When I had the power of attorney for my mother, my siblings and I had a huge fight one night. I started out sober and ended up drunk, screaming that I was done and had had all I could stand. If you've never been the one responsible for making physical and finanacial decisions for someone else, you probably have no idea what can happen in families, but it was ugly. The next day I took my power of attorney to my sister with the appropriate signature filled in resigning my authority. I then took a copy to my mother and explained that I couldn't stand between my sisters and my brother and I was no longer representing her. She sat in her chair, oxegyn tubes coming out of her nose, her legs elevated and said, "I thought you said you had power of attorney because you were the strong one." I gathered my strength, took a deep breath and said, yes, I was the strong one. She re-authorized me on the spot.
My mom died three years ago and I have always been glad I continued in my role as her financial and physical overseer. She taught me something important that day; she taught me that she believed in me and that I had to believe in myself.
While that ended well, I'm not so sure sometimes that I am capable of holding the power of attorney for myself. I make bad decisions. I fail miserably. I take gambles and I lose and sometimes I wonder whatever made me think I could do anything other than work mindlessly in jobs I hate in order to earn the basic money needed to survive in terms of food and bills and life in general. Give me a 50/50 chance and I'll chose the losing side every time.
I struggled, while working a full-time job and raising my daughter, to go back to school. Against all kinds of odds I obtained an MFA in writing at the old age of 55. My goal was to teach adjunct and write. Fairly lofty considering the conservative nature of publishing companies, the number of unpublished authors and the government's new anti-education attitude, but still -- I was the tough one, right? People give up and I don't. Talent is everywhere but perserverance is rare, at least according to the sign in my son's band room and the posters in the subways. If you envision success and believe and be steadfast, you get there. It doesn't come to you. You go to it.
So I wrote a book and I send it out and it isn't published. I'm writing another book and who knows what will happen with that, but that's okay because I can support my writing addiction through adjunct courses and a very small retirement earned through 12 years of unhappily working for the State of PA. During my years of education I helped take care of my mother and gave up on a career in real estate. Now there is no real estate career to establish although I would try again if I could find the money to reinstate my license. I sought for and obtained a reconciliation with the man I've loved for 20 years. left my state job, promised him I could succeed in my new life, and moved to Montrose, PA to start over again.
I did get an offer to be an adjunct instructor, but it was in Philadelphia. I did it and was pretty good at it, even though I really don't want to teach the difference between a verb and a noun, and how to layout a paragraph. If I was successful in teaching Dev Writing I could get a job teaching Comp, and I did. However, the gas and tolls of teaching in Philadelphia roughly equaled the pay so when I was offered 2 - 3 classes in Lancaster I took them -- same cost and double or triple the pay. Meanwhile, Bloomsburg University offered to fast-track my application there if I taught a Composition course, and the University pays 2 - 3 times more than community college. It was all turning out just fine. Until today, that is. I turned down Philadelphia and accepted HACC in Lancaster and ... the class didn't roster. And now I have no class to teach, no income, no open door to the university and no publishing income in sight.
I'm as tough as nails. This too shall pass. Right? Right? But why on earth did I cancel Philadelphia before HACC was a done deal? Because I was being honorable. I was giving Philadelphia lots and lots of time to replace me, which was the right thing to do. And I was wrong. And now I'm up the proverbial creek without a paddle and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do ... but I'm tough. I can see this through, right?
Any one need a housekeeper?
Someone once told me that, "To live is to dream; to dream is to live." As I get older people I've been young with and dreamed dreams with are falling, one by one, into a state of perpetual stillness. Dreams are scoffed at and put into "when I was young" and "before I knew better" catagories. This is the blog of someone who hopes to never know better. It's the rambling of someone who should know who they are by now, and doesn't -- someone who is still evolving. Photo by Angela Episale
