... home immediately after high school." (This after my youngest at age seven came home from second grade weeping. I asked her why and she told me got a 'C' on a test. I told her it was OK, she had always done done well and sometimes a C is what you get. She said. "But now I will not be able to get into a good college. This at age seven.).
I told my wife that what she was doing was counterproductive to her goal. That if she made them miserable and feeling inferior, they'd never be able to cut loose from home, they'd be low achieving and in need of constant help. That the kids needed to be appreciated and challenged, to be self confident, ready to take the world on.
That was one of the only times she ever took my advice. She joined Girl Scouts and took the leadership program and then enrolled the kids. Any camp, class, activity they wanted, we made sure they got. Horse back riding, gymnastics, sports, theater, including a circus school in Evanston, anything. Everything. Both girls graduated Summa Cum Laude; one from Texas A&M, one from St Edwards in Austin.
She got what she wanted: both girls have hit life running and have had success in their lives and left home. The unintended consequence? My children live more than a thousand miles away and in different directions, and the eldest and her family are planning to move to Ecuador. Which is not what I wanted having from a Ohio family on both sides that lived life as if it were a single long set of family reunions.
I have been able to see my daughters and grand-children only several times in the last decade. I live in Central Texas and have no family near. My step mother and sister in Houston. My mother is not able to travel, and because of my health since 2017, have only been able to get to Houston maybe a dozen times. My 'other side' brothers and sisters are in Phoenix and Italy.
I tried to drive to Phoenix to see my step-dad before he passed this last April and my car broke down just short of El Paso. Getting back to Marble Falls with my car took two days and the help of the one good friend I have. And my insurance company's help was above and beyond (USAA).
I have a lot of trouble watching a very good movie, No Land for Old Men, partly because the assassin's cold relentlessness (which I take as relentless time itself hunting all of us), but most of all, the blind old man who begs to be shot as his son who took care of him went into the VA and never came back. And being left alone again when the character who found him leaves.
Where does that leave us. My parents always told us we needed to make our own fun. I guess you and I have to find our own purpose. If I ever figure it out, I promise I'll share it with you. Right now it's getting rid of the menance in the White House. My biggest support group has DU.
I am now the oldest one standing after my step-mother. I became so in an infernal process of elimination. My only salvation at knowing this is that it isn't personal. Fortunately I have a supportive wife. But when her 98 year old mother passes, will be the only one of her family in hundreds of miles. We are each other's desert isle. Comfortable but secluded.
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