My mom has text me twice telling me how happy the kids and I look now and attributing it to no longer living in an apartment but a house with lots of outside room.
I’ve been thinking about that. I was frustrated with being on the third floor of an apartment complex and not able to watch my boys run around from a window. Naturally it was annoying having my very uppity religious neighbor who lived bellow me tell me my boyfriend and I made to much noise at 5am. lol And other such typical apartment living type things. But really over all it wasn’t horrible. It was a pretty safe place in a great neighborhood with free access to the YMCA in the back area and either good to decent neighbors. Best of all I had Sabrina and Shirley and family to trot over to and poor my guts out too, we made good friends with the neighbors who shared a wall, the Cummings, and were getting to know people and make friends at the local UU. Having good family and friends nearby is a huge benefit.
But, then there is those scary tornado warnings, now I admit, I really did not like that at all and they happen there a lot. Having Joplin which is just an hour away ripped to shreds by a tornado didn’t make me feel any safer in that department. I mean, how well are you protected in a third story apartment bathtub with four kids and a mattress on top? The pictures I’ve seen of apartment hit by a tornado usually were taken apart to the foundation. I have yet to see a tub fly to safety, but that would make a great kids story.
So basically my time in Springfield, MO was what we made of it and we made the best of it which means it was pretty dang good. Sure we had out ups and downs but that is part of life.
Chili, WI, farm house, middle of farm land, room to run (more like sled at this point), Yeah it’s nice. I love the fresh air and that we can make noise and not worry about neighbors. The kids like the running around the house and the girls like having their own rooms. But it isn’t perfect either. Making friends is that much harder which means having someone to talk to that I can see or someone to call on for an emergency ride and so on just doesn’t happen. So, the odds of me talking someone head off when I finally do get to talk to an adult are much greater. Since we’ve been here we have run into more financial trials then we ever. I had to shut myself down emotionally for a while just to get through it in one piece cause the stress was so high. When it gets that bad and there is nothing you can do about it I figure that letting it get to me will only make it worse and I’d just as well relax and keep going.
Again, like anywhere, it’s what we make of it. In the middle of the recent problems we have still sled down the drive way, roller skated and gone to camp. Getting to see my boyfriend and his kids twice now has been wonderful for us all too. It took a lot of effort on both parties but it was always wonderful. My mom, Shirley, gets updating e-mailed from me from time to time and my sis, Sabrina, and sis, Jeannie, and Chuck chat and text with me and I vent at them often which is very helpful too. And I’m here for them as well. It may not be the same as seeing each other but that doesn’t mean it’s not of great value cause it is and they are.
When we leave here we will have some crazy stories, some good and some bad, like anywhere. Where we go will be the same, we will make the best of it, deal with the negative and find happiness with in ourselves while enjoying the positive. We may not always see it right away but time will take us there.
Kalamazoo, MIHawaiiNear Marshfield, WI
Updating 3/6/12
I wanted to write this but was interrupted a lot and lost my train of thought several times. Having four kids around will do that to ya.
While looking at some pic and downloading I remembered something I wanted to put in this blog on this subject.
I have been actively working on not being so stressed toward my children and just enjoying them. Not that I don’t do my parental duties, I still do that but to not be so uptight about things and worried. I believe that has caused us to be a lot happier. After all, that’s what I want for my children, I want them to be happy. I also want to look back on their childhood and have a lot of memories of smiles and laughter.
Since I have been putting this into practice I not only see us all being happier but also the idea of missing their childhood actually seems plausible. Before when people would warn me to enjoy each moment cause one day you’ll look back and miss when they were young sounded plum crazy to me. Now I can see that happening from time to time and I’m glad.
Why didn’t I do this earlier? Good question and I have a good answer. I was raised in a very religious strict family. Things had to be done a certain way or the world would fall apart, or so it seemed. Then I was in a church for almost twenty years that was slightly different but initially just the same. If things weren’t just so then all kinds of condemnation was dished out and loaded onto your back. If kids weren’t disciplined and controlled just right they would turn into monsters and terrible things would happen and they could end up in hell.
(This pic I found on google images reminds me of the church leaders wife Sister Marcia Turner. She was known for using shoes. She would also whip the kids countless times and smile all the way through it.)
