Survival

Well another day another 50 cents... Due to this economy, that it just what it seems lately. However, I feel that I have spent most of my adult life in just surviving the next road block. I would certainly consider myself quite proficient at it almost, especially lately.

My childhood was quite normal in fact. Life was very predictable and dinner was almost always on the table at 5:30p. Life in Plainville was safe and happy. My parents wonderful people who provided a solid foundation for which I had many times to rely upon. We speak daily and it is a nice connection. In the summer they are right outside my window across my field of sheep here as my neighbor and in the winter, they are far away in Florida (connected by a telephone wire). I thank them a million times over for giving me a childhood which I have spent my whole adult life trying to simulate the best I can to my three daughters. My solid childhood was filled with an almost dreamlike predictability that seems almost foreign in my adult life. My parents are of the generation where one could get a job out of college and plan on staying there until retirement. They retired from long standing comfortable positions. My father in insurance as the vice president of claims to Quincy Mutual and my mother as the Art teacher for the elementary schools of Foster Rhode Island. They each commuted forty five minutes to work each day. My mother working on Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesdays and home always for us on Thursdays and Fridays. I used to think of my life as boring and how I pray for even a fraction of that which I found dull as a child for my adult life. I had piano lessons, art lesson and tennis at the local tennis club (Tennis 95 in Foxboro-now no longer there). We would have a vacation once a year and summer camp at the Hockamock YMCA in North Attleboro. We had a dog and two cats and a pool to swim in during the summer.

I have spent my whole life trying to give even a fraction of that blissful normalcy to my three daughters. Never mind my own personal road blocks along the way. I had always been determined.

I was destined to become an art teacher like my mother, I had always loved art. I secretly wanted to also be a writer and an Egyptologist. I should have listened to them. They knew security and how to reach it. They had both lost their parents young and secured a wonderful life for us and knew the hard ships out there that they wanted to protect us from.

Not me, I jumped right into life and ran for it. I was a rebellious artist and lived with my heart. My parents had sent me to college at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass in Dartmouth, MA) where I quickly fell into the party scene. Enjoying all too much the freedom which I never had and never saw the reality and the dangers of it all. I wanted to live a Bohemian life and eventually dropped out of that school and then went to pursue my life as an artist. How young was I, and naive. I stayed at their condo in Wells, Maine and worked at an art gallery and saved my money for a trip to Europe. I worked 18 hour days and lived off Ramon Noodles and Mac and Cheese boxes, diligently saving all of my money for a trip to Europe. I wanted to backpack and bike all around on my own schedule to my parents horror. We worked out a deal that if I saved up enough money-they would find a tour. I did and gave them the money for the tour. Before this ! had met and thought I fell in love with a local and had decided to be a mature adult and go on birth control. Well, needless to say, the pill did not work and while in Europe I discovered that I was pregnant!

Upon my return I had to face the parents. The father of my child, when I told him replied, "How do you know its mine" In utter shock, since he was definitely the only one-I cried and woke up to real life. The drama life had ended and so had my dreams of being a writer-Egyptologist and artist. I had to think about raising this child (She is now almost the same age as I was when all of this happened!). I promptly moved into my parents house and signed back into school. I first went to school to receive and Early Childhood Growth and Development Certificate since I had attained a job as an assistant teacher at a Day Care Center in Wrentham. I had also gotten a job at the Emerald Square mall at a Jewelery Store and realized that retail nor daycare was ever going to pay the bills for a single mother who ever had plans of moving our of her parents house! I then went to School for Travel, Tourism and Hospitality at the Sawyer School in Pawtuckett Rhode Island.

While going to school there I had met my first husband Jim. We were engaged in April of 1991 and then married in September of that year. He was going to School at Johnson & Wales in Providence Rhode Island. We had saved up enough money to get an apartment in North Attleboro. This was also when I realized that I still needed a career which would better enable me to provide for my daughter-Alex- the way that I wanted to.

This marriage was a roller-coaster to say the very least about it. I feel like I have been a single mother the whole time. Jim, after graduation had attained a job at the Sheritan as a chef and had fallen into partying and long hours. This caused a huge strain on our marriage. I had paid most if not all of the bills and even for the rent, etc... My father had found a job for him as a claims adjuster-which he excelled at for more of an income. He even purchased a car for Jim. Jim never paid it off or even tried it seemed and very rarely contributed to the household. I had also, during this time become pregnant with my second daughter, Jacqui. I had decided also, to go back to school and went to Fisher College for my degree in Paralegal Studies. I had also attained a job at a law firm in Brockton and earned a more stable income. By the time Jacqui was born I had graduated with honors-like the other schools and had started my own business working as an independent paralegal.

