Tag Archives: education

REGRETS, I’VE HAD A FEW, BUT THEN AGAIN TOO FEW TO MENTION

I grew up in an Irish Catholic family. There were six children in our family. My fraternal twin sister and I were the youngest, and then I had three older sisters; the oldest one was fifteen years older, and the next two were seven and eight years older than I was. My oldest sibling was my only brother, who was nineteen years older than me.

My childhood home in Maple Shade, NJ

One of the things that I experienced during my childhood was that my family was not big huggers. In fact, I recall very little physical affection from my parents or my siblings. For that matter, it was a rare occasion when my mother or my father told me that they loved me. As for my siblings, I don’t remember them ever showing any affection to me. I’m not saying that they didn’t love each other. I’m saying love and affection were not displayed. I believe at some level that we cared about each other, but we rarely expressed it. I believe that this was a trait that originated within the Irish Culture in Ireland. And since both of my grandparents originated in Ireland, you might say that this lack of showing love or affection was a trait that their parents and their parents and previous generations displayed. And it has occurred to me that if I had grown up in Ireland, this lack of affection might not have affected me so deeply because in Ireland, this is a trait of people in Ireland.

But, since I was born and grew up in America, I knew people and families whose families originated in many other countries. My oldest and best friend’s family was Italian. Her family were affectionate to one another and often expressed verbally their love for one another. I spent a great deal of my childhood at my best friend’s house, and I couldn’t help but notice how often my friend’s mother and father hugged her and told her they loved her. It made me feel sad. I recall asking my mother one day why she and my father didn’t hug me or tell me they loved me. She didn’t really respond to my question. So, for most of my life, I questioned whether my parents loved me.

As I grew up, I came to realize that both my father and mother loved me. And they demonstrated it with their concern and care for my well-being. My mother took care of me when I became ill or if I fell and was injured while playing. She worried about me when I went on bike rides and didn’t come back for hours. She worried when I went to visit my friends and didn’t come back on time for meals. My parents showed their love by enrolling me and my sister and my older sisters in Catholic School for twelve years, which was a financial burden for them. Not to mention that my mother cooked hot meals every day of the twenty years that I lived at my familial home, even when she worked a full-time job.

As I look back over the course of my life, I recognize that I have had difficulty showing my feelings. However, what I have also recognized about my nature is that I have a big heart. That I showed my care and love for people in different ways. Since I was a young girl, my older siblings married moved to their own homes, and started their own families. I found out that I loved being around their children. I enjoyed taking care of them and showing my love for them by hugging them and playing with them. I didn’t have any issues showing affection toward them I loved them as if they were my own younger siblings.

I looked forward to the time when I would fall in love, get married, and have children. And over time, all these events did take place. I had my first child when I was thirty and my second child when I was thirty-four. And I can say without a doubt that there were no two children who were loved more than I loved my daughters. They were not perfect children, and I know I was not the perfect mother. But I love them both with all my heart through the good times and the bad. I also recognize that when they were young, they received many more hugs and kisses than they received when they became adolescents. Adolescents can be like prickly pears.

It was never a matter of me loving them less, but they seemed less able to accept and respond to my affection. Adolescence is a difficult time for both the adolescent and the parents. They are moving forward and away from their families, and perhaps I, along with most parents, attempt to hold on more tightly, perhaps too tightly to them, which causes them to rebel and react negatively.

Parenting an adolescent is perhaps the most difficult challenge anyone can have in their life. Because during that time, adolescents are attempting to move away from childhood and move towards independence. Which is the natural order of things but still a painful time for parents. And a challenging time for adolescents.

I have to admit during my children’s adolescence, there weren’t a lot of hugs and kisses. I regret that, but it is hard to hug someone who makes it their life’s goal to move as far away from you physically and emotionally as they possibly can. And they are just as willing to leave with angry, hateful words.

When I left home at age twenty, I talked to my parents in advance. I was not angry, I still loved them both with my whole heart. I was just ready to move forward in my life and my independence. And that included having started working full-time by the time I was eighteen. I bought my own new car and found an apartment in a town thirty minutes drive from where I grew up. I became responsible for my own expenses, including car insurance, health insurance, rent, and food.

Everyone doesn’t take the same path in life. And life often offers us challenges that are difficult to overcome. Sometimes it is better to take one day at a time, one step at a time. And sometimes, it is better to make that leap of faith in yourself that you are capable of being independent.

