I have been going through a major transformation in my life the past few weeks. Most of this transformation has stemmed from the fact that a few weeks ago I came to a life shattering conclusion that I have been a coward for a very long time. Somewhere in my life I decided that it was more important to make people feel good than to do the right thing. And because of this decision I made, Lord knows when, my life has been a series of bad decisions based on someone’s tears, fears, angst or discontent.
The effects of a cowardly man are far reaching. Everything that requires the strength of a man are shot to hell when a man refuses to be strong. And I believe things are designed to be that way. Men are made strong so we can use our strength. We are made aggressive so we can be aggressors. We are made to withstand because we need to withstand. It is in our makeup. Strength is not supposed to be something that looks good on a model or handles itself well under circumstance, strength is a meant to a be a lifestyle, a characteristic that is exuded daily by all men.
I have not lived that lifestyle. I have indeed allowed myself to be swayed by many different circumstances. And in so doing I have surrendered my position as a man, a leader and head of household to my wife. I have not only stripped myself of the authority and dominion inherent to me as a man but I have also placed my wife in a position where her identity as a woman is cloudy because of the things she has to do because I have chosen not to do them.
One area of long standing contention in my marriage has been finances. I am the sole provider of the house and have been for about five years or so. In the 13 years that Sandi and I have been married she has worked outside of the home for about five years with the remaining eight years being spread out over several periods in our marriage when we had new children or some other life event allowed/necessitated her be home with the kids.
Up until a few years ago I had managed the money in our home. I was diligent, relentless and incredibly passionate about making sure our bills were paid and our obligations met. I had the bank account balanced against my register every morning. I knew, to the penny, how much money I had available to my at any given point of any given day. I was on it.
Unfortunately at that time we did not make a whole lot of money so even though I had things firmly under control we did not really have a lifestyle. We had kids, a place to live, cars to drive and a little bit of food in the fridge. But that was about it. And Sandi felt like she was being locked out of the finances.
So in response to her feelings I decided to offer control of the finances to her. I am not one for two people handle the same task at the same time so I told her that she could have it if she was willing to take it all. She agreed and a few years back I gave her everything I had in relation to our finances. And you know what? For a couple of years she did a kick ass job of making sure everything was handled appropriately just as I had done. She also saw to it that there was money for other lifestyle type things so we were not always so stuffed on what we could do or when.
She even made sure our credit improved. From very early on in my adult life I seemed to do everything under the sun to make sure that my credit was craptastic. She actually improved our credit standing and in late 2005 we began taking on credit again. It was nice to be able to qualify for things that required good credit because had, for so long, been such a huge credit risk that we were either completely unable to do things based on credit or we paid a huge premium for doing things on credit. So I felt great about her handling the money and the success we were having.
In September of 2006 I changed jobs. I began to earn about 50% more than I was earning at my old job. We had lots more money and what appeared to be a growing lifestyle. And then things began to take a turn for the worse in our finances. We had amassed an enormous amount of debt. Things were not getting paid. We began to get calls from creditors. We began to not have money. This was about summer 2007.
Being faced with some troubling circumstances ahead I made a few decisions and didn’t make a few others that led to an increased lack in my household. The long and short of it is that I ended up costing my family my retirement to get us out of hock in June 2007. The biggest bills were paid, some smaller ones were paid off completely. We put some money (about $6,000) into savings and put a little more (about $2,500) into savings for our children ($500 each for five kids). It felt good, but in a bad way. While the bills were paid and we had some savings immediately I knew that withdrawing $60,000 worth of my retirement would have a negative effect on our lives.
Spring forth to December 2007. Even though we had paid off almost all of our debt just six months earlier we were maxed out again. I had about $200 cash to spend on Christmas for my entire family, my wife and my kids. My credit cards were shut off or at their limits. Times were tough. Bills were not getting paid again. Calls were coming in again. The kids began to understand that Privacy Manager, or 1-800 Services on the phone meant that neither mom nor dad wanted to take that call. In January of this year I was faced with another decision to make.
I chose to borrow against my paid off car so I could pay down our American Express bill. Again. We paid a few others too but the AmEx bill has always been the one that has gotten us into trouble. And mind you we had burned through the $6,000 grand in savings (I was saving that for the tax bill on the retirement withdrawal that I knew was coming) and the kids savings had been wiped out too. We had nothing at our disposal except my car. So I had to do something. I hocked my car.