I am glad that I had that business for it gave me the freedom that I needed to survive a tumultuous marriage. For not only had he not contributed a dime toward the household, but he would take off for weeks on end and sometimes even empty out the bank account to do this leaving us all alone and hungry. Sometimes without any food in the house. I had a friend, James Chauncy who had witnessed this one time and had filled my empty kitchen one day before I returned home from work. He knew the situation and had never admitted that he had done this. He is now gone from this earth and I hope he truly knows how much he had saved us that day. For I had too much pride to tell my parents about this and tried to save everything on my own. I had even taken my own husband to court to ask for support. I had won on this even before Jacqui was born. Her current child support order was based on this amount dated from the order of 1992-she was born in 1993! I had to also take him to court for his stealing of my business funds in the total amount of $5000. I had to go to courts in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire (where he had taken out the money) to pursue him in this matter) I won-back in 1993 and still have not seen one penny of this judgment! Yet, I survived and fought on to give my children the life I had as a child! I never once took into consideration that I had two very active parents and my daughters only had me in every way. I just kept fighting to give them all that I could.

My business grew and soon I had regular clients in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island. One time Jim had taken off and was gone for a month and by the time he had returned I had purchased my first house with my father as co-signer. I had paid off my college loans by then and for the attorney who went after the father of my first daughter, Alex. There is so much more to all of this that I am writing-I am giving a very short version of events to lead to the present.

My first house was in Attleboro and I absolutely loved it, though was planning for my house in the suburbs to raise them. I had to start wisely and purchase the house in Attleboro to get there. By this time in 1997, I finally was divorced from Jim and had met Bill. Bill had swept me off my feet and offered protection and the life that I had wanted from the start that I had never gotten from Jim. He offered stability and a peaceful life. I grabbed it and prayed. He started off by being nice and probably had full intentions of it. However, by the time of our honeymoon, after our church and country club wedding (that I proudly paid for on my own-hint!)-I discovered how wrong I was. Our honeymoon was in Egypt and on the Nile no less, for there I saw his true personality. He started out with emotional abuse, which then escalated to verbal and then the dreaded physical abuse. He was an alcoholic and I quickly became drawn into a cycle of the abused woman and lived in denial and and had hoped that it would not last. I was still running my business and even hired some people to help me and masked it all behind a facade of smiles and confidence. I was too ashamed to let people see the ugly truth. I had begged for a divorce and he threatened that he would have the children taken away from me (by this time I had my youngest from him-Tiffany) and the house and that he would make sure that I was locked up. He told me that he would convince everyone that I was crazy. It was horrible. But, being a paralegal-I kept my mouth shut and saved all of the evidence that I could for the divorce anyways. I worked hard for the house and had even upgraded to another house in Norton-I finally bought my house in the suburbs and had made sure that his name was not on it. Again, here I was paying all of the bills, cooking all of the meals, bringing and paying for the daycare of my children and the older girls sports and lessons-Jacqui was now in ballet and Alex was in cheer leading. I had also hired another housekeeper and had them for years so that I could run the business and the household and have time for the girls. I also bought all of their clothes and co-leaded the youth group at my church in Attleboro at Murray Unitarian Universalist Church with Heidi Hasselbaum-Ferreira. Our youth group was strong then and was in the renaissance with over twenty members and more arriving because we made it fun with lots of activities and events and a full curriculum-which we both created. I had also started an earth centered spirituality group for adults at the church with Nancy Fuller-Boucher. This group was also very successful. I led a very active life and played the perfect soccer-mom complete with mini-van (Alex was also in soccer). I hid it all behind this very busy exterior. However, I knew that this would all not last based upon the financial strain that it had built up. I was pretty much the only stable financial support of my children and my household. By then Jim was in constant arrears in child-support (still wondering what the total amount of arrearages is to this present date!) and I had kicked out Bill-who had never paid one dime in child support. Steve the father of my oldest daughter was very sporadic on his own and had only just become reliable and the order updated to his current pay only as recently in 2001.

Though I was married twice-I was always the single mother. However, I constantly had to fight for my daughters to lead even a semblance of the normal life that I had as a child. Both husbands had stolen from me. Bill had even written checks to his own brothers forging my signature from my personal account.

Through all of this, I made sure that my daughters never suffered one bit for what I had to endure behind closed doors with their fathers. I was there holding them when their fathers promised to visit and never showed. I was there whenever they fell or cried for some reason or another. I made sure they had clothes for school and play and toys and bedrooms to play in and sports, etc... I made sure they had a roof over their heads and food on the table and I made sure their homework was done. I took them on vacations to Quebec and Florida and made sure they went to summer camp. This was very hard to do and sometimes I had to rely on my parents to make sure that this was never broken. My stable, wonderful parents would make sure that things would not fall for all of us-considering all of the hidden battles that I have had to fight.

