A few years ago, a colleague and friend made this analogy about me. "Christa," with a huge smile she said, "You are like a 747 taking off on a runway. When you get an idea, you start at the end of the runway and get your engines going. You then proceed down the runway and once you lift off the pavement and get into the air, there is no calling you back." She is as right now if she were sitting by me today saying as she was then. My 747 idea of 2015 was to make the life altering decision of moving back into my childhood home. I written about the house previously, "Walls." I turned 48 in September and did a lot of soul searching and realized that the house that I was working so hard to maintain, that's first section was built in 1873, was the heart of my existence... was going to be standing when I was ready to move in, I was going to have to stop paying out rent and utilities and put it into the house. I had my 30th high school reunion in October and after consulting my 16 year-old son, asked my 72 year old mother if we could move. With great delight, she quickly said yes and within a week, everything was set in motion for me to make the biggest decision of my life that would impact not just me but my son and my mother since my separation and divorce three years ago.
With this decision, I knew that my entire world was going to change. I officially became a member of the "Sandwich Generation." PEW Research shows that 1 out of 8 Americans between the ages of 40 and 60 are part of this generation. We are simultaneously caring for one or more of our children and one or both parents. We are stuck between these two other generations for a variety of reasons and or combination of food/household bills, debt, home renovation, medical costs, and or educational fees. I have say that I am 100% all of those reasons.
First, I filed for bankruptcy in December of 2014 to recover from the divorce and debts that followed me out of the marriage. I was granted a Chapter 13, which is the one that is primarily known as the "one you pay back" on. So, there went a sizable amount of my monthly paycheck. Secondly, the educational fees were still very much a part of my life. I am still paying on my student loans from my Bachelor's and Master's. While they are currently included in the bankruptcy, what is not paid by the time I am completed (December 2019), I will continue to pay. My youngest son will graduate high school in June of 2017, so I will be looking at him being in college at least 3 semesters by the time my bankruptcy is complete. Thirdly comes the food and household bills. As a single parent of a 16 year old boy, you understand the line from Field of Dreams - "if you build it, they will come" - within the context of food. If you buy it, they will eat it. If you buy in bulk, they will eat in bulk. I had a membership in Sam's and Costco's at one time and yes, while it was thrifty as I checked out of the store to have purchased the amount of food that I had for the price I had. Reality set in when about a week later, most of the food was inhaled during some ritualistic grazing feast that teen boys observe. Fourth is the repayment of debt which has basically been covered in the second of educational debt. Fifth are medical costs. There is therapy and prescribed medications on my part, my sons part and then you add the daft system of medicare for my mother...it totally sucks someone dry. Lastly, and I think the greatest impacting factor, was home restoration. It had become very clear to me that if I was going to be able to move into the house at some point later in life, I was going to have to be putting the money into the house that I had been putting into rent and other utilities. I had already slashed cable/satellite from the budget and did not have a land line. It made complete sense, monetarily.
For my mother, sister, and aunt, there came the security that I would be living with my mother, who at 72 has a pace maker and a tendency to fall. For my son, well...I don't think there has been a huge change except that his bedroom would now be on the second floor and not the basement. For me, there are the changes of boundaries. I am not the little girl my mother raised and she is not the physically active mother she was as a child. We have had to institute some understandings. Momo (that is what we call her instead of Grandma) cannot initiate a conversation or carry a conversation on with me unless I am in the same room with her. Mainly because I can't hear her over the TV, the animals, the boy, and whatever I am doing in the other room. So I have taken to giving the blanket response when this understanding is misunderstood, "Are we in the same room? No!" My phone. My phone is a smart phone and it does a lot of really cool things. It makes all kinds of really cool noises and sounds and yes they go off multiple times, but I am not a slave to my phone. It is a smart phone for a reason and it takes messages. The most recent understanding is that in the morning, you cannot ask me a series of questions or give me a series of tasks and expect me to accomplish them. This is just not possible for a number of reasons. First, I just woke up and my brain needs to be infused with coffee and my daily dose of Adderall for my ADHD. My ADHD, my busy brain, my chemo brain, I think you get it. Then there is my already non-existent social life that just became even more non-existent when I respond to the question, "Your place or mine?" Well, it will have to be yours, because I live with my mom. ( :/ )
So, the beginning of November 2015, I moved for the last time in my life and back to my childhood home and MY ROOM. There was a peace and a comfort to this move that I am still working through. It has been hard to get used to having television for the first time in two years. I now live with the woman that chooses her satellite/cable provider by whether or not they have the Hallmark Channel. So now that I have watched all the possible Christmas movies and with the start of the new year will come the Valentine's movies, I have determined that I will be in a diabetic comma by Easter, if not sooner. One of the things that I requested be DVR'd was the Barbara Walters' Most Interesting People of 2015. Ah, now comes the text to media connection! (Yes, I play an English teacher at school.) One of the individuals that she chose was Bradley Cooper. Yes, THE Bradley Cooper. The one that we cannot simply fathom why he and Jennifer Lawrence area not together, because if one of us cannot have him why she should because she is just totally cool. In the middle of the interview, Walter's asked him about his father's death and then indicated that after his father's death, he had his mother move in with him. What?!?!?! did I just hear?!?!?!?! Bradley Cooper, the man that was once told by his agent that he did not get certain roles because he was not "fuckable!" lives with his mom. At that very moment, the biggest and smartest decision I have made in a very, very long time, was just validated by Bradley Cooper.
