The Back Story

(We have all heard the saying "Those that can't do, teach."  In my case it has always been more like "Those that can't do, dream.")

I grew up in a small town in upstate NY.  Now when I say small town, I mean I graduated with a class of 86 students.  I started Kindergarden in the same building I finished High School.  There is one traffic light, two blinking lights, a small grocery store, and, I must proudly say, a McDonalds.  In this town you could either live in the "Village" or in the "Boonies", and yes you guessed it, I was from the boonies. The road that I lived on, Yager Road, was named after my grandparents who also lived on that road, and still do.  My closest neighbors were various aunts and uncles and therefore, by default, my best friends were my sister and my cousins.

When I was a child this life didn't bother me, I didn't know any different.  To me, summers meant spending the day swimming in Grandma's pool, building forts with my cousins and sister in the woods, exploring the acres upon acres of fields, brush, and creeks, and helping in the garden.  As winter encroached our activities turned to iceskating on nearby ponds or sleighing down hills a quarter mile long.   Growing older I started to loath this life, to hate every bit of it.  Summers began to mean not existing to my friends any more because I lived too far away to walk.  Winters meant never seeing the light of day unless I was in school or on a bus.

I often found myself escaping to a world that I created through inspirations in Seventeen Magazine and young adult novels.  I vowed that I would be "someone", do something "important"and most of all be "famous"!  I wanted to be a fashion designer, an actress, a doctor.  I had big dreams and big aspirations, but most importantly I wanted to GET OUT.  I didn't want to be a statistic that was swallowed up by a dying town.

Instead of going to college at FIT in Manhattan like I had dreamed, I went to SUNY Oneonta instead.  My mom just wouldn't dream of sending her all too sheltered daughter off to the big city all alone.  So I rebelled against her, partied way too much, and almost failed out of college.  At that point my mom thought it would be best to live at home and go to community college.  Of course I wouldn't dream of moving back to small town life(that would be the logical thing to do).  Instead I got my own one room apartment in Albany, worked at a sleezy hotel full time, and went to night school full time. 

Life went on that way for a few years.  I didn't get to see my friends as much as I would have liked, they were all away at college.  I envied them, but I felt I had missed my opportunity for that and it was time to move on to what came next.  After my plan of instant stardom failed, I went to the next thing on my list:  Marriage, a house, a family (yes I think I forgot that I would need a career to support any of that).  At 21 though I was naive and latched onto the first serious relationship I had outside of highschool.  Even though there was every sign it wouldn't work out, I felt that I had wasted too much of my life (1 1/2 yrs) to call it quits.  So at 22, unmarried, in a miserable relationship with an abusive man, I had my daughter.
                                                     
That was the first time in my life I realized what my mom had been talking about.  The first time that I truely knew what it meant to want to keep close and protect what you valued most in the world.  When my daughter was five months old I made another life changing decision that for once wasn't fueled by a need for acceptance, love, or popularity.  I left my daughter's father so she didn't grow up thinking that what her father and I had was what a family was suppose to be like, and I moved back in with my mom.

I was back where I had started, but I now had a new lease on life so to speak.  Soon after, I met the man that is now my husband.  He loves my daughter like she is his own, just like I love his son who he brought with him to our relationship.  Together we had our youngest son, got married, and bought our first house (in the same tiny town I grew up in of all places).  But what my experieces so far have taught me that life is what you make it no matter where you are or what you do.  I may not be famous to the world, but to my kids and my husband I am, and in the end thats all that matters.

This is my first blog.  It has been something I have wanted to do for a long time. So hopefully as you read on through my future posts you will see the lessons I have learned thus far and the ones that are yet to come!