I have cried and sometimes that I have thought myself a failure in not providing any stability for my daughters. At, least nothing compared to what I had as a child. Though I have had to stop that train of thought and realize that despite everything that I have been through with both vicious marriages and even more bitter divorces-I had kept all of the ugly from my little girls. They saw a Mom who has always been there for them and has provided them with good food and lessons and wonderful homes-to the present farm in Maine.

I have survived having my husbands steal from me, and hurt me and even lie to me and kept it all from the girls. I have kept my chin up when all of the money in the bank accounts had been stolen by either husband. Nothing missed a beat in front of the girls. They really never knew what went on. I smiled and bought them to wonderful places and gave them a huge farm in Maine to play in with glorious sheep out in the field to look out at every day and fresh eggs from chickens-when we had them. They have seen kittens born and have went out to the coop to find fresh eggs. They have even seen some of those eggs hatch into chicks (some of them who had died) and then two that had grown into roosters-who then died as well from some yard predator). They learned about birth, life and death on this farm and have grown strong because of it.

I never let anyone speak ill of their fathers in front of the girls and hope they never have to see that side of them nor witness it from any other man they may meet some day when they are grown. I feel that through my experiences that I have learned has enabled me to better teach them about the world. I have learned wisdom of this world as an adult and wish to learn so much more. I have encouraged them to learn as well and take pride in how wonderful they are growing up. The fresh air in Maine has allowed me to heal and to breathe freely.

I had arrived to write my novels that I had stored in my mind forever. I did that and have started my third. Maybe someday they will be published. But, I wrote them and for that I am proud of myself. I had read all of the required reading for the Brown University Undergrad and Grad programs in that program (Egyptology) and had used it in my first two novels as well as other research that I had done in Massachusetts and Maine. I had learned to create my own studies in research since I could no longer afford the official education required nor have time away from home and my children. I had learned to find the reading lists at the Universities and to purchase and read the second hand books from the book stores and to read them at night and when waiting for doctor's appointments, etc... My father had taught me that you can learn anything from a book-and you can-you just do not get any formal credit for it. It is, though stored forever in your mind for your use. In my case it was for the novels that I have written and those I plan to write that I have researched and outlined. I have even traveled for the research for my novels written and that which I am working on. I have been to France, England, Egypt and Quebec for further research on them.

I have started a farm and raise Icelandic Sheep and have learned to work with the wool in order to make extra money for the household. I had gone out and earned my brokers license in insurance sales for my employment (you have to work to support a farm). I have earned almost two years experience in Sales for High Point Insurance based out of New Jersey. My income, as always it seems, is the main one for the support of my children and farm. I had long ago learned not to count on any financial or emotional support from the fathers of my children. I had learned the hard way, if you want anything done at all-you must do it yourself.

In this way, I had planned on my farm. I wanted desperately to give security to my children. I own this farm and home outright without mortgage and hope to leave it to them someday. I have very little expenses and need little to live on this farm. I have arranged my life to survive on the very little income offered in the only employment there is up here.

I started work in Wilton in July of 2007. I had been searching for employment for a year and a half. This is rural Western Maine. The only thing that I could find was in Wilton. There I had taken classes and had attained my brokers license. I had taken a huge cut in the pay that I was used to for this chance of employment-as did most of the others in my department. We were thankful to be employed. It is a call center and High Point is merely a vendor, though it was the program that everyone wanted to be on. The sales team had become a family and we had added on to become quite a group. We had succeeded so much in sales that we were given a raise and incentives were added on. Most brokers earn a commission, though here in rural Maine, they take advantage of there being nothing else out here for employment and we are paid only an hourly rate and not even a full 40 hours. No sick time is allowed to us and we do not get paid if we are truly sick-we take the cut in pay ( I earn currently what I used to make back when I was 19 in 1989 in Massachusetts-before college). There has never been one day when the center had shut down due to weather. So, we battled our country roads and snowstorms of a foot or more with ice and arrived to sell insurance bright and cheerful. I work on a phenomenal sales team and love the people that I work with. We had been so successful that they had finally allowed us to crochet and read books in between calls as long as all of our work was in. We had become close and were constantly causing trouble in a fun way. Suddenly our security was shattered when the first lay-off occurred. Soon, enough after months when more people disappeared with the dreaded staples boxes and heads hung low-that we told less jokes and feared laughingly when our badges would no longer work.

