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Middle and high school
The boys were both good sons, but very different in interests and personality. They chose different middle schools and in our unified county wide district that worked well. The oldest liked sports and went to a K-8 school with a passion for football and lots of hunting and fishing families. The youngest chose a 7 & 8 grade middle school with clubs for math and a choir and field trips for science.
Whenever we could we still fit in trips back to the towns Greg and I had grown up in to visit family and the Wyoming beauty that had formed us. We tried to never miss a concert or game. I wasn’t teaching full time, but sometimes I’d get full time substitute jobs and work close to a full year or semester. I considered myself so lucky to have the chance to be available to sub in my kids classes or volunteer on their field trips and never took for granted that I could do that because Greg was working full time plus usually at least five weeks out of the summer.
Maybe we should have focused more on each other. It’s easy to find pictures of the boys but rare to find any of just the two of us. Communication got taken for granted a lot and usually we were on the run, so days turned into years at a breakneck speed.
Whenever we could we still fit in trips back to the towns Greg and I had grown up in to visit family and the Wyoming beauty that had formed us. We tried to never miss a concert or game. I wasn’t teaching full time, but sometimes I’d get full time substitute jobs and work close to a full year or semester. I considered myself so lucky to have the chance to be available to sub in my kids classes or volunteer on their field trips and never took for granted that I could do that because Greg was working full time plus usually at least five weeks out of the summer.
Maybe we should have focused more on each other. It’s easy to find pictures of the boys but rare to find any of just the two of us. Communication got taken for granted a lot and usually we were on the run, so days turned into years at a breakneck speed.
Empty Nesters
Two babies in 12 1/2 months meant two adult sons and suddenly a crowded house was empty. Son One was off working on a fishing boat so sometimes his dog lived with us, and one of his girlfriends had a two year old daughter that we got to practice our grandparenting skills on. Second Son had found a girlfriend in high school who was beautiful and brilliant and they both earned lots of scholarships so were off together at UC Santa Cruz. They came home for holidays but still . . .
Empty nest.
I found myself staring at a bare dining room table. The one I had dreamed of when it was buried under school books and fishing lures and mail. And just sobbing. Greg’s mom was sick, my mom was sick but both were thousands of miles from us being mostly cared for by siblings and nursing homes.
Getting time together to rediscover that we were still friends was incredible. We went to some shows and played board games. Ate way too much and a lot of that was out at restaurants because driving around and eating together was always our happy spots.
We still had the parrots and one of our cats and often the granddog but the time with just the two of us felt strange. Like an old comfortable pair of shoes you hadn’t tried on for a few years.
Empty nest.
I found myself staring at a bare dining room table. The one I had dreamed of when it was buried under school books and fishing lures and mail. And just sobbing. Greg’s mom was sick, my mom was sick but both were thousands of miles from us being mostly cared for by siblings and nursing homes.
Getting time together to rediscover that we were still friends was incredible. We went to some shows and played board games. Ate way too much and a lot of that was out at restaurants because driving around and eating together was always our happy spots.
We still had the parrots and one of our cats and often the granddog but the time with just the two of us felt strange. Like an old comfortable pair of shoes you hadn’t tried on for a few years.
Christmas Matters
Both Greg and I were raised celebrating Family at Christmas time and most of the Christmas times of the last 40 years were tied to family togetherness. So even though it is May I can’t consider our years together without a heavy portion of Christmas reminiscing.
Christmas ‘82 and ‘83 at the jr college where we met we were living “in sin” but already married in our hearts, just not on paper. But we always said the paper is for other people. The commitment between us we do for just us.
So the first year he went home to Newcastle where his older siblings also came back to their parents. And I went back to my parents home. And the next year he had a huge deal surgery over Christmas break, straightening the femur he had broken in a motorcycle at age 15, so I spent a few days in Billings, Montana with friends so I could be at the hospital every day. Then his family all came to his sister’s new house in my parents hometown and we ended up joining together with our four parents and my grandma. His five siblings and a brother in law and my two brothers. He was pretty out of it having had his femur sawed in two with a staircase pattern so it could be pulled apart and moved over one step and thus lengthened. But in his codeine haze he missed a lot of the family celebration.
The next year we were married and in Ashland, Oregon and too broke to go home. We got my first ever real tree for Christmas and left it up until Valentines Day. I never loved a tree more but that year I loved the scent and the touch and the lights. And we found a lovely angel we got cheap because her face was cracked. And then it wasn’t even cracked but had a thread of hot melt glue we easily removed.
Over the years and as the family grew we traveled mostly to Wyoming in all kinds of winter weather and did it with kids in car seats they filled with diarrhea or with 1100 miles driven and suddenly snowed into a motel and missing the family anyway. We did one Christmas at Disneyland and three in a row at a parents funeral. We spent one with all our children so angry at me that they wouldn’t come home and we spent one with a granddaughter in the ER for six hours. But every friend, Sibling ,parent, grandparent, and child was always reminded that getting together as a family was important and worth even major inconvenience just to sit around a living room bursting at the seams with those who mattered.
Christmas ‘82 and ‘83 at the jr college where we met we were living “in sin” but already married in our hearts, just not on paper. But we always said the paper is for other people. The commitment between us we do for just us.
So the first year he went home to Newcastle where his older siblings also came back to their parents. And I went back to my parents home. And the next year he had a huge deal surgery over Christmas break, straightening the femur he had broken in a motorcycle at age 15, so I spent a few days in Billings, Montana with friends so I could be at the hospital every day. Then his family all came to his sister’s new house in my parents hometown and we ended up joining together with our four parents and my grandma. His five siblings and a brother in law and my two brothers. He was pretty out of it having had his femur sawed in two with a staircase pattern so it could be pulled apart and moved over one step and thus lengthened. But in his codeine haze he missed a lot of the family celebration.
The next year we were married and in Ashland, Oregon and too broke to go home. We got my first ever real tree for Christmas and left it up until Valentines Day. I never loved a tree more but that year I loved the scent and the touch and the lights. And we found a lovely angel we got cheap because her face was cracked. And then it wasn’t even cracked but had a thread of hot melt glue we easily removed.
Over the years and as the family grew we traveled mostly to Wyoming in all kinds of winter weather and did it with kids in car seats they filled with diarrhea or with 1100 miles driven and suddenly snowed into a motel and missing the family anyway. We did one Christmas at Disneyland and three in a row at a parents funeral. We spent one with all our children so angry at me that they wouldn’t come home and we spent one with a granddaughter in the ER for six hours. But every friend, Sibling ,parent, grandparent, and child was always reminded that getting together as a family was important and worth even major inconvenience just to sit around a living room bursting at the seams with those who mattered.
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