Time heals all wounds? hmmmmm…
What happens after pretty much your whole life gets squished like a bug? I don’t know about the rest of you but I drank! Like a fish. I would make it through the day till about 1:00. Then I would walk across to my handy convenience store and buy a case of beer. I would drink a 12 pack before Mike got home at night from work! Then we would share the rest, with me usually stealing a couple of his! I worked a couple of crappy jobs in that time, and just didn’t have the ambition to do very much of anything else!
In the meantime, I had family members move in for awhile. We rented a huge place for us all and I tried not to drink so much! I tried to act like life was OK and we would make it through it, that this was just a rough patch. Problem was that I had no direction. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My self esteem was so low that I didn’t really think that I was good for anything.
After 8 months of this, my family moved back to the mainland and left us kind of (Okay, totally) holding the bag with this huge house. Our landlady was really nice though. We did repairs for her on the house and took care of things she had wanted to do for some time. So, we parted on great terms and moved back into Waikiki. We found an apartment in the same building we had moved from, and life went back to what it had been. We were both drinking and partying pretty heavily. We would make it through the night and pretty much fall into bed to drunk to worry about anything else in life!
Then a couple of things changed for us. One was a job I took with a little old lady who lived in the building in front of ours. Her name was Ruth, and I credit her with probably saving my life! She needed someone to come in and help her with meals and light housework. It started out just 3 days a week. She was a very conservative christian woman who had moved to Hawaii from Pennsylvania. Just being around her, and listening to her world view, helped me to understand that I had to decide how I was going to live and for what purpose. She brought me back to my christian roots and made me want to be a better person than I was at that moment in time. She sensed that I was going through something but, never asked me. I never could really talk about how I felt losing those babies. To this day, I don’t say all that much about it when asked. Luckily, people don’t ask any more.
Anyway, I worked for Ruth about a year. In that time we became very close. Her health continued to decline, and when I asked her what she wanted to do she just said she wanted to go home. I was going over to her apartment everyday by this time. Boy, was it taking a toll on me. My back, hips, and shoulders were tore up all the time! Ruth was a pretty good sized girl! She couldn’t move very well either, and I had to lift her around. I had to charge her for my time as well. She understood that, and we continued on with me trying to find some help. Finally, I found some volunteers to come in on Sundays. That helped a lot! Then the state came to her house to assess her. She was thinking of going into a nursing home by this time. Luckily, the daughter was in town for this assessment. Ruth told the nurse that she only wanted to go home. The daughter took her back home.
Mike and I, in the meantime, bought a condo just outside of Waikiki. I actually call it a compartment! 750 square feet including the lanai (balcony)! It is a nice little two bedroom, two bath, and two parking stalls! The extra parking stall clinched the deal! Finding parking on this side of the island is a drag! We settled in and enjoying our new home. This was the first place we have ever bought!
We fixed it up as a place that was definitely for adults. We had one bedroom, and the other bedroom was a tv room. The cats thought it was all theirs. I think that it is the happiest we had been in about 4 years. The following January (2002), we got a phone call asking us to take in Mike’s 14, (almost 15) year old nephew. It seemed meant to be because my job had ended. Also, I should point out that it has never been unusual for us to take in nieces and nephews for what ever reason. We have had a hand in raising a lot of kids.
So, we decided to embrace this and see what we could do to help this kid. We started changing the place around to include a teenager. We also decided to just quit drinking cold turkey. Went back to church and really got involved with it. By the time our nephew got here our lives had done a total 360! We were “normal” people.
When my nephew got here it was obvious that things with him were not quite right. At 14 his reading and writing were very childlike, and his reading skills were not to good. He was a freshman in high school special ed but, it was obvious he was being socially promoted!
We headed to the doctor and he was sent on to the psychologist after that to try and figure out what was wrong with him. In the end, a woman in the homeschool group we had joined, asked me some interesting questions. She also gave me a book to read. I read it and headed back to the doctors. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Something I had barely heard of before, but which was so obvious once you knew what to look for. The doctors agreed that it was probably that. I think they were reluctant to say it for sure because they only had my word on how much the mom drank while pregnant with him. The psychologist and I decided to take him off of the depacote he had been on. It just didn’t seem to be the right medication for him.
He did take ritalin once a day to help with learning time. This was his decision as he just could not sit still if he didn’t take it. He would sit and try to look at his work and just could not focus on it! It would get to where he was so frustrated that he would throw everything away from himself and all but scream. Ritalin was good for 4 hours after he took it. That gave me just enough time to teach him in English and Math.
By the time that he went back to his home state, he could read, write, do fractions, and hold down a job. I feel like homeschooling him was the only way to go. He could do everything at his own pace and not feel like he was a “special ed” kid.
His sister came to live with us 4 months after he did. She brought the sunshine with her! She is a very smart girl with a lot of ambition! She loves to sing, dance, act, and just play. She was with us till she was 17. Just a couple of years they each stayed with us. She brought a whole lot of laughter and fun to our house. She didn’t go home till about a year after her brother.
We treated these two as if they were our very own! We enjoyed them both so much and still miss them! They just brought to our home exactly what we always wanted, children! It just seemed so natural. I had no desire to drink or do anything but be a great mom! Life was wonderful. Then our nephew decided he was ready to go back home. He has always wanted to come back here though. We have told them all that once they become adults, they have to pay their own way back here! That will let you know if they are serious or not!
It was the end of 2004 and Mike came home one night from work just like everynight! Only one difference though. He looked at me and said, I am ready to adopt! I just looked at him and for once in my life was totally speechless!