Now in the midst of all this I had made a firm decision in my head to take back control of the finances of our home. And each time I was completely swayed by my wife’s tears and heartfelt sentiment that she could get things back under control if she just had a little more time. Plus she said that she didn’t want to be kept out of the finances again and that when I was doing the money before I would just push her down and not listen to her. So again, I caved. Each time we hit rock bottom I would try to get us back up to a point and still let the situation run. I was scared of my wife’s reaction and feelings.
Let’s come back to here and now shall we? We are just about to move into August. The last time we paid anything to American Express, I come to find out, was April. Our truck payment is behind. Most of my cards are behind a month or more. Some have even gone all the way to collection agencies. I am getting multiple calls daily from various collectors that want to be paid. And, even though I was just told a few weeks ago that our car payments were up to date and that we are good, I also find out this past Saturday that we are overdrawn in our back account by $800.
“What? How could we be negative?” she says. “I was watching that.”
This morning we are up to $1,000 negative in our account. If it gets any worse we will not be able to pay our rent. We are already not going to be able to buy groceries. Our utility bills are mounting because they are months behind and I have a truck payment that is about to get to 60 days late. How much longer should I wait to see if this thing gets better?
Granted things have gotten out of hand in terms of cost all over the place. The economy is crap right now thanks to fuel prices. The cost of gas is driving the cost of everything else up so things that we rely on daily are getting harder and harder to afford. But when it comes right down to it, how would that explain the condition of our expenses?
I blame myself. Sandi should never had been put into a position to handle this. It is my role as the leader of our household to take care of things like this. I have failed her, my family and myself. I have let this get out of control. That gets fixed now.
A man with no balls allows all sorts of mischief to take place right under his nose because he is too damned scared to make a change. Today, I take my balls back. This will be fixed.
Spending time with your kids is important. When you have five of them like I do you realize that it is not only important but sometimes difficult to do in a fashion that speaks the each at his/her level. My children range in age from 3 to 12 so what one may like the others may not.
One of the things that my wife and I try to do from time to time is allow for parent/child time that takes into account the childs age. To foster this we sometimes schedule time with the child(ren) for whom the time spent will be most appreciated and enjoyed.
Last night we did that with the two older girls. Sarah and Rebekah have been putting in a lot of time and work into the home since Sandi has been sick. They are working probably a little harder than kids their age should and they have needed a break almost as long as I have. So to give them a little time to cut loose Sandi and I decided that after the three younger kids went to bed we would have Sarah and Rebekah join us for a board game in the living room.
Sarah suggested Scrabble and, since Scrabble can have a definite end to it, I was all for it. We set the board up, picked out tiles and picked who was to go first. We started playing and as is common with me I busted out the Fritos, Cheetos and Funyuns.
We played, we ate, we learned. We were have a grand old time. And then it happened. 10:30 PM. This is the time that Sandi and I usually have to start yelling at our two oldest kids to stop talking, turn their lights out, be quiet, stop whispering, stop laughing, stop yelling and all that other stuff that is totally not conducive to a couple sleeping kids.
What made it even funnier was that as my daughters entered into their goofy stage, the imaginations and creativity began to show brighter and brighter. The icing on the cake was when they started trying to help mom user her “Y”. Some of the combinated words that the kids came up were:
- tuftedYkit
- funkYpanty
- greensYhim
- weenYbeefy
In addition to these beauties, there was much laughter, rolling on the ground, snorting and all sorts of other goodness that even got mom into the groove. While sitting there looking at the madness of three tired females rolling all over the place laughing their bootYis off I realized something: I was at a home brewed slumper party. Crikey!
Not wanting to feel too left out I decided to throw my own little bit into the mix. No, it was not a wordYword. Instead it was a Lord of the Rings spin (which Sarah was doing plenty of as well). My contribution to this little shindig: Foghoggin Baggins
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that my new nickname is now Foghoggin Baggins.
One of the most challenging aspects of parenting, in my opinion, is occupying your children with cool experiences that enrich them and you while at the same time building the parent/child bond that is so necessary in our families of today. For the past few years I have made it a point to get my kids out as much as possible, taking them to places like Tilden Park, the Lindsey Wildlife Museum, the Oakland Zoo, the Tech Museum of Innovation and a few others. I think it is important to get them out of the house while allowing them to experience things they enjoy and letting them learn at the same time.
