Doctor Grandma

I am now officially “on vacation”. Last week was the first family vacation we ever planned and accomplished. Al couldn’t join us because his job training for a new job started the same exact week. But the rest of the family was there, minus Jasmine’s husband and some step-children. I don’t think I will write about that week right now, but we spent a week at Table Rock state park, which I would recommend to anyone. Hike as much as your body will take. Do not overdo it, but get a lot of walking in. For those more capable, you can hike as much as 12 miles on one trail (which none of us did), or you can hike to the top of Table Rock Mountain (which I could not do)! We had tiny scorpions and one mouse in our cabin. We counted 8 scorpions before we left. We put down sticky paper and felt better able to sleep at night, checked our shoes in the mornings, and had air conditioning, so it was not a bad set-up.  We hiked to and found a total of 5 waterfalls, plus saw many smaller ones on a 2-mile hike. Lots of mountain flora, water lilies, all very beautiful. Canoed around a lake. Played games together and watched movies at night, plus built a fire occasionally and roasted marshmellows. All in all, a LOVELY week! The expense was $900. for the cabin, for a full week.

I am now back home and officially have *nothing* to do, which is a primal necessity for me, at this time. Last summer, from April through the summer I was writing a dissertation, which nearly killed me. I firmly believe it did upset my health, which I have still not recovered from. Final defense was, I think, in October, and then graduation last December. Meanwhile last summer I searched for and applied to 5 jobs in the South, interviewed at 2 and rec’d offers from both. I am sure I took the best one. Started teaching at a new job in August, teaching 4 courses per semester and many I’ve never taught before. I have been working literally night and day since I got here to South Carolina. These two months off are absolutely ESSENTIAL.

My plans for this summer are to now work on organizing my office, bump my classes up a notch by having more activities that facilitate their learning critical thinking and applying what they learn, AND to find a publisher for my “book” which is my dissertation. We may paint my office. And I will work on family history. I have had many dreams with Native Americans in them. In one particular dream, someone told me we were descended from some tribe, which when I awoke I could only remember as starting with the letters “C-H.” I couldn’t even think of one and asked my husband and looked on the Internet. It was not as big as Cherokee, but something different. It may have been Chickasaw.   —  so who knows? I have learned to respect and learn from my dreams. They are not always true exactly as they appear in dreams, but dreams are always a window to the soul — to what is going on within yourself. Occasionally, but rarely, they are messages from perhaps the spiritual worlds. This one is not something I have yet deciphered, but it is something I cannot ignore. I cannot imagine having Indian relations, unless they are buried in the Agnew family tree, which is a total mystery after my own grandparents.

Levin has moved to New Orleans and thinks he may have an offer with Radio Shack; Jasmine is the only one left in Indiana at this point; Leah & Jean returned to Raleigh; Jamal & Shelly to Wisconsin, where they just put an offer on a house. Leah is wanting to get pregnant for the second one. Life is exciting and challenging.

I think about our legacy with money. This is something I will write more about later. We got married as teenagers. Al’s dad, though supportive as a family, would never think of assisting financially once one of his children got married. And he never did. I don’t think he believed in financially assisting children in ANY capacity, really. They all struggled and worked as children and teenagers, earning money however they could and buying their own things.

So– as far as my family with money, growing up I had whatever I wanted. Privileged life. New wardrobe for school twice a year, with our mother taking my sister and I to Sears, using the charge card, and buying us a lot of matching dresses and outfits. Basically, our mother never knew how to handle money and we never learned. Our dad loved us very much, grew up himself very poor, probably a poor hilljack family out of southern Indiana basically, and was very proud at what he accomplished and showered his gifts upon us. We were not “wealthy rich” but we had nothing we longed for. Not much anyway. We sometimes got used bicycles if it was not our birthday — the birthday person would get the new bike. But we lived in wonderful, big old houses and got nice clothes.

After my father died, my mother turned to alcohol and had no clue how to handle money. The social security payments she got which were supposedly for us kids, we never had access to. In a nutshell, my family was of no help when I got married at age 18.

Al and I have struggled financially all our lives and worked hard all our married life. We have no savings to speak of, which is the story for most American families today. Neither do we have a large debt until recently, when for the first time we were forced to take out parent loans to get our last child through college. We have 2 little tiny credit cards which we use for gas on trips.

I cannot tell you how many times I have gone forward on faith alone. But that is what poverty mixed with belief teaches you: trust in God and move forward, one step at a time. We have had blessings showered down on us, and have always made it through, we have sent every one of our children overseas for that experience, all on VERY little money. The stories of how these things happened abound in our lives, but I will not go into them right now. They have made me stronger as a person and given me an understanding of other peoples’ difficult life situations, which add a real depth to my teaching. However, I still feel that we should have done better, for our kids.

The main thing we need to do now is find a place to move to. I cannot tolerate this house another year, with no storage space, not much space in general, and no control over the furnishings (which are awful)! The owners are lovely people. They couldn’t be better neighbors. It is just the place. We need a HOME, one we can invite the family to, have room to have meetings in, and store things in. I want a garden, I want to paint rooms the colors we like, I want control over our household. However, we are not in a great financial position yet, to do this. So again, we are going forward on a prayer and hoping a rent-to-own opportunity works itself out. Inshallah, we shall see what happens.

“God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God, sufficeth. Verily, He is in Himself, the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent.”  — Baha’i writings.

This blog has only been for the purpose of logging my thoughts of being with my older brother the last week of his life. I have decided to start using it for general thoughts & musings. For anyone who wants to read, enjoy.