That sort of pressure is pretty intense. Not everyone in the church received the same treatment. The folks with money were treated as if they had more naturally good kids and had more freedom to enjoy their children. The leader (Elder Turner) kept folks like me in check by talking behind those peoples back and explaining that they weren’t really filled with the holy ghost and they were carnal and he only told them that so they wouldn’t quit cause the Lord wanted them there. And he would talk down about their terrible kids that he praised in their presence making them look like fools to us “lower” folks. I was brain washed and I was trying my best to do what was right and pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ cause I loved him and believed him with all my heart.
It blinded me to the obvious and just because I woke up to all this doesn’t mean I repaired all the damages inside me in one day. It’s been a process. Being able to enjoy life with my children is a process and I adjust as I learn better and so do they.
It’s not only how I was raised or the cult I was in for so long, it’s also pressure from people in general, it’s life. Those of us with Autistic kids know the judgmental pressure we get because normal reward and discipline doesn’t have the same effect on ASD kids but we are still pressured to do the norm and looked down on for doing things differently or for not yet knowing what works on our child. But, it’s not just people with special needs kids, it’s everyone. You can never make everyone happy, you will always be around someone who judges you. If you do it their way then the next person will condemn you for it so if you switch to their way someone else will condemn you for that and so on.
Personally, I’ve learned to use my own brain and do what makes sense. I think things through the best I can and try to see the whole picture. I remind myself that my kids are my first responsibility and my priority and no matter what other people think I will end up doing what I feel is best for them.
I believe happiness is the valuable diamond, or you could say “the pearl of great price”.
Updated 3/6/12
In the last txt I said that they looked “wonderful”…more specifically, I might have said that they all look more “healthy”. This scenerio reminds me of how much better both Kari and Lori look in their pictures after living on the boat for a few years as compared with how they both looked while they lived in a house with a yard enclosed with a block wall fence in a nice neighborhood in the city of Orange, California. Somehow just living the ‘boat-life’ that included actually being outside most of the day and rowing a dinghy to get to shore or just for fun, and walking alot all contributed to some amazing results in the countenance of both girls. It may be the harder we live the healthier we are. Plus the fact that Lori makes the best of any circumstance is very commendable. Her attitude determines the stress level in her own home.
I am so very glad for all her friends that love, comfort & enjoy her. She knows how to express herself well and will be there for them as they need her. It may be that Karl Preston Revels having a part in the children’s lives helps them to feel his fatherly love added to her motherly love as well. My Dad came to get me for dinner & a movie almost every Friday night for 12 years (from 6 to 18 years old). This caring for me really helped me in growing up and now I see how that must have really helped my Mom too…lol.
One more comment: Lori grasping the opportunity to move to WI when she did, may be critical in the lives of her children’s grandparents who live nearby and undoubtedly need the great comfort and joy that both Lori and the children bring into their lives. So, although I do not get to see them myself, I am aware of their being in a special place at a special time and am therefore very grateful.
Thanks for the comment mom! And thank you for reading what I write, that always means a lot to me.
We all were so much heather on the boat. Not just the fresh sea air but we had to row and do other things that kept us in great physical shape.
The time during separation that I still wived with my ex for that year took a terrible toll on my health. I have improved a lot but still have a ways to go yet.
I am glad we moved to Wisconsin so that the kids and I will know that I at least tired to unite them with their dad. Sadly, he is to busy and they hardly ever see him. His folks are also to tied up most the time. They don’t mind if we visit but they do not want to help out with the kids, oh, they will likely say they do but the proof has been in the pudding. The kids don’t care to go over there and sit around while Rose and I chat so I don’t make them. So we have had to make the best of it on our own. Like I said though, I don’t regret it, it was a good attempt.
Now I want some pudding. lol
Just yesterday I asked Lori about a multi-level business, and as soon as the words were texted I felt awful for a moment. Then I quickly realized that that phrase “multi-level” made me alittle sick because of the memory of what we had all been in when we were under “that guru”. I guess that making the best of even our memories is an on-going endeavor. So her most recent comment about those days were very well descriptive for me also. I verify the words about how he would comment behind the backs of his richest (weakest) clients, while we poorer ones were suppose to be satisfied with all the harsh corrections and scrunitizing of our every word and action. But, in hind-sight, we were at least slightly better off, kinda like the traditional step-children, made stronger by all that adversity.
