The Little Home We Outgrew...

We purchased our little townhome in 2005 and quickly outgrew it.  As the burden of it's ownership grew over the years, I became less sentimental about it.  But there are some irreplaceable parts of our life that couldn't exist as-is without it...


These walls have witnessed emotions from me that so few know I experience.  

They have heard friendships ended, and laughter abounding.  
They have seen sleeplessness nights, and days filled with play.
They have seen puppy accidents, and the melody of a welcoming trio of dogs.

They have seen heartache, and they have seen new life created.
They have heard moans of defeat, and those of ecstasy.
They have heard me weep, and they have heard my babies cry.

They have heard countless "I love you's", and a fair share of less pleasant utterances.
They have heard dreams spoken, and disappointments shouted.  
They have worn my memories, and housed my secrets.

It is the place where I finally stopped being the person I thought I should be, and became the place where I reclaimed my path to being the person I need to be.  

In the end, it was my home.  Our home.  The place where I grew from a 20 year old girl lost in my own small world, to a wife, a mother, and a confident nearly 30 year old woman.  The place where we grew into a family, from a couple lost in love, but struggling with diverging plans.  This is the end of an era and the beginning of our next.  We are beyond life-creating mode and into life-living mode.  In the words of my wise and poetic husband, "let's do this shit!" 

Photo courtesy of Mike Akers

Raising Freethinkers

When I was ten years old, I heard the word "agnostic" for the first time.  I asked my dad what it meant and he gave me a brief explanation, but encouraged me to look it up myself.  In the archaic age of paper-based research, I did just that.  As a naturally inquisitive child, I immersed myself in that research.  My focus wasn't just on agnosticism and atheism, it was on theology.  It was on the world's religions.  

I began reading the Christian Bible and requested my mom take me to the church services of a few different denominations.  None of it clicked with me.  Over the years, I consistently found so many disparities between myself and any deity or organized religion, that I nearly certainly considered myself agnostic.  I wasn't sure that a deity outside of the those in mythology and tall tales existed, but I couldn't bring myself to think one certainly did NOT exist.  

I traveled through adolescence on a quest to find something that made me feel differently.  I was almost always the odd one out.  So few of my peers could fathom my disbelief.  That adversity caused me much introspection and even more knowledge-seeking.  I continued to read the Bible, I continued to learn, I watched religious-based films...I was searching to be proven wrong.  But, I wasn't.  As I became a young adult, I realized that I am an atheist.  I am still fascinated by religion, but it is not mine to have.  

I refuse to baptize my children "just in case", because I think it is preposterous to consider that a child even has the capacity to "sin". 

I do not fear death without an afterlife, because I know that the true "afterlife" is the memories we gift to those still living.

I do not need salvation, because I live an imperfect life that I am proud of.  

I know that my children are not deprived of the valuable lessons that can come with religious affiliation, because I lead my life as a role model that I am comfortable with them emulating. 

We learn so much more by what is modeled for us, than what is merely spoken to us.  So instead of regaling life's lessons through age-old stories, I do it with my words and actions each and every day.  I am not necessarily raising Christians or Muslims or Buddhists, I am just raising good people who are free to think as they choose.  So for any religious-based worries for my children, I bid a sincere "no thank you".  Mike and I long ago chose to impart our children with knowledge, rather than religious affiliation.  We will let each of our daughters check-mark their own boxes when it comes to spiritual identification.  

  

The Wrong Twenty-One

I have received the familiar green postcard I see every other year.  It is time to renew my nursing license.  This is my fifth time receiving this little card, and I've decided it will also be my last.  I have chosen not to renew my Registered Nurse license.  It is a dichotomous pull for me, but I have realized at this point I'm only holding on to it for the off-chance I may need it.  I've learned over the years, that off-chance isn't coming.  I have been asked numerous times, by a variety of people why I left my job as a nurse and haven't gone back.  Here is my why...