This was my survival job and now, even this was not working. For today, we heard the news we feared- that our program would be ending April 3rd. I had a brief glimpse of the security that I had longed for and had almost accepted it. I hated the drop in pay-though the people that I have worked beside made it all worth it. All of us in sales are licensed brokers and most of us have degrees besides and have known employment as professionals and salaries, like myself. (I had also worked at Quincy Mutual as claims examiner and at a law firm in Taunton Mass as the head paralegal of the Torts department at a Plaintiff firm.) We had known stability. Though we had all grown close to each other and have felt the bond of a sort of family. I had felt accepted there and had made a lot of friends and have shared alot with them. I was starting to adjust to this new life and love the stability that it slowly gave me. I grew used to the new level of pay and had managed my life around it. I was proud that I had a job to provide for my daughters in this economy.

Today, it was all ripped away from us. We were all thankful to be employed in this day and age and now-we join the rest. For me, it is just another road block. I have fought through many before and I will fight again. I just have to be a lot more creative in that my girls are older and it is not that easy to hide it any more behind smiles nad baked cookies. I have taught them about life the way it really is along the way so they are not so naive as I was and I know and hope they will be more armed than I ever was as a result of this. I honestly feel that my experiences have perhaps armed them for the world that they have to face.

I suppose if worse comes to worse- I do have my farm and the land. I could always learn to live as my ancestors had hundreds of years before-off the land. Maybe that is the real reason that I had purchased this large piece of Cheddahville-as a place to fall down on and to help us live. Will we have to resort to this in this time of economic harship. Is this our lesson in that we had become too materialistic and perhaps had to lose this all to realize how lucky we all truly are? As an adult I have had no choice but to fight and to survive on the remnants left. I have had to hide it from my children thinking that it was all wrong for them to see harship. Perhaps that is why I have fallen so hard. I have learned over the most recent years to be more realistic in raising my children and have slowly let them in. I have used the hardships as lessons on teaching them about teamwork and of us helping each other and others around us. I have been showing them life with all of the good and bad, gradually waking them up to the life around them. I have made sure they witnessed and helped in the birthing of the lambs on the farm and have shown them the natural cycle of death and life on a farm. I have learned right beside them holding their hands, rejoicing and crying beside them holding them close. I am proud to have witnessed all around us with them. We have gone without luxuries; TV, cable, phone (long-distance) etc... and have learned what is most important. Family, peace, food and warmth. This, they have never lacked. I have gone without eating during the day to make sure my children eat good and healthy foods and have worked hard at night on the wool for extra money and to be at home for this, the second job-for the clothes, sports, lessons, etc... We have learned that a family is strong when it works together. We are a team and we all stand strong when we help one another. Every chore-no matter how small is important to the well-being of this family and farm. I am proud of what my daughters have grown to be and smile at all that they have potential to be. The farm has given them the team skills, and leadership skills that they need for the world and the food upon the table. I have cut out a lot of luxuries along the way, learning to become more and more humble- and I will cut some more-never losing grip on what is most important in life.

I have learned to be a very active person and would not have achieved half of all that I have had I ever been lazy or cried when the going got tough-which has been quite often. Though, sometime that I have learned that a good cry-will certainly clear the mind well enough to get to business- the business of survival.

I am owed a lot of money in child support in just Maine alone ( I long ago gave up in ever seeing a penny of money owed while I was living in Massachusetts). In Maine I had agreed for child support to stop with Alex's father, because he had finally stepped up to plate and he is helping her with her college. She is a freshman at the University of Maine and had graduated high school with honors. I am very proud of her! I am owed four years and over ten thousand dollars from Bill and probably close to that amount from Jim to this date. I have been the sole support of my children and home for so long-I would not honestly know what to do if I actually had someone other than my parents help us. They have had to help when I would break down and call for money for oil and snow tires for my car-I hate to ask anyone for help. They have also helped with alot more-thanks to them I have been able to hold this home together for my daughters! I have long ago stopped crying over not having the life of my parents or the blessed stability they have always had throughout my life at least. I have had to protect my children and I against the people who should have protected us. I have survived and will navigate my way thorugh this next obstacle-as I have always done-very carefully.

Another survival skill is in this very blog. I have spent most of my adult life in trying to seek justice for me and my children. Though I have won legally in all of those matters-I still had not received much monetarily. I have managed an amazing lot on my own and continue to do so. This blog provides an outlet that enables me to speak out and hope that maybe somene-somewhere is actually listening! Maybe someday I will actually publish those novels that I have worked so heard to write and possibly even enough of the wool items that I have made to support this home and farm. But I still work and work hard to provide some semblance of security for my children. I know my story now-especially, is one of millions. Though I do not want this to be a story of pity-but one of hope. That a single mother can provide security and stabilty to her children-even when alone and do it well. I have healthy and active little girls and one grown and in college and I am very proud of them and even of myself for getting them there despite all that I have gone through for them. I would do it all again and will never give up. I realize that this is just another step in my master plan for my dream and know I have yet another hill to climb to get there. Here I go....