In keeping with the theme this week, I am continually challenged to find things to do with the kids that will meet all of the things I want for them but still allow me to take care of them and the house as needed. With weekends being so short nowadays I am finding that my free time to take outings with the kids has been dramatically reduced in favor of cleaning the house and other domestic chores that are absolutely necessary to keeping our house running at least somewhat smoothly. Which brings me to my next question.
At what point do you forgo domestic duties to enjoy time with your family? I have always been of the mindset that family comes first. But I can see how that undermined my wife’s attempt at order in the house are when I look at how terribly behind I get when I take the kids out when I should be home handling home related business. And the more I do this the more worn out I get, which leads me to cut back on some of this and spend more time at home, which ends up in me feeling guilty that I am damaging my kids by not getting them out of the house more.
Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? I want a clean and orderly home. I want a haven for my children to be able to live, grow, learn and experience in. But I also want for my children to be able to experience life beyond the borders of our front and back yards. I want my kids to not just read about stuff but to be able to experience them and learn firsthand what the thing they are learning is really all about.
To that end I have though that there are things we can do that will not require a whole lot of time outside of the home but will still allow for a fun experience for all of us. Some of the things I am thinking are:
Of course we cannot always do everything around cleaning the house, right? At least that is what I am aiming for. Some of the other things that I have thought about that might require a little more time outside of the house, but would be incredibly fun:
Now my only contention is with how I go about doing all of these things with a sick wife at home and a home that needs desperate maintenance almost every day. But I suppose that is why I write. Because I so do not have all the answers. In fact, I don’t think I have any answers. I just have a strong desire to take care of my family and provide for them as best I can.
A few weeks ago my wife was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a very lifestyle disturbing illness that is very difficult to diagnose and ever more difficult to treat. In a nutshell:
The defining symptoms of fibromyalgia are chronic, widespread pain and tenderness to light touch. Other symptoms can include moderate to severe fatigue, a heightened and painful response to gentle touch (allodynia), needle-like tingling of the skin, muscle aches, prolonged muscle spasms, weakness in the limbs, nerve pain, functional bowel disturbances, and chronic sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances may be related to a phenomenon called alpha-delta sleep, a condition in which deep sleep (associated with delta waves) is frequently interrupted by bursts of alpha waves, which normally occur during wakefulness. Slow-wave sleep is often dramatically reduced.
Many patients experience cognitive dysfunction (known as “brain fog” or “fibrofog”), which may be characterized by impaired concentration, problems with short and long-term memory, short-term memory consolidation, genitourinary symptoms and interstitial cystitis, dermatological disorders, headaches, myoclonic twitches, and symptomatic hypoglycemia. Although fibromyalgia is classified based on the presence of chronic widespread pain, pain may also be localized in areas such as the shoulders, neck, low back, hips, or other areas. Many sufferers also experience varying degrees of facial pain and have high rates of comorbid temporomandibular joint disorder. Not all patients have all symptoms.
Wikipedia
At first I thought the doctor was spot on because my wife has exhibited many of those symptoms in the past eight months that she has been ill. There were a few inconsistencies with the diagnosis in my opinion, but for the most part all of the things that are encompassed by fibromyalgia were apparent in my wife’s lack of health for the last eight months.
Then a few days ago my wife found Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS, or CFS for short) and began to look closer at that. Now I have read about CFS. In fact, when my wife first got sick back in November I read I about CFS and thought that the symptoms seemed eerily similar to what she was experiencing. I even suggested it to my wife’s doctor in January and, as of about a month ago, the only thing related to it that was ever put in my wife’s chart was “fatigue”. Not CFS, just fatigue.
Looking closer as CFS you’ll find:
CFIDS is characterized by incapacitating fatigue (experienced as profound exhaustion and extremely poor stamina) and problems with concentration and short-term memory. It is also accompanied by flu-like symptoms such as pain in the joints and muscles, unrefreshing sleep, tender lymph nodes, sore throat and headache. A distinctive characteristic of the illness is post-exertional malaise, a worsening of symptoms following physical or mental exertion occurring within 12-48 hours of the exertion and requiring an extended recovery period.
