Memories

As a Facebook junkie I signed on to Facebook this morning to catch up on the latest gossip, news, cute puppy videos, etc. One of Facebook's features is posting a "Facebook Memory", a post from 2 years ago, 5 years ago, any number of years, but on this exact date. Sometimes they make me sad but today's tickled me pink. Cassi could be so much more serious than me at times, but she was sarcastic, hilarious, too cool for school...and also an old soul.

I always loved her friends, hanging out with her friends, enjoying their culture, and I didn't see anything unusual about it...but she did!!! LOL Oh how we can embarrass our children when we think we are just being cool. I think of myself as a senior teenager, lol. Anyway, I thought I was home alone and I must have been feeling quite chipper and started belting out one of my favorite pop songs at that time, completely unselfconscience as I thought I was alone. Then, Cassi and her friend Hayley walked out of Cassi's room...Cassi just sighed, rolled her eyes, and called me stupid under her breath...LMAO...Classic Cassi.

It reminded me of another memory, a good one. A couple of years before that, Cassi was in her second or third year of college, she seemed to have stabilized and I believed had made it through a really bad period of her life and had a bright future ahead of her. So, I was relieved and as the months passed turned my thoughts more inward considering what I was doing with my life. I had a job I hated, absolutely hated, but provided a good salary and even better benefits. I came to realise that spending that salary on my time off was not what I needed to feel better about myself, I wanted to do something meaningful to me. I started looking into wildlife preserves and found one in South Africa where I could work, volunteering my time, for room (a cot) and board. I thought maybe devoting a year or so of my life to something like that might fill an emptyness in my soul that I couldn't seem to escape. Taking care of Cassi had been my sole purpose for so long, and it seemed she wasn't needing me so much anymore, but I would only do it with her blessing. So I talked to her, explained how I was feeling (empty nester), how I had nothing positive to give to my job and certainly received nothing positive from it. Then I told her that I was her mother first and foremost and as long as she needed me I would not devote my life to anything else. She thought about it for awhile and then told me she wasn't ready for something like that...it was her way of saying she needed me. So many months passed, she had some ups and downs but seemed to navigate her way through them very well. Maybe a year later I brought up the subject again...this time she rolled her eyes and said, "Momma, you know you'd just get hot and be miserable."...Oh..yeah...I hadn't thought of that. South Africa is HOT...and no air conditioning in the living quarters...hmmm. I HATE the heat, I HATE Florida heat, would I be able to tolerate African heat??? And was I so shallow that I would give up on my dream because of the discomfort that so many live with??? My lily white skin turns beet red and angry in the 80's. I break out in heat rashes in the 90's. Triple degrees...Ugh, I couldn't give my best when I was so distracted by my own physical misery, Could I??? Her statement gave me a lot to think about...it wasn't until later that I realised it was another way of telling me she wasn't ready for me to be relatively out of her life for a year. It was her too cool for school way of saying, "No Mom, I need you here." She was like her Daddy that way...not comfortable revealing such a sentiment, so finding another way to get her point across.

My kid KNEW how I hated heat...Lol...and was sharp enough to use that knowledge to curb my desire to devote my life to something besides her.

Fast forward a couple of years...she had graduated and was sending out resumes, hundreds of resumes, to her dream destinations, mainly the Pacific Northwest. Her work produced exactly two interviews, one in Washington State and one in North Dakota. She was so excited about these interviews...naively believing one of the jobs would be hers, despite her lack of experience. While waiting to hear from her future employer she declared her intention for her Dad and I to start looking for houses...it didn't even occur to her that we might not follow her wherever she went...she was right, as long as she wanted and needed us near we would have moved Heaven and earth to be there. At the age of 22, when her depression returned with a vengance, she thought she could outrun it and we would have been right there running beside her.

I wonder how things would have worked out if she had gotten one of those jobs...would the massive change and upheaval have distracted her from her dark thoughts??? Would a new job, new people, new scenary have inspired a different outlook...a whole new life yet with the full support of her parents...there's no way to know. She wasn't hired at either job due to lack of experience, and seemed to lose hope that her dreams would ever come true. She would have made it, eventually, to Seattle,or Portland or wherever she wanted to go. I wish she would have realised that...maybe she would have given me a grandchild by now and I would be spending my days caring for my mini-Cassi instead of scrolling Facebook and watching t.v., eating nothing but getting fatter, taking pills to knock me out at night...sigh...girls, please don't get jealous of my exciting life. Maybe I should check up on that wildlife preserve I was so enthralled with years ago, I still have time to make my life count.