On the other hand, growing up doesn’t have to mean growing apart. But sometimes it does. When I was twenty-three, I moved to Florida and got married. Then, my new husband and I moved to Santa Barbara, California, so that he could attend Brooks Institute of Photography. I did not move back to New Jersey for seven years. It was a time of growth, both mentally and emotionally. And I returned a much more independent, mature young woman.

After we arrived back in New Jersey, we stayed with my parent until my husband found a job, and then we decided to buy a small home in Pennsauken, NJ. It was only about a ten-minute drive to Maple Shade, where my parents lived. In fact, my father was one of our first visitors.

When I was thirty years old, I had our first child, and three years later, we had our second child. It was a challenging time for us, and we were so happy and blessed to have my parents in our lives. Becoming a new parent and a stay-at-home Mom for several years was challenging and rewarding. On the other hand, I often felt isolated because I spent most of my time alone with two young children.

When my oldest daughter was in the second grade, and my youngest daughter was in preschool, I made the decision to go to college, and I was accepted at three art schools: Hussian, Moore, and Temple Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. I decided to attend Tyler School of Art because they offered me a full scholarship for the first year. After the first year, I applied for student loans to continue my education.

The Tyler School of Art 1991

It was difficult balancing going to college and being a wife and mother. But, with the help of friends, I was able to do just that. I graduated at forty-one with a Bachelor of Arts and a teaching certificate. I was in the top ten percent of Temple University in 1991. It was a challenging four years for me, my children, and my family. My oldest daughter was in the fifth grade, and my youngest was in second grade when I graduated. I have to admit it was one of the hardest but most rewarding challenges I ever faced, both for me and my husband and two children. During my four years in college, I spent my time with my children when I was home. After they went to bed at night, I did my school work and studied sometimes long into the night. When I was on school break and during the summer, I spent all my time with my children. It was a growing experience for all of us.

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THE BEST AND WORST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE

I have arrived at that time in my life when I reflect on the most important and life-changing events I have experienced. One of the biggest challenges I have faced in recent years is acknowledging that I am no longer young and have arrived at the final years.

home in Pitman, New Jersey, 1994- 2016

Over the course of my life, I have had ups and downs. I have suffered losses, and I have experienced successes. At the end of May, I will be celebrating my seventy-second birthday. I often find myself wondering how time passed so quickly. I can say that I have few regrets about my decisions and choices.

When I graduated from high school, I found a job as a dental assistant through my school counselor. Back in the day, in the ‘70S, dentists hired inexperienced young women and then trained them to be chairside assistants who ran the office, answered the phone, made appointments, and confirmed appointments. In addition, I developed the xrays and was responsible for sending out the bills and cleaning the office. Occasionally I even babysat the dentist’s children.

I was given a great deal of responsibility for an eighteen-year-old girl. But as it turned out, I proved myself to be highly efficient at running the office. And I enjoyed working there for a number of years. I worked for Dr. E. G. Wozniak in Haddon Township, NJ.

I was able to purchase a brand new 1970 yellow Volkswagen, rent my own apartment, and live on my own. That job taught me so much more than the skills it took to be a dental assistant. It confirmed to me that I was able to meet any challenges that came my way. I was a confident young woman from that point forward.

When I was twenty-two, I started dating my best friend’s cousin, Bob. And  I decided I wanted to move to Florida, where Bob lived. We got married when I was twenty-three, and he was twenty-five. I was laid off from the insurance company the week after we came back from our honeymoon. I wasn’t able to find a job. And made the decision to go to a hairdressing school, the West Palm Beach Beauty Academy. After completing the eighteen-month program, I was hired to work at the Collonades Hotel, located on Singer Island.  I did hair and facials.

Bob decided that he wanted to attend Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, two years later. Brooks was a school for Photography. We lived in California until he graduated from school three years later. My first job in California was at Robinson’s Department Store selling hats and wigs. I can not tell you how boring that job was. However, I made a friend named Terry Ropfogel, and she told me there was a residential school, St. Vincent’s School, where she volunteered. She told me that they were looking for full-time childcare workers. I loved little kids, so I applied for a job. I kept calling them once a week until they agreed to interview me for a job. I was hired shortly thereafter.