…
Additional symptoms are reported by people with CFIDS (PWCs) such as word-finding difficulties, inability to comprehend/retain what is read, inability to calculate numbers and impairment of speech and/or reasoning. PWCs may also have visual disturbances (blurring, sensitivity to light, eye pain, need for frequent prescription changes); psychological problems (depression, irritability, anxiety, panic attacks, personality changes, mood swings); chills and night sweats; shortness of breath; dizziness and balance problems; sensitivity to heat and/or cold; alcohol intolerance; irregular heartbeat; irritable bowel (abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, intestinal gas); low-grade fever or low body temperature; numbness, tingling and/or burning sensations in the face or extremities; dryness of the mouth and eyes (sicca syndrome); gynecological problems including PMS and endometriosis; chest pains; rashes; ringing in the ears (tinnitus); allergies and sensitivities to noise/sound, odors, chemicals and medications; weight changes without changes in diet; light-headedness; mental fogginess; fainting; muscle twitching; and seizures.
CFIDS Association of America
The more I look at CFS the more I think that this is where the problem lies. I think my wife has been stricken by this illness more than I am thinking fibromyalgia. Here is my thought process:
CFS and Fibromyalgia and how they stack up to my wife
| |
CFS |
Fibromyalgia |
My Wife |
| Data for this table gathered from CFIDS and Wikipedia |
| Incapacitating Fatigue |
X |
X |
X |
| Problems W/concentration & Short-term Memory |
X |
X |
X |
| Flu-like Symptoms |
X |
X |
X |
| Unrefreshing Sleep |
X |
X |
X |
| Tender Lymph Nodes |
X |
X |
X |
| Sore Throat |
X |
|
|
| Headache |
X |
X |
X |
| Post-exertional Malaise |
X |
|
X |
| Inability To Comprehend/retain What Is Read |
X |
|
X |
| Inability To Calculate Numbers |
X |
|
X |
| Impairment Of Speech And/or Reasoning |
X |
|
|
| Visual Disturbances |
X |
|
X |
| Depression |
X |
X |
X |
| Irritability |
X |
X |
X |
| Anxiety |
X |
X |
X |
| Panic Attacks |
X |
X |
X |
| Personality Changes |
X |
|
X |
| Mood Swings |
X |
|
X |
| Chills And Night Sweats |
X |
|
X |
| Shortness Of Breath |
X |
|
X |
| Dizziness And Balance Problems |
X |
X |
X |
| Sensitivity To Heat And/or Cold |
X |
|
|
| Alcohol Intolerance |
X |
|
|
| Irregular Heartbeat |
X |
|
X |
| Irritable Bowel |
X |
X |
X |
| Low-grade Fever Or Low Body Temperature |
X |
|
X |
| Numbness, Tingling And/or Burning Sensations In The Face Or Extremities |
X |
X |
|
| Dryness Of The Mouth And Eyes |
X |
|
X |
| Gynecological Problems Including PMS And Endometriosis |
X |
|
X |
| Chest Pains |
X |
|
|
| Rashes |
X |
|
|
| Ringing In The Ears |
X |
|
|
| Allergies |
X |
|
X |
| Sensitivities To Noise/sound, Odors, Chemicals And Medications |
X |
|
X |
| Weight Changes Without Changes In Diet |
X |
|
X |
| Light-headedness |
X |
|
X |
| Mental Fogginess |
X |
X |
X |
| Fainting |
X |
|
|
| Muscle Twitching |
X |
|
|
| Seizures |
X |
|
|
If you look closely you can see that many of the symptoms Sandi exhibits are found in CFS. And while the fibromyalgia camp still carries with it a heavy list of things that suck, Sandi is experiencing more of the CFS related issues than the fibromyalgia ones.
This leads me to think the doctors have misdiagnosed her. Which means they are treating something that is not what she has. Which means the chances of her improving her health are pretty much crap. Which means that our family is going to continue to go through hell daily until something can be done.
The most daunting thing about CFS, as I continue to study it, is the insanely long recovery period. It is one in which people with CFS may never actually fully recover. And in general that period is between two and five years. How badly does that suck to be the poor soul with CFS? Living, day in and day out like you have just gotten run over by a train and knowing that you are going to be run over again tomorrow as soon as you wake up, and then again the next day, and again the next, and so on. For years.
I really feel a great deal of sympathy for my wife right now because she is in a place that no one should ever have to be. Her life is very hard right now and as such, the lives of her family members are very hard right now. But praise God, there are people that are willing to help us and many have already helped us.
I am just trying to wade through the stuff that I have take care of now that my wife is, in effect, incapacitated. But that will be for tomorrow’s post I think, one in which I will call out for help from single parents that are trying to raise kids, take care of the house and take care of the bills.
