Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Reflections

My birthday was last week and as I start another decade of my life, I sit and reflect on where I have been and where my life has led me.

Background: I grew up on a farm with my grandparents raising my sister and I. Our parents were divorced when I was 4 and my mother had us living with her. One day she brought the laundry and us girls and our baby brother to my grandparents and said she would be back in a couple of days and she never returned. My grandparents who had two kids of their own still at home, one girl 16 and a boy 12 couldn't keep all of us so my brother who was only 5 months old was adopted by my grandfather sister and husband. My grandparents then got guardianship of us girls. We had a good life from then on and enjoyed living and working on farms in the northern Illinois area.

I think because of this early trauma, I vowed if I got married, I would never put my children through that. Well, here I am married 52 years and raised three wonderful children so I guess I made it. Yes, being married is not always easy and yes we had our bad times but there were many more good times than bad.

My husband, John and I are best friends and have worked all our lives until we retired 6 years ago. The last few years of working we even worked in the same job so were together 24/7 so when we retired we didn't have that trauma of all of a sudden being together all the time.

We even spent 20 years of doing craft shows all over the western states. We really enjoyed doing them with John setting up everything and I doing all the sewing. It worked great. We would work all week at regular jobs and our weekend were craft shows. We still do a couple of shows a year but due to health problems, that is all that we can manage. Then John doesn't drive anymore so now the shows are all local.

I love doing my crafts and I love to sew so now with a website I am able to sell some of my work that way too. I try to keep my cost low and I don't charge what I know I should charge for my work but it is more of "keeping busy" so as long as I can make enough to cover my costs of materials and a little extra to cover the shows, I am happy.

I have rambled on now and never got to the part of reflection that I started this blog with so tomorrow is another day. I have lots of time, so if I get busy doing something else I will write and explore what my life has given me.

1 comment:

Patty Moore said...

Stopping by to say hello and to enjoy your blog on my CDA blog hopp'in journey.

Trish