In May of 2005, I was newly engaged, weeks away from closing on my first home, and being pinned as a Registered Nurse...I was also twenty.  At twenty years old, I knew I had adulthood by the horns and I was certain I would succeed.  Before I graduated, I already had a great job offer: a full-time day-shift position at a fabulous hospital, working on their medical-surgical floor!  I was thrilled and felt ready to take my NCLEX (the computerized nursing license exam).  Since this is the test I'd spent the previous two and half years preparing for, I booked a hotel next to my testing facility to take make sure I wouldn't be late for the exam.  Mike accompanied me and even drove me to the facility.  Twenty-five minutes after dropping me at the doors, I called him to say I was ready to be picked-up.  A few weeks later I learned I had passed and enthusiastically started my nursing job in late-June.  A few weeks later, on July 15, we signed on our little townhouse.  It was going to be our starter home for the next three to five years.  I was doing this adulthood thing!  I was able to check all the boxes I had assumed entailed being adult.  So I worked and planned our wedding.  All the while, I was rapidly approaching my twenty-first birthday.

Reality was slowly rearing it's head to me, and my twenty year old self was too naive to understand or adapt.  I was a good nurse and I was frequently commended by coworkers and patients.  I was requested by patients that were admitted to our floor regularly, and I put my nursing school knowledge to work.  What was missing, was life experience and personal confidence.  I knew pharmacology like the back of my hand, but what does a newly twenty-one year old young woman say to a fifty year old woman dying of cancer?  I remember working a PM shift and being assigned a patient with metastatic pancreatic cancer, awaiting her consultation with hospice the next day.  She had morphine infusing through an epidural, but was still in an immense amount of pain.  I looked at her chart and saw that she had an as needed order for buccal morphine: in essence a morphine lollipop.  So I went to my Pyxis (the computerized medicine vending machine), and dispensed one for her.  I brought it to her and she silently cried.  She would be facing tomorrow's consultation alone.  Her family refused to see her, and  she knew that she would also likely die alone.  I sat with her far longer than my supervisor would have liked, and just held her hand.  At twenty-one, I could feel compassion for her.  That was never difficult.  But I couldn't really wrap my brain or heart around her reality.  Nor was I sure I wanted to be exposed to those realities yet.  But I kept on trucking, because her thank you and kiss on my hand, encouraged me that I was doing something right.  

A few weeks later, I was working an overnight shift on a Saturday and was assigned a post-surgical patient.  There is protocol to follow with post-op patients, and I usually looked forward to them because the care expectations were very clearly defined.  I met the patient and noticed a cot on the floor of her private room.  She told me that she had trouble sleeping without her fiance present, and the previous RN said he could stay the night.  I said ok and kept making my rounds.  A few hours into my shift, around 2:30AM I heard yelling and a crash come from the room.  I signaled to my nursing supervisor and went into the room.  The fiance had thrown the cot against the wall and assaulted my sleeping patient.  I stayed in the room until Security came and tried to gather details.  After everything settled down, I asked my supervisor if I could go out for a break.  By this time, it was nearly 4AM, but I knew that Mike was still up.  I called him, because I needed to hear someone familiar.  He couldn't talk then because he was playing poker and it was down to him and another player.  I hung up the phone and stood outside in the stark quiet of the four o'clock hour and realized I was living the wrong twenty-one.  I was too young to handle this.  I was too naive to be an adequate caretaker.  I was not ready to help other people live, or die, through the ugliest parts of life.  I needed some irresponsibility that I never allowed myself.  I needed to slow down.  I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I would have heard those exact words. 

In late-November of that same year, I resigned my position.  I did not have another to replace it, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to keep working as a Registered Nurse for that moment.  The problem, is that with nursing, so little experience means nearly no future job potentials.  Looking back, it was probably foolish.  Looking back, I would do many things differently.  But I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward.  And because of this time, my life is being lived the way that fits me best for now.  I have let go of the guilt and settled into my confident adult self.  Now I just have to figure out, what I really want to be when I grow up. ;)