HER STORY - THEIR STORIES

HER STORY - THEIR STORIES 

 

> At night, on a darkened street when she has good friends as passengers, she sometimes turns off the car’s headlights to give them a parallel parking experience they would always remember. Doing this really doesn’t surprise them because, in their own way, they are all kindred spirits who love to do odd and unexpected things.

> She loves to create back stories to the human echos she hears in the distant. And some of these back stories become characters in the plays she writes.

> Late at night, while driving, when she sees a light through a window, she wonders about the lives of the people who are still up so late at night, while hoping it isn’t because of an illness or other emergency. Because she worked a late shift at one time, she wondered then if other people driving by wondered why her lights were still on late at night.

> During a light rain she sometimes walks around her neighborhood, while secretly thanking Nature for providing us with life supporting water.

> From an early age she wanted to find a good, honest, hardworking and supportive man to marry. And she wanted to have several children they could raise in a comfortable home. By choosing wisely, with perhaps a little luck thrown in, this happened to her.

> Her high school friend wanted the same thing. What she didn’t know was the man she married would become an abusive alcoholic, one who deserted her and their two boys after seven years of marriage.

> She wanted a good, supportive, loving relationship and found it with another woman.

> She grew up to realize she had little, if any, interest in personal, physical relationships and the few she did have seldom lasted very long. Her real love, her passion, is her job as a nurse.

> By the time she was eleven she knew what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She would get her degree in science, then her master's in chemistry, then land a job in a Lab where she could discover cures for diseases. This didn’t happen because, at the age of twelve, she and her father were tragically killed when a drunk driver ran a red light and slammed into their car.

> After so much drama and stress in her life she wanted to find a quiet, comfortable job that would pay enough for her simple needs. She loved reading and often recommended books to friends and wanted the type of job that professionally encouraged more people to read. So, she became a Liberian at the local Public Library.

> From an early age she loved helping her father do basic work on his car and truck and she grew up wanting to become a skilled mechanic. After graduating from a Mechanic School she became one, specializing in restoring classic cars and trucks from the early 50s through the late 60s.

> Although she wasn’t born in the country, from an early age she wanted to live on, work on and eventually own a produce producing farm. So, she worked on them during the Summer and went to college the rest of the year, mainly studying Agriculture and Business. It took her until she was in her early fifties to afford to buy a two-hundred-acre farm that was already producing produce, including a forty-acre orchard that had mature, fruit baring Apple and Pear trees. 

> She is homeless, living in a van on a seldom used side road, a van she couldn’t drive because it had run out of gas long ago. She isn’t an addict, a drunk or crazy. It’s just that life has knocked her down far too many times. The illnesses, injuries, a husband who deserted her, and her no longer having medical coverage, have compounded what she’s gone though. One smaller ray of light in her life is that sometimes caring people will stop by and offer her food to eat and bottled water, and some have given her clean, new clothes and shoes to wear.

She isn’t jealous of all the people better off than her, the one’s with nice cars, homes, families, good jobs and educations. But sometimes late at night, while trying to go to sleep, she wonders if there really is a God and, if there is, why this God let's all these things happen to her.

> At an early age she was reading and writing poetry and started acquiring an advanced vocabulary to help her creative voice mature. And she kept writing, kept improving her skills through her college years. Being realistic, she knew her chances for making a living from her verse was slim. So, she teaches English to pay her bills. And she married a fellow teacher, one who is also a serious poet, and their life together is good, with each supporting the other’s writing.

> As far as she knew she wasn’t creatively talented and didn’t have the grades, or money, to go to college. But she has a certain type of natural magnetism that lets people, including strangers, feel comfortable around her. And she talks and listens to anyone willing to talk to her.

> After she became an MD she wasn’t worried about making a lot of money. She wanted to help those living in improvised areas, so she joined the Peace Corps. The man she met in the Peace Corps, and married, has his Masters in Education and speaks five languages and they always travel together as a team. She attends to the sick and teaches better personal hygiene and stresses the need for a healthy diet. He teaches the children who can’t read or write how to do so and teaches the more advanced children how to use the Laptops the Peace Corps provides. 

> When she was seventeen, she ran away from home after a Court ordered her Psychological Evaluation. She was never hear from again, failing to tell even her widowed mother where she was or what happened to her. Still, her mother continued to hope, to believe, someday she would return home.

> More than anything but her family, she loved being outdoors and in nature and wanted to do what she could to protect the planet’s natural resources. After she received her degree, she thought about joining the National Parks Services, but her mother suggested she think about working for the Environmental Protection Agency and help go after and fine those companies and private individuals polluting the natural resources. So, she joined them and specializes in detecting chemical toxins on land and in the water.

> She grew up in a family that had little extra money to spend. They had their small house and always had enough food to eat. Still, this didn’t seem to bother her parents, her brother or herself because it was a close, supportive family. They had one computer and one television to share, but didn’t have cable. The whole family loved to read and had their own library cards to use. And both her younger brother and her are secretly proud when their classmates sometimes called them nerds. 

> She grew up to understood she was her own best company and always treasured her moments of solitude and longed for a well-paying job that would allow her this solitude. While driving through Arizona she stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner, late at night, and talked to a truck driver who made interstate pickups and deliveries and realized this was a job she could handle. After going to, and graduating from, a truck driver school she landed a lob for a nation-wide grocery company, where she was assigned the West Coast routes. So, her life became the road, with her travel company being her dog, who always traveled with her, and the music she plays. 

