A Grand Adventure

My life is an adventure. These day's, most of the time, it is a low keyed, boring adventure, which is fine by me. I tend to like a boring non chaos kind of life. I have had enough drama and chaos in my past, that I try to steer clear of it now.

I love children of all ages and I love being a mom more than anything in the world. I put everything in my life on hold, to raise the 5 of them along with the many daycare children that spent all their waking hours at my home. I became a mom when I was still a kid myself, so I had spent all my adult years being “mom”. I knew that eventually they would grow up and then it would be my time.

When I finally found the love of my life and married him, I was excited about the adventure that he and I were embarking on. I had waited my whole life for him and could hardly wait for our adventure to begin. It was only in that year before meeting him, that I had started living a life for me…doing things outside of mothering. With my youngest child, a senior in high school, I had more freedoms to do those things I had put on hold…and now I had found someone to share the adventure with.

We entered our marriage with many dreams and plans for our adventure. None of these plans included having children together. None of these dreams were of being “daddy” and “mommy” together. None of these were of being tied down on the weekends or our day’s off.

Three weeks after our wedding, our granddaughter, little lady, was born. It became evident that her mother, my step daughter, could not handle caring for her and her brother, our grandson, little man, who was 14 months old, at the same time, alone. There are no fathers involved with either of them so she was alone but she made that choice. We tried to support her as a mom. Tried to get her help. We were either caring for one or both of them, all of the time. She was not bonding with her children and the conditions of the children after being with her, were poor. She could not handle parenting and the children were suffering and no amount of help we gave her was fixing the situation.

We lived in denial of what was happening. We kept thinking this would end any day now and our adventures would begin. We were afraid for our grandchildren. We could not keep up with her lies and her refusal to take responsibility for her life, her choices and her children. No amount of support or help was doing any good. Talking with her, was like talking to a wall. She was the mother for gods sake, but here I was being the mother, 90 % of the time. We didn’t want to be the parents, we wanted to be the grandparents. We felt stuck in a no win situation. When it came to the point of her asking us to take them, we could have said “no” but how could we look at these precious children, and say “no“?

Thus, our birth into parenthood. Our lives were interrupted to become parents. I started this blog to write about the adventures of becoming a mommy again…to write about this interruption of our lives. Our plans and dreams have been put on hold, as our adventure changed directions. Somehow, those plans and dreams aren’t as important as what we are in the middle of. Our plans and dreams can wait, but children can’t.

It’s been a fight, as many of you already know…fighting to keep giving these children what they so deserve. I will fight until the fight is taken away from me. It has not been an easy road to travel and I know it will not get any easier down the road. Yes, there are times that we get a little weathered from the storms that hit and there are day’s I question if I am cut out for this job. But, most of the time, the sun shines brightly, with the love and the smiles and the giggles that over flow in my days.

I look at these two precious interruptions, and I cannot imagine my life without them. They have changed everything and they have changed me.
This grand adventure is worth everything I have given up and put on hold. What I have gained is far more grand and spectacular than what I imagined to be. This is the story of how our grand adventure began. This is the story of my journey.

This is my life interrupted. Thank you for letting me share it with you.

To read more stories on adventure, go visit the spin cycle at Sprite's Keeper.