Slice of Life choices for the week of September 7, 2008 are:

1. A Matter of Choice

2. An Engaging Proposition

3. Writer’s Choice - what life memory moves you today?

    I was in my "thirtysomething" years. Having the time of my life. After a painful divorce a few years earlier, I found myself with an amazing career. Sales and design work for a giftware company. This position afforded me many opportunities for travel. My daughter was finishing up her last year of high school so that spring I went for it. I began a journey that would last many years. Many years of not being home. I stayed in all the finest hotels, I ate my meals in the finest restaurants. I went to the most fabulous cocktail parties and met some of the most amazing and interesting people. Yes, it was many years of not being home. My education in the form of a suitcase. I closed a couple million dollar deals, I met with executives from QVC, Disney, Harrods, etc., it was the high life for a small town girl. Yes, it was many years of not being home. Every choice we make has an upside and a downside, heads or tails if you will. Flip the coin, roll the dice, it's all a matter of choice.
   I had a fabulous career but I sacrificed time. Time away from my friends and my family. Time away from everything I held dear. I  had to earn a living didn't I? I recall the end of the very first summer I spent away from home. My daughter an only child, was eighteen and living at home. She worked nights in a factory, the same factory that brought me as a child from the suburbs of Chicago to a small town in Ohio. My father was transferred from Illinois to Ohio to start this factory almost thirty years before. It was a job worth having in those days. People would camp out on the one day a year they took applications. It was very hard to gain employment there. My daughter, because of her Grandfather, was able to get into their summer job program. This job payed way too much money for a girl of eighteen with no expenses. It brought with it a great deal of independence. Lots of money and Mother away from home.  You see the problems brewing don't you?
    I came home the end of July that first summer, excited to have a few days off and to just be home. While visiting with my daughter I began to notice this sense of independence. I felt her resentment that I was home. She had been holding down the fort while I was away. My parents were not far away and she was eighteen after all. The more we talked things became clearer. She was quite used to having the house to herself. Entertaining her friends, drinking and having parties. I was just about to cramp her style. We ended up in quite a screaming match. I said absolutely no friends in my house while I was away and as for the drinking, there was no way I was going to jail for any under age kids drinking in my home. Then it happened. I will never forget it....she said, "I think you should just get an apartment near the airport, you are never here anyway!" Well, I came unglued. "Listen sister one of us is going to get out and it is not going to be me!" "Get your stuff and get out now!!" That was that, I through her out into the street. Of course I knew she would run to her Grandma (the Most High Mother) I didn't care. I was not going to be treated like that by a child I had sacrificed so much for. I went ballistic and threw things, broke things and just made a mess. They were MY things and MY house and if I wanted to tear them up...I WOULD!
      I went to a friends house for the weekend. I couldn't bare to stay at home by myself after all that. Later that evening The Most High Mother tracked me down and expected an explanation for my explosion with my own daughter. I was so angry, I told her to keep her nose out of it. I used a few more choice words with her, which I had never done before. Later she told me she thought I had lost my mind, I guess I did for awhile. I got it back together and was able to get back to work the following week. I started locking the doors, which we had never done. Everytime I got home I would look for her to show up...she didn't.
     That fall while travelling I purchased a gold peace sign and a gold chain to put it on. I wrapped it in a piece of paper with the word.... PEACE?.... then I ups'd it to her. The next time I got home she stopped over. She wanted to talk about what happened because she thought she had some valid points. I said, "We will discuss it when you are thirty and not a day before" That was seventeen years ago, she is now thirtyfive, college educated, has her own art studio, a fine wife and proud mother of two.
        Oh yeah,...on her thirtieth birthday I said, "Weren't we supposed to discuss something when you turned thirty? I can't remember..." she said, "Thats a good thing mom."
 

        

Slice of Life choices for the week of August 24, 2008 are:

1. First Kiss

2. A Knot of Hate