Oh, and The Lord did bless us all with some healthy Superfood and Correctives (which Fred, GrandmaDot and I are still using even after all these years). I somehow hope that in God’s mercy, we all have changed since those days, even that guru and his wife. We may have all endured that awful trial, those many years, but most everyone experiences odd things in their lives. For example those living under Hitler, Stalin, and even today in North Korea, etc. One of the worse things I have ever read about was the effects of the infamous “Red Guard” in Red China under Mao. He so efficiently brain-washed the youth of China that they gladly turned in their own parents to be tortured and put to death.
Praying for the continual healing of every single person who was ever affected by that experience, both young and old. The young bare the scars of one kind, the older the awful shame of “ought to know better” and pain of irresponsibility in their parenting years. And then there are the “in-betweens”?
Good Heavens! What could possibly be keeping their Dad from spending time with them?!?!? I mean really!!! No one can even possibly imagine how busy my Dad was in those 12 years that he invested his very valuable time into my little bitty life….but he must have really sacrificed a lot in order to do that. My Mom would always say that he missed many Friday nights, but my pea-brain can only recall that I would very rarely receive a call a few days in advance telling me that he could not make it.
Nadeen had married in 1952, when I was 10 and he would still come to get “just” me. He and Lu had even adopted Brett by the time I was 13 and he still managed to come & get me for our “date” on Friday evenings. (Remember he was constantly facing great challenges in owning and operating Red-E-Crete of San Diego.) Oh, later, after he determined that I would not be in a painful position being around “Auntie Lu” he would bring me to their home. And I even got to take a vacation to San Francisco with them once.)
Maybe Karl needs a schedule! (tee-hee) No, really, that could help but he really may need to gain some self-confidence in his role as a father. Yes, most people have an over-supply of self-love…but I mean self-confidence….like in “Well, God made me a parent, so I must learn quickly, how to be a good parent and really start parenting…fast! Because they grow up so fast. I must get ahold of The Lord and get His help, before I miss my chance.”
Lori, I did pray that way when you & your sister were young, but then, regrettably, I dropped the ball. I really found it easier to let that guru finish up the job as you two became young adults. Regretting, but also repenting, with great love and respect for you, Your Mom
I am trying to remember my experiences as a child visiting older people. Because Gran-Gran is so senile she can’t help me anymore in this way.
I would go visit Mrs.Morgan who lived upstairs in the apartments we lived in on the eastern side of Glendale after Mom moved us from the house on Jackson Street. So I was about 12-since I was entering 6th grade. (And very lonely for all the friends I no longer could see.) She would fix some tea & cookies or something and we would visit. What we spoke about I do not remember, but her kindness and gratitude to see me was very evident. My Mom had to warn me not to scare her in the stairswell. I had laughed so hard and enjoyed her jumping so much, I was awful, really! But anyway, somehow, Mrs.Morgan and I were good for each other.
I was also encountering the beginnings of that teenage culture of “cliques”, kids were jocking for positions in 6th grade back then in California. I was not getting with the program. My teacher, Mr Bertrand, went to see my Mom at work waitressing at Pike’s Verdugo Oaks, a restaurant on Glenoaks (I think) to ask my Mom what was bother me so much as to make me such a vegetable, like in non-responsive. She didn’t know. But I think that I must have felt out-of-place and missed my friends back in the eastern side of town. Glendale was divided in half by the two high schools that were very competitive. Nadeen graduated from Glendale High…in l952 and I later graduated from Hoover High….in 1962, (so there will be a 50 year reunion this year).
Anyway, kids need “friends” of all differing ages, so they don’t feel so lonesome and they experience less prejudicism – I think. I don’t recall Mrs.Morgan having a lot of company, so we sure did need each other. Her teenage grandaughter would visit her and there was a big incident when this girl’s new date shot and killed her old boyfriend right in front of the apartments. Yep, it was in the newspaper, so it is recorded.
Karl’s parents are not too well so they could not be counted on to be of any real help to you as far as sitting with the children, Sweetheart. But, there are other ways that old people can be of value and these ways are illusive…hard to identily, but very valuable! Your children learning to serve them in their weakness will be of great mutual value.The Oriental cultures all highly esteem the older people of the earth. It’s the Occidental cultures that do not, they consider themselves pragmatic, too efficient to bother with slow, out-dated people, they catagorize as “useless”.
You seem to have become a combination of the East and the West, so I am sure that you will work out a solution to both the “missing father” and the “sickly grandparents” problems. Especially since the welfare of your “charges” is concerned. Hey, maybe your Facebook friends can offer suggestions or inspirations about the value of the aged and the value of fatherhood. LoveAgain, Mom