civilians due to cutbacks in reserve officers on active duty, we settled in Oak Park, IL, a western suburb of Chicago, which is where I spent 6th-12th grade. That's when I bloomed. I could make connections and friends and find my own personality. Prior to that, the only real roots I had--and they were strong ones--was with my mother's parents at the family farm homestead near Streator, IL. Prior to that, the only stability we had, wherever we were, was with family: parents, grandparents, and first cousins from my mother's siblings. Home was wherever they were. Family was my only security, and that farm, my only place to call home. (That actually shaped my life. Family became everything to me.) And when I married a school administrator, things didn't get much better. Thus, when our daughter was born and he/we changed jobs and locations more often than I liked, I found myself seeking roots again. Not just for me, this time, but for our daughter.
Thirteen years later, when her father and I divorced, my daughter and I moved out of the particular community we were in to another nicer one, much closer to the school where I taught. I left behind the lovely house that my husband and I had bought in the former town, and moved into a rented duplex in our new town. A few months later, I was prepared to buy a small bungalow, with help from my dad on a downpayment. I was bound and determined that, just because my husband had left the marriage didn't mean that our daughter should suffer living in rental housing where she couldn't have her cats. We succeeded. My daughter bloomed in Plainfield, IN. She was in plays, musicals, and the highly-respected/award-winning show choir. And she/we could finally keep her cats! She graduated from school and went on to find and make her own roots.
I still live in the little house-on-a-slab that I bought in 1992. Slightly over 28 years, and counting. It's the longest I have ever lived anywhere in my entire life. 'Tis a tiny house by most standards, and I have made many major changes to it over the years, but it's mine and it's paid for. Finally, roots!
Goal #3 was easy, at first. Married-teachers-turned-single-moms never lack for ways to feel wanted and needed. There were days when I longed for respite from responsibilities. Then, suddenly, my daughter was grown up and started a family of her own. When my grandchildren came along, and their parents struggled financially, as most young families do, all of my non-teaching attention and every spare cent went to them. They never really asked for help, and I didn't ask for anything in return. I just did it because I loved them, and could. It made me feel good. I bought groceries and furniture and child items and entertainment. And gave time. Lots and lots of time. I think I got more out of it than they did.
That marriage ended. My daughter and grandchildren moved in with me with no warning. We did the best we could, then made some major adjustments to the house to provide for everyone. I was needed even more as Megan got a job and took college classes, all the while caring for two young children. We were a team! A year or so later, my daughter met an international student online. He was going to Indiana State University, about 1 1/2 hours from us. She was smitten. A lot of crazy things happened thereafter, not all of which I care to talk about here, but the bottom line was that they married, moved to the West Coast, then back to the Midwest, then to the Pacific Northwest where they are now, half a continent away from Mom/Grandma. I retired just before all of that happened, so my income dropped considerably. No longer could I help--physically or financially.
Truth be known, they don't need my help, physically or financially. My son-in-law is, what we call in the vernacular, a kick-ass provider. I am, what we call in the vernacular, a disabled old lady, stuck at home in a pandemic. Thank God, my house has been paid off for a couple of years now which frees up a sizeable chunk of my income...but I'm still not anywhere close to rich. I have to pay for things that others can still do for themselves, and it kills me! When did I get old? How did this happen? I have worked so hard all my life...is this my reward? To sit in my house all alone and rely on the rest of the world just to get me through the day? And what is down the road for me?
Me, me, me.
Almost two years ago, my house needed a new roof. It was old and had moss growing on it, and the company that carried my homeowner's insurance threatened to drop my coverage if I didn't take care of it. I had a deadline in April of that year, so I got busy. Got estimates; went with the lower one; procured a loan from my bank; and got a new roof within mere days. Whew! And then the miracle happened. When the first loan payment was due, I got some weird email from my bank indicating that I didn't owe anything. Thinking it was surely an error, I called the bank. The rep told me it was no mistake. Some anonymous someone had paid off my $5,000 loan. I couldn't believe it. I made the woman check again. She did and was almost gleeful about verifying that the loan was paid off. She would only tell me, as I quizzed her, that it wasn't my daughter, and my sister says no, as well. Do you know what that does to a person? If someone was willing to bestow a $5k gift to me, how much more should I do for others??
One day a few years ago, a former student said something on Facebook that caused me to ask, "Do you need help?" She did. That started a partnership, of sorts. I discovered that I could buy $100 worth of groceries from Aldi that would make a difference in her family without denting my own larder. *Another former student was going through some really rough health problems. I provided some meals and some support, some groceries and some cash. Guess what? I didn't starve as a result. *Yet another former student complained that he probably wasn't going to get a Thanksgiving dinner because of his circumstances where he lived with his father. He and I went out and bought the fixings for the entire feast, and then some, for $150. My bank account survived without the lack of a Thanksgiving feast of my own. And later, when he had a change of living accommodations, since he had no income and no way to help with his own support, I took him to a local food pantry once a month to help him have something to contribute to his new household. All I spent on those trips was for gas. We also took a shopping trip to buy him some clothing when he outgrew what he had. *Most recently, I took on a deal that just came to me. Someone who helps me a lot and for whom I care deeply has been struggling to figure out how to repair her second vehicle that has been dead in the water at her home for two years. There is a second car that she and her live-in son share, but it gets tricky. With her permission, I had the dead vehicle towed to my favorite mechanic. We're waiting on the verdict now, but all she could do was cry. "No one has ever done anything like this for me!"
Oh, sweetie...I'm not doing anything for you. I'm doing it for me! I'm trying to justify my own footprint on the planet. It isn't enough just to live and breathe. There has to be a reason to exist in the world: give to it or take away from it. My contributions to my friends and neighbors are in dribs and drabs, but I do what I can. I still want to be useful to pay back for what I have received so many times over. Please, please...don't think for a second that what I do makes me some kind of saint. I give because I am selfish!
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