Ten Years Ago...

Ten Years Ago…

I was 31 years old. I had a 5 year old, a 9 year old and a 13 year old. We lived in a rented house on Fielding Drive in Riverdale, Georgia… it was a fairly large house with four bedrooms and a HUGE garage. The owner was a racecar driver. Not a major Dale Earnhart kinda race driver, but big enough that they had a big garage. Which I had filled with stuff.

We had moved out of our first home that June… a home we had bought in 1989. We sold it right before foreclosure. It was a sad time but it was a symptom of a greater disease…

It was the end of my first marriage. We knew it. We took a “save our marriage” trip to Gatlinburg that fall. It didn’t work. It’s hard to be the only grown up in a marriage… and in some ways, I was the only grown up. In others… he was. Either way, we certainly weren’t working together at anything. In some ways, I think that’s why I allowed M to have so much control over my life – in my mind control = concern. I thought that I could love anyone who paid such close attention to details. Wish I’d known then what I know now!

Back at the end of 1999, our friend Scott was going thru a divorce with his second wife and staying with us part of the time. A lot of the stuff in the garage was Scott’s. Scott and I remained friends until I started dating Michael. We still are, I guess, I just haven’t seen him in almost 4 years. Scott saw me through a lot of stuff… fixed things when they broke… gave me the “male common sense” point of view. He got engaged in May of 2000. His 3rd wife. They’re still married. I guess for some folks the third time is a charm…

That Christmas my boys all got their own tv. One of those tvs is still with us – Austin uses it for his Wii.

Our church was freaked out about Y2K. I was only mildly concerned but didn’t have the big stockpile of stuff because… well… we spent all of our money on three tvs for Christmas! Not really. I mean, we just weren’t hugely concerned about it.

Back then… I drove a 1994 Pontiac Sunbird. Red. 4 doors. We called it “Old Red”. My kids went to Kilpatrick Elementary. Ryan was homeschooling. Yes, I once homeschooled, believe it or not! I didn’t work full time then… I sold Avon and got paid to keep kids and kept score at the ballfield… odds and ends jobs… Austin was in kindergarten and he was a handful. He was in trouble constantly at school. Thank God for my friend Kelli who worked as an aide in his class!

I was about the same size then that I am now, give or take a few pounds.

In 2000… I started working full time in the freight forwarding industry. On May 8th, the kids’ dad moved out. In June… I moved in with my parents and then in September bought the trailer.
In 2001… 9/11 happened. I met Purple Michael while my kids were in a local production of the Nutcracker.
In 2002… My first divorce was final. I started working with Purple Michael in theatre… and then with Joey… I got laid off… I spent the summer scrubbing toilets and doing odd jobs to survive. Sarabeth was born. I started working for State Farm.
In 2003… I worked at State Farm and took any theatre job I could find – paying or not paying – I spent a lot of time at the ballfield and the theatre and I can’t remember how we survived. But we did.
In 2004 I bought my car and my nephew Caleb and niece Jamie were born.
In 2005 I started my weight loss journey – losing 85 pounds and feeling better than I’d felt in years. I got my first digital camera.
In 2006 my New Year’s Resolution was to travel… and I did! New York, Boston, San Francisco, Miami… despite the TSA restrictions on lip gloss! I moved in with Michael thinking that my struggles were over. Boy was I wrong!
In 2007 I married Michael and moved to Jacksonville. Some people are slow learners.
In 2008 I came back to Georgia. Scarlett can’t be far from the red clay of Tara.

Ten years went by just like that. My parents’ hair turned grey and my brother’s hair turned grey and I have a few sneaking in on me. Our family grew and our family divided. My children grew and became handsome, smart, charming young men. It took a village to raise my children – in my case it was the Village People. My faith has grown stronger. My vision is clearer – if not in the literal sense, at least figuratively.

Thanks to the magic of facebook… there are people in my life now that I have known for 30 years or more… so I hope and believe that my community – both in real life and online – will only continue to grow over the next decade. I believe I’ll be smarter. I believe I’ll be stronger. I believe that there are good times still to come!

Happy New Year, y’all!