That ought to be fun.
Yesterday morning I woke up earlier than I have in a long time. This is somewhat unusual because I have been working so hard and so long at home (because of Sandi being as sick as she is right now) that I have to fight myself pretty hard to get out of bed before 8:00 AM on any given day (which is the latest that I can leave in order to get to work at a time that allows me to leave before 7:00 in the evening).
Yep, up early and proud of myself I decided that I would pat myself on the back a little bit by making myself breakfast. This has been a rarity as of late since I am usually hauling butt to get out of the house before 8 o’clock. In fact, I have made my own breakfast for years seeing as I am usually the only grown up when it is time for me to eat breakfast.
With breakfast on the brain I showered as quickly as I could and got myself ready to leave for work. I headed toward the kitchen with the intent of cooking when I ran into Adriannah in the living. Her first words to me for the day were “Can you make me an egg sandwich?”.
Not wanting to be a curmudgeon of a father I told her that I would. Not wanting to share any more than I had to at this point I also told her to be quiet so as not to wake up her siblings. It didn’t matter.
Aaron woke up a few minutes into Annah’s breakfast sandwich. Knowing that I was now at least three sandwiches into this morning I got a little frantic. Knowing that I was running out Egg Beaters AND bread I got quite a bit more frantic. Apparently that was just enough to wake up Alaynah.
Now I had three children awake, very little time to get myself out of the house, very little breakfast making material left and an uneasy feeling that it would only take the slightest sound to ensure that I made breakfast for all of my kids while not having any for me.
Ultimately the waking up stopped and I was able to cook sandwiches for all the kids that were awake at the same time as I was able to make me one. Awesome.
Though I could have left the house at about 7:05 and been on time instead I left the house at 7:55 having cooked four sandwiches and washed the dishes and kissed the kiddos and made me coffee.
Yes. I felt a little good about myself. Or was it my 0.025 ounce egg sandwich on bread heals that did that?
Today was a rough day for the Gonzalez family. Primarily for Sarah and Sandi, but everyone in the house felt a little something I am sure.
For the last few days Sarah’s mouse Peanut has been looking increasingly sicker. Sarah took her to the vet about a week ago and found out that she had an abscess in her mouth and a mite problem on her fur. She was not eating and because of that her teeth had overgrown to the point where she could now no longer eat.
The vet filed down her teeth for her and prescribed some antibiotic for her mouth.
Last night we noticed that Peanut looked very weak. She didn’t seem to want to move. She seemed very listless. She seemed tired. As I held her I noticed that she really just wanted to be right where she was and that was about all she wanted.
Given her condition we felt it was time to go back to the vet so we made an appointment for this morning.
Not a good morning
Sandi took Sarah and Peanut to the vet this morning. Sandi has not been doing that well herself and the added stress of Peanut being sick I think was enough to exacerbate her situation. In hindsight I should never have let her leave the house this morning.
Around 11:00 this morning I got a scream-a-gram from Rebekah telling me that Poppa would be dropping mom off and I would need to take him back to the vet to get his truck. This was the beginning of the stress for today.
What ended up happening is that Peanut died while at the Vet. There is a story in this but I don’t want to delve into that too much. For now the important thing to know is that one of Sarah’s “children” passed away.
Shortly after that Sandi began to have an emotional reaction of sorts and was no longer able to walk, stand or drive. Sarah was in bad shape emotionally as well. This left Sandi with one option: call for help.
Sandi’s dad dropped Sarah and Sandi off a short while later. When they got home Sarah was absolutely devastated. Sandi was completely broken down. In a very tearful voice Sarah communicated that Peanut had died. Immediately Alaynah began to cry. The house was sad.
A home full of mournful people
Needless to say our house was a wreck today. Sandi was basically back in the same place she was in late November. Sarah was very depressed and had a lot of questions which she naturally needed to ask mom. The other kids were pretty sad as well. The day just seemed to get harder all around.
As you can imagine things here a bit sensitive at the moment. As I write this the house is very somber. Sarah is very depressed. Sandi is beginning another bout with depression. The kids miss their mouse. Sarah misses her Peanut.
I am not sure what is going to come of this. I know that Sandi wants to have a funeral for Peanut. But rather than bury her she wants to allow Sarah a chance to make a coffin for her complete with decorations and the what not.