>. She grew up in an lower income family, in a neighborhood of lower income people. The type of neighborhood where graffiti was widespread, gangs roamed the streets, a neighborhood where parents didn’t their children to be outside after dark. Despite such seeming obstacles, she wanted to travel and see as much of the world as she could, perhaps doing so through a job that allowed this to happen.

The main thing she had going for herself was she made excellent grades in school and hoped these grades would bring her scholarship offers. Then she told herself one way to travel a lot while earning good money was apply to West Point because, if accepted and she graduated, she would become a commissioned officer. And, with the nomination to West Point made by her state’s Senator, she was accepted. After graduation, she applied for flight training and became a navigator assigned to Army cargo aircraft. While serving in the Middle East, her plane was hit by ground fire and she was injured, losing partial hearing loss in her ears. 

So, she retired from active duty with the rank of Major. But before this happened, she got to see as much of the world as she could and, with flight stop-overs and military leave, she actually got to spend more time in the many countries she visited. After her retirement she teaches navigation classes, with the help of a hearing aid, and finally feels she has enough time for a serious, long-term relationship.

> Her parents took the day off because it was her last day of school in the First Grade. They dropped her off at school and said they were going shopping to buy her a graduation cake, then pick her up when her at school after her class was over. This never happened because they died in a freak accident driving to pick her up. So, at the age of seven, she became an orphan.

Because she has few living relatives except her aging grandparents, she was placed in a local Foster Home family, and told by the Child Welfare Services it would be temporary, until they could locate younger relatives more suitable to live with. The temporary search continued and, three years later, none had been found. So, for the next three years she has been placed in four different Foster Home families. 

The reasons offered to Child Welfare Services by the first three Foster Home Parents were pretty much the same reasons. They told the Child Welfare Service workers the young girl was too difficult to live with, too often moody or indifferent and had occasional fits of anger. The fourth couple was older, had grown children living on their own, and were loving and patient with her.

Mrs. Hodges, her third-grade teacher, was aware of what had happened to the young girl’s parents and was also patient with her student. What seemed interesting to her was her student made good grades, seemed to get along well with her classmates, but when alone appeared moody, indifferent, easily distracted and very likely depressed. And, although she was not a Psychologist, Mrs. Hodges suspected her orphaned student was suffering from Survivor's Syndrome and wanted to earn the girl’s trust. 

So, she took a gamble and asked the girl to stay after class for a half-hour so they could talk. And Mrs. Hodges reassured her that whatever was said between them would not be repeated to anyone and she could trust her to keep her word. Then said she would call her student’s current Foster Home Parents and let them know, adding she would drive her student home. Her student didn’t say yes, but meekly nodded her head, implying is was okay with her.

When they were alone Mrs. Hodges reminded her how smart she and how she always made good grades, then asked her what was really wrong in her life. She girl stared at her teacher a moment, wiped away tears, then told Mrs. Hodges what her life was like before her parents died and was like in those Foster Homes. Her teacher smiled at her, then told the girl she needed to sit in her desk chair behind her desk to think for a moment. As she was doing this Mrs. Hodges told her she had an offer the girl might like.

While sitting at her desk the teacher told the girl that she and her husband were both teachers, though he taught Mechanical Drawing and was a football coach. Then Mrs. Hodges said they both wanted children of their own but couldn’t have any. After watching the girl’s reaction, she asked the girl if she would consider letting Mr. Hodges and herself be the girl’s new Foster Parents and, if she was happy enough, comfortable enough living with then, would she consider letting them adopt her as their own child. The young girl’s reply was to rise from her own chair, hurry back to her teacher’s desk chair and hug Mrs. Hodges, the first time she’s hugged anyone since her parents were alive.

> In high school her classmates sometimes teased her, calling her names like Miss Sherlock or Miss Columbo because she had an uncanny, almost remarkable, ability to remember details, from minor ones to the overall details from first impressions. Some of her friends suggested she should become a Private Investigator. What she became is a criminal investigator with her local Police Department, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Detective. 

> At sixteen she ran away from home because her mother was a drug addict and her stepfather often blamed her for her mother becoming an addict. And, unlike many girls who run away from home, she was lucky. An older woman noticed her leaning against a wall, scared and crying, and offered to let the runaway stay with her until the girl figured out what she wanted to do next. The runway looked up at her and told her last night she went to sleep around other homeless people, and when she woke up, someone had stolen her bag full of close and all she had left was twenty-two dollars in the wallet in the back pocket of her jeans. The teenaged girl ended up staying with the older woman, when to the local high school and graduated, then started classes at a local collage. Her desire is to become a Social Worker and counsel runaway children. 

> In her retirement she drives around the country, visiting all of the stateside states, taking her time, driving anywhere from National Parks to small towns with odd sounding names.

Epilogue: All women, from childhood to old age, if they live that long, have their stories to tell. Some can be about childhood wonders, first loves, heartaches, family, sometimes raising their own children, achievements, educations, setbacks, advancements, sometimes physical or emotional pains and sometimes just the joy of living and experiencing so many things in a life filled with experiences.

And if you’re one on the people they trust to tell their stories you should feel honored because of their trust in you. Let them tell their stories, try not to interrupt the flow and, if you want to ask questions make sure they’re receptive to questions being asked.

All women have lessons they’ve learn from a lifetime of experiences, experiences that very often cover the full spectrum of life itself.