School Days

After I got remarried and gave birth to Matt, we moved about 25 minutes away from my parents to a neighborhood called Ross, Ohio. That was the same time Angie “graduated” from UCP Preschool and started kindergarten. There were a lot of changes all at once, so it was a challenging time for all of us. My parents made the effort to come by often since Dad was retired by then. Caring for a new baby, taking Angie to a special needs kindergarten and keeping a four-year-old busy and happy was so challenging that I seem to have blocked out the memory of the most of the days. I remember that John loved ramen noodles for breakfast and had nice friends to play with. I remember that Matt was an extremely peaceful and happy baby. I remember that when I came home from shopping one day, Angie had a strange look on her face, a look of pain. When I asked my husband what was wrong, he was vague. He avoided giving me an answer. As I was moving her little body she screamed and he eventually admitted that we had been trying to give her “therapy.” I had no idea what he did (he had never even come to observe therapy) and if he had any idea he didn’t tell me, so I took her to the emergency room where they discovered she had a broken leg after doing a bone scan.

This was when I started to wonder if I had made a grave mistake getting married and at the same time I was beginning to understand just how fragile Angie was.

Angie recovered, Matt and John grew and day-to-day life went on relatively normally. Over and above the daily routine, I found my new support system close to our new home, although I didn’t realize that was what is was at the time. One of new neighbors became great friends with us.  One reason we got so close was because we both had new baby boys born within about two weeks of each other. Another blessing was being closer to my cousin Lessy and her family. She and her husband welcomed us into their lives. They had four amazing children who acted as big brothers and sisters to John and Matt. In addition, I got a very part time job working for a fabric store called Stretch and Sew. This job gave me a place to go and a chance to make a little money. It also gave me the opportunity to be creative by giving me sewing projects where I would get a picture, design a pattern and make an outfit for store displays. Eventually, I’d even get to keep the new outfit!

The most important and impactful thing about that move was the connection we gained with my cousin and her family.  The first thing was an invitation to sing with them in their music ministry at church. I had studied voice through both high school and college, but with my life so full of caring for my kids, I had let it drop. After accepting their invite, each Wednesday evening I joined them for practice sitting around their kitchen table. Matt sat in his pumpkin seat in the middle of table as a baby, Angie watched and John played. Lessy played the mandolin while each of her four children played either their guitars or their banjo. Singing at church again with them really lifted me up, and seeing my children having a great time with their big cousins plus being around their farm gave me so much joy. We were all in a very good place.