Whatever the case may be I can say that things are going to be amiss at the Gonzalez house for a while. But I guess that is to be expected.
If you have kids you know the importance of allowing your children the chance to have some one-on-one time with you. We all need time like that.
Last night I took my 12 year old daughter, Sarah, out to dinner and dessert. We chitchatted, ate, laughed… generally we had a good time.
I learned some things about my daughter last night as a result of our time.
I learned that she wants more time with her friends (without her sisters around). She actually talks with her friends about things most normal kids talks about with their friends (but that they would never, EVER talk about with mom and dad). I learned she has a great sense of humor (though I already knew that) and a flair for the disgusting (kinda like I do).
I also learned that Sarah trusts me. Enough to be open with me about something that most kids would probably be raked over the coals for (you now what I am talking about Sarah so there is no need to go into that here 
) and that even though there is a chance that she could have gotten in trouble for it, she still felt comfortable enough with me to bring it to my attention.
We laughed. We talked. We grew closer together.
I feel so fatherly now. Well, I did before our night out, but now I feel more so.
I am now planning my nights out with my other daughters. My next evening will be with Rebekah. I am sure she will love that. She has been asking for time together for a while now. And knowing her, we will probably hit the park to smack the baseball around a little bit before going any place else.
And I can already tell you that Adriannah will be wanting to hit up Starbucks and the book store when we go out. That is like her favorite.
Until then I will be relishing in the joy I have that my children still want to spend time with me and that I can still spend time with them. I like having the ability to spend time with my kids. We both need that I think.
Another gem from my uber-smart, ridiculously sexy, incredibly funny wife, Sandi:
Moving on to social studies…..Rebekah groggily walks into the living room and with a scowl on her face, plops onto the couch, and proceeds to mumble every offense each sibling has done to her, leading up to being awoken by them. She will make a great prosecuting attorney someday with that memory. Some are born mediators, some learn how to mediate and moms have mediation thrust upon them. I now have the job of hearing Rebekah’s feelings and having grace with my younger kids without having them all turn on me for not taking their particular side, while managing to keep my two-year-old from being permanently traumatized by the fan incident and my four-year-old from becoming a sadist. I really need to get to my coffee. In the meantime, Alaynah and Adriannah have managed to top their cookies with the remainder of the whipped cream that my son had had with his breakfast, and by remainder I mean the cookie is no longer visible amidst the cream. Apparently Aaron had only gotten a couple of squirts out of a brand new can, much to Adriannah and Alaynah’s delight. Nutrition, or lack thereof, has been taken care of. I send everyone back to their corners, meaning beds, and while I’d love to send my son back to his, his half-nelson grip around me allows me to have my hands free to do other things.
Tonight we had an interesting event occur in our house. I was on the phone scrambling to put together something for dinner. This is not unusual, but tonight was a bit more intense because our entire day was spent not cleaning, not cooking, not preparing, not doing anything in particular that would be considered conducive to putting a family of seven on the last legs of a Saturday evening.
I was on the phone trying to setup a dinner to-go order. The kids, all five of them, were sitting on the sofa next to me and were being insanely loud. I asked them to be quiet while I was on the phone and that seemed to skim right off of them and bounce onto the wall. As they got louder I got crankier and asked them to go to their rooms.
Again, this didn’t quite land where I intended it to. And the kids, not receiving my instructions as I had intended them, continued to get louder.
Given the circumstance I decided that it was time for the kids to get to their rooms and loudly instructed them to do so. They responded, albeit slowly, and were soon in their rooms. I completed the call, put the phone down and few seconds later heard this extremely stressed out, shrilly “Stop!”. It then repeated itself quickly a few times and was ultimately met with an equally loud response.
What ensued was a long talk between my two oldest daughters and I that spanned about two hours and left mom and I considering deeply how we are managing the development of our children.
My daughters, specifically my two oldest daughters, Sarah and Rebekah, have been asked as of late to take on more responsibilities in the home. I don’t think this is out of the norm at all since we all share the house and all have responsibility for our own spaces, our own actions and the effects of these spaces and actions. However, what has taken place over the last four months or so (about the time that we started dealing with Sandi’s depression and anxiety) is that everyone in the house has been asked to step up our games, myself included. And this has resulted in Sarah and Rebekah taking on a lot of responsibility that they should have grown up with but didn’t and is now becoming overwhelming for them.
