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A third journal of personal musings |
 My life always continues to change and it only stands to reason that with each change, there should be a journal dedicated to it. |
Prompt: "Every moment in your life tells a story." Write about this in your Blog entry today. Oh boy. You aren't kidding. I'm going to make this an easy one (for me) and probably an emotional one (for everyone else). I'm missing my mom a lot lately (always) and it's a story I like to tell because...well, I'll get to it and maybe you'll realize it before I get there. So, when I was 8 years old, my life kinda changed a lot. My dad had to file bankruptcy. We had quite a bit of money before I was born and when I was little. Through some inheritance yes, but my dad was a good business man. He ran some game rooms (remember those! I don't really, too little, but I vaguely remember my dad's) and was good at it. Unfortunately, my dad ended up running into a man who took advantage of him and his money and welp, by like 1993/94 my dad just kinda ran out of money. We lost our house and had to sell a lot of stuff to kinda get some money to find a place and a vehicle. Unfortunately, what my parents sold didn't do really either of those things. We ended up staying with a family friend and his wife that my dad had worked closely with before he'd come into his inheritance do being in the same plumbers and pipefitters union. Anyway, during the 3 months we stayed there, I celebrated my 9th birthday. I know I didn't get a lot of gifts, but I don't remember being saddened by it. To be fair, even though my parents had a lot of money, they never acted like they had a lot of money. My mom always felt like the most down to earth person. Sure, did she get her hair done and wear some nice clothes? Yes, but her clothes never felt outrageous or looked super expensive (even to me now when I look at old pictures, they look like she went to Macy's or JCPenny or something honestly). I know they did have some nice clothes and stuff. Like they got some really nice leather jackets and really nice cowboy boots, but that's really all that stands out to me (my dad could've had some really nice expensive suits, since I know he wore them a lot back then, but they just looked nice to me, I don't remember any brands). Anyway, not to say I didn't get a lot of gifts before then, but well, I don't know how to explain it. I never had the expectation of receiving a lot of gifts. They were never flamboyant with their money and so I don't think I understood what we lost, other than our house and that my mom had to get a job (she was a stay-at-home mom until then) and my dad had to get something else. To also put into reference, my dad had "retired" by this time. In 1985 when I was born, he was 52 (my mom was 34. She liked older men, lol) He had been able to get into doing whatever his friend was doing at the time, which might've been working at the old Birds Eye factory (which has sense closed). I just remember that they used to go to work together and come home together. My mom hadn't found a job yet (sometime after my birthday she would end up getting a job doing food prep for the Golden Corral). My mom told me much much later (after I graduated high school), how she was able to pull off that birthday. Because they didn't have much of anything then. She had taken a dollar (or two) and had played the lotto. She won $68 dollars. She used that money to give me a birthday. To buy me some gifts and a cake. I remember how hard that hit me when she told me, because she could have, should have, used it for whatever they needed to use it for at the time, even if it meant it went into savings. Instead, she used it on me. Now I want to say that I never ever doubted my mom's love for me or her devotion, but it really made me realize how lucky I was to have her as a mom. It's a story I like to tell when I want to describe the type of mom she was in the easiest way. I guess because my mom doubted herself a lot, because after that time, we never really had a lot of money. Did we ever end up destitute or have anything shut off? No, but there wasn't really time for extras or vacations. I think she always felt so bad for that. Or that she couldn't buy us more things for Christmas or our birthdays. I think those things hung on her a lot. She worked very hard, sometimes extra to get extra money. Especially during the fall and into winter time. My birthday was in September, hers was October, my sister's was at the very end of November, then there was Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas thrown in there too. It's one of the things I hate that I can't tell her now. That I don't think of those things. All of the small things she did are what I remember. Okay so maybe I got emotional too. Anyway, a moment in my life that tells a story. |
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you failed at that job, at all. You gave it your all and your time. Sometimes, we beat ourselves on others' mistakes. I think the mistake was with the management and not you. 
