Family

I don't use this as often I should.  I mean, it's not like anyone actually reads it or anything.  So I could use it to vent and stuff and only strangers might come upon it...

😐

So.  Family.  Yeah.  My spawn are 16 and just about to be 18.   I have to say that they are pretty good kids.  They are hard working, don't take much of their lives for granted, are generous, funny, and full of life.  They haven't had an easy go of it.  Their father, my beloved first husband Sean (senior), passed away when they were little.  Sean (Junior) had just turned 6 and Siobhan was 4.  It wasn't easy for us.  Yes, I had help and money and a house and a career, but it was still hard.  Then I met Paul, fell in love, and married him 5 years ago.  I was lucky; my kids fell in love with him too.    Paul's adoption of the spawn was finalized two years ago. We're a family in every sense of the word. 

This is so important to me as I never had a family growing up. I was orphaned at a very young age and was raised by nuns in a children's home.  I never got adopted.  Most of us didn't.  That isn't to say I had a bad childhood.  It wasn't Dickensian or anything.  It was actually pretty happy, for the most part.  The Sisters were supportive and I had a great education and did grow up to become a doctor.  But I didn't have that core feeling of belonging.  Not until I met and married Sean and had our kids.  And then that ended.  Sean left me in the worst possible way, the victim on a drunk driver going the wrong way on an upstate road.

I had to navigate the waters of single motherhood with no mother of my own to lean on for advice and support.  I had it better than a lot of single mothers, though.  I had, as I said above, a good solid career with good money coming in and I could afford childcare assistance.  A lot of single mothers (and a lot of married working mothers) don't have that.  But having that assistance didn't replace not having a mother figure I could rely on.  I was probably a crappy single mother in the beginning.  I'm sure I was.  But my kids were (and still are) resilient and they forgave my ineptitude. I'm glad they forgave me, and probably forgive me every day for never really getting it quite right.  But I must be doing something right, because my kids are amazing.

So, yeah.  This is probably disjointed as hell, but I am a perfectionist and this blog is my change not to be.  My chance to grammatically incorrect at times and not follow the rules.  Now let's see if I can avoid coming back to make a million corrections.