June 19, 2008
I read this post by Mum and it made my eyes well up with tears. My 17 year old sister in law called my parents unsuccessful. It hurts me and it kind of offends me, because in my mind, they aren’t. They have a loving family and strong ties and are happy people. Granted, we aren’t loaded with cash like Bill Gates (but who is), but we live in California and can somehow afford to drive our cars at $4.50 a gallon, pay our $1000 rent for our apartment/townhomes, and still manage to go out on weekends to do fun things with each other. Other people marvel at how we essentially throw money away just to live 20 minutes from the beach and have a year round summer. We make the best of what we have, and in that sense we’re probably more successful than say, Oprah. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. I can’t say that I blame her though. When I was 17, I had my whole life planned out. And nowhere in those plans of mine were there having a baby and being married by 21. I worked hard in high school so I could go to college (my parents were going to pay the whole way while I was an undergrad), get a degree in veterinary science, find my husband in grad school, get married and have my first baby between 25 and 27. Somewhere though, I had to work to put myself through college and pretty soon college wasn’t as important as paying bills. And if I could go back and tell my 17 year old self that my life would end up like this, I would have laughed and thought I was just having a really good drug trip. The point is, life happens and you have to roll with it. In the end, things will turn out ok, one way or another. I wish I was that young again.