Working at St. Vincent’s turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. The kids were mildly retarded, and some of them had behavior problems.  I must admit that I came to love them like they were my children when Bob graduated from Brooks three years l after we decided to move back to the Philadelphia, New Jersey, area. I wanted to move to the New York City area because I believed Bob would be able to get a job as a photographer there. Bob decided he wanted to buy a house, and he got a job as an electronics technician. And at that point, we purchased a house with the assistance of the Veteran’s benefits that Bob earned while he was in the Navy.

Picture of me and one of my co-workers Stacy Smitter at St. Vincent’s School in California

A year later, Bob and I had our first child, Jeanette. by then, we had been married for seven years. Three years later, I had a second daughter, Bridget. I had always loved kids and wanted to be a mother. And it turned out to be one of my most challenging life experiences. We lived in that small, three-bedroom house in Pennsauken, New Jersey, for thirteen years when our children were young.

My parents passed away eight months apart in 1986 when my children were five and two years old. My dad had lung cancer, and my mother passed away from a complete respiratory and coronary arrest. My mother told me before she passed away that she didn’t regret any of the decisions she had made during her life but only regretted all the things she hadn’t done. Her words had a profound effect on me. The year after she passed away, I decided that I would go to college, which I didn’t have the opportunity to do when I was of college age since I had to get a full-time job when I graduated from high school.

And so, I prepared a portfolio of my artwork and applied to the Hussian School of Art and the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. I was accepted at both schools. But, I made the decision to attend the Temple Tyler School of Art because they offered me a full scholarship for the first year and financial aid for the second, third, and fourth years.

Tyler School of Art

And so, at the age of thirty-six, I began college as a Freshman, the only adult student. The rest of the Freshman students was seventeen or eighteen years old. Some of them hadn’t even gotten their driver’s licenses yet. I could write an entire book about my art college experience, and perhaps I will someday. Needless to say, it was a challenging and sometimes difficult four years. I graduated Summa Cum Laude at the age of forty with teaching credentials. My class stood up at graduation and clapped when my name was called out as a graduating senior. I have to say going to college was probably the best choice I ever made. And although it was challenging, to say the least, I never regretted it for a single moment. My children were ten and seven when I graduated.

After graduation, I applied to every elementary, middle, and high school for an art teacher position. Unfortunately, it turned out that the New Jersey public schools were eliminating the art programs in their schools, and I wasn’t able to find a public school teaching position.

After about a year, I realized I could create my own private art school. And my husband and I started looking for a house that could accommodate our family and several rooms to be used for my art classes. And after several months of looking at residences, I found a house in Pitman, NJ, that had been owned by a neuropsychologist that had been empty for several years since his passing. After several months we were able to purchase it. It had been empty for several years, and we spent the first several; years repairing it and had to put a new roof on it. We lived there for twenty-four years. And I taught art there for many years to kids from four through high school and adults in the evening. Overall it was a wonderful experience, and I met and befriended many of the people who lived in Pitman while teaching there.

When we were ready to retire, we spent the last year we lived there preparing the house for sale. We loved that house so much, and it was difficult to leave it, but it was necessary to sell it since we couldn’t afford to keep it after we both retired from working.

We chose to retire to North Carolina and bought a house about forty-five minutes from Raleigh, NC, in Willow Spring. We have been living here for seven years. During those seven years, I have been doing volunteer work in the Guardian ad Litem in the NC Court. The Guardian Litem are citizens that volunteer to investigate at-risk children and make decisions about their care and where they should live if there is a problem within their homes. And in addition, for the last seven years, I have been volunteering at an animal sanctuary caring for Parrots, Macaws, and Pheasants. The sanctuary is called Animal Edventure, and it is located in Coats, NC. I have always loved animals, and it seemed a perfect match for me at this time of my life. 

In addition, five and a half years ago, I started this blog and write short stories and memoirs for WRITE ON. I write one new story a week. I also continue to create my artwork in my free time. Who knows what the future holds for me? I am a person with a high energy level, and I hope that in the future, I will continue to contribute in some way for the rest of my life. I can not imagine not doing so. I have always had the desire to do good in my life and be kind to the people I met along the way. I can not imagine wanting to do else wise.

So, here we are, living out our lives in North Carolina. Our youngest daughter lives with us. And although the last several years have been challenging because of the pandemic and inflation, we keep moving forward from one day to the next.

I can not say what lies in my future and that of my family, but I hope my good health will continue, life will give us challenges to meet, and we will succeed in all our endeavors.

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