As I began to look into what we were talking about I found myself remembering a time a few months ago where I sitting in front of my wife hearing about how unappreciated she felt, how unheard she felt, how nothing she seemed to do ever seemed to stick, how no one in the house cares about what she goes through daily, how it seems that no one does anything to show any signs of gratitude, how it seems that if something needs to be handled that the only way to make sure it is handled it to handle it herself and how it appears that there is a lot more things to do than there are hands to do it. And that is when it hit me.
Sarah and Rebekah were beginning to feel the same as Sandi did about four months ago. And, much like Sandi, they were not sharing their feelings for fear that their feelings may be met with opposition or condemnation. This realization had me feeling like a worthless father and careless man.
How could I let this happen? How could I, having seen this very occurrence in my wife, not see it taking place in my daughters’ lives? I have been so focused on making sure mom was taken care of (which is something I should do) that I did not spend any time making sure my family was taken care of (which is also something I should do). So in effect I have allowed my children to be placed on the same destructive path that my wife was on before all of this started.
Much like my wife, my children have a special value to me that puts them in a place to garner all of my love and affection. I should, by default, be putting my wife and kids ahead of everything else. But I haven’t done that. I put my wife first, but only after she had a nervous breakdown and literally could not get out of bed for weeks. Finally, after months of trying to right the ship, Sandi is getting to a place where we can actually have a somewhat normal family life. But this has come at a great expense.
Everything I was doing to put strain on my wife has now been transplanted to my daughters. Sarah and Bekah are feeling the bulk of this transfer because, honestly, Annah at seven years old and Laynie, at four years old, are really not going to be able to handle that much responsibility (they have their share, but it is almost more work to keep them moving along as it is to handle their parts for them - but I still give them their fair share of responsibility). Aaron, well, Aaron, at years old, is the primary cause of most of the calamity our house experiences at the moment.
AJ is a two year old boy. He is learning and is anxious to experience as much as he can, on his own, in as little time as possible. This keeps all of us in a state of !@^%$#!. With Sandi still recovering from depression and anxiety, and I out of the house almost 10 hours a day, you can imagine how easy it is for the responsibility of managing our family to fall on the two older girls. Tack on to that a sense of responsibility they feel when left with the kids in the same room and you can see that they have, unintentionally, put themselves deeper into the pit of having to do things that probably shouldn’t be doing… like trying to keep a two year old out of trouble or trying to discipline a four year old sister.
With all that said I feel like there needs to be a significant change in my household. Starting tonight with a talk with Sandi I am hoping that I can learn to not only manage taking care of my wife but also making sure that my children are protected, too. They need time to themselves, they need time with friends, they need stuff just like you and I need stuff. And I need to give that to them. So I will be working that out for them starting tomorrow.
I just hope that I can help the kids recover quickly. No one should have to deal with depression and anxiety. No one. And this is especially true for kids. Sarah, Bekah, Adriannah, Alaynah and Aaron all deserve better than this. And I plan to make things right for my house.
Yesterday evening, at around 7:30, the father of a good friend of our family past away. He was 75 years old and lived a life that I think was exemplified by the manner in which he was talked about.
Papi Chui had 5 daughters. He had one wife. He had the admiration of his family and friends. He was what every man wants to be.
I met Papi about a year before I actually met him. I met him through his daugher, Leti Hernandez and her husband Tom. They were business mentors to my wife and I and eventually turned in to our spiritual mentors in the early 90’s.
I remember hearing Leti talk about her father and her childhood. I remember her talking about Papi being very disciplined financially, never doing on credit would could and should be done with cash. I remember hearing how Papi paid for five weddings for his five daughters and how he stayed devoted and committed to his wife. He was the type of man’s man that most men want to model themselves after. And I felt like he was the type of guy I wanted to be just by hearing his daughter speak of him with such adoration and admiration in her voice.
As I look on my own life right now (as it is almost impossible not to at a time like this) I begin to think again that I want to have what Papi had in his life. I want my children to be totally enamored with me and talk to others about me with such admiration and adoration in their voices. I want to be married to the same woman I married the first, and last, time I got married. I want to be debt free, worry free and care free like he was. I want my funeral reception to be as packed as his, to the point were there were upward of 50 people that never made it in to the main ceremony room.
To Papi Chui, I thank you for the example you set for men to follow and for dealing with your family in a way that sets a higher standard for men than is normal. You will be missed.