To All Things There Is A Season
Part One - 1: How Did I Get Here When I Started There?
Where to begin? That’s a million-dollar question right there. In the last two years my life has been turned upside down. Everything has moved so fast that I never even bothered to sit down and try and make sense of it. Until now.
One of those annoying philosophical questions that occasionally occurs to me is “Who am I?” I hate those stupid questions, they tend to take all the quiet and self-assurance away that I’ve managed to build since the last time it came up.
If I had to pick a word to describe how my life used to be it would be “normal.” I wasn’t from a broken home. I never had some tragic occurrence scar me for life. As a matter of fact I was the much loved and much waited for child. My mother called me a miracle and my dad called me his little darling. My Mom was forty when I was born and Dad forty-five; they’d given up having any biological children and didn’t have the financial resources to afford adoption so they did a lot of volunteer work only suddenly there I was when they least expected it; Momma was five months along before they even realized she was pregnant.
I’m an only child but not of the spoiled variety; my parents kept me pretty well grounded. My name is Leah Helainna Hambrick. Don’t ask me to explain my middle name; it was some wild hare that my parents came up with by putting together Helen and Alainna which were the two names they were trying to choose between. My middle name was probably the only wild hare my parents ever had if you want to know the truth. I loved them both and appreciated them for who they were but my friends all thought they were old and stodgy.
Contrary to many stories of single, late in life babies I had a really fun home life, just not what my peers were used to. My life was very traditional with strong role models in both my parents. My mom taught me the art of homemaking from the time I could stand on a chair and stir the pot. My dad taught me to be mechanically inclined and how to fix most everything, including changing my own oil and brakes when it was needed. We went camping, hunting, and fishing together as a family. As a matter of fact, we did most everything together as a family. Divorce was never a word I even heard muttered in my home.
By the time I went to a public high school I was so painfully normal I began to resent all of the attention that my peers were receiving for their seemingly endless supply of problems and angst … both real and imagined. Daddy quickly tired of my desent into adolescent idiocy and sat me down one day to explain how my friends were wasting their God-given lives on that sort of foolishness and then went on to tell me I had a choice to make. Was I going to flop around thinking I was a fish out of water or was I going to expend my life’s energy swimming upstream in order to fulfill God’s plan for my life? Put like that my friends started looking pretty silly and it was like being the only sober person at a wild frat kegger. I got over myself in fairly short order and got on with my life.
The only part of the idiocy I couldn’t seem to give up was my high school sweetheart. Hank was a “great catch” when we were in high school. Later … well, not so much as I was to find out the hard way.
Other than my parents’ occasional homespun homilies, I had a normal education that was supplemented with a rich home life, church life, and with extracurricular activities supporting the goal of producing a well-rounded child. I graduated with honors from high school, continued to live at home while I went to college, and graduated with a double major … a BSS in Social Science Education and a BS in History. I was all hot to make history come to life as a High school teacher. Yeah right.
Daddy tried to warn me. He said that he hadn’t thought much of a lot of the kids I went to school with and didn’t see that the latest crop were any better. Momma tried to warn me. She had been a teacher’s aide for 19 years before forced to take early retirement when she got pregnant with me as well as other health issues. My favorite professor tried to warn me by saying that I was too pretty and innocent and that I would be better off in Early Education until the new got rubbed off of me. I didn’t listen; I was too full of idealism and dreams.
My internship should have awoken my sense of self-preservation if nothing else had, but it didn’t. The kids were rotten, the school was over crowded, the equipment was archaic … but I loved it. And my dad hated it. I was 21 years old and still living at home; still Daddy’s little princess. I graduated with honors so finding a job hadn’t been as hard as it might have otherwise been, especially as I was willing to take a job at an “under-performing” school. By that time Dad was fully retired but the pension wasn’t enough to pay the bills so he made knives and did a lot of woodwork and carpentry that he sold on Ebay, at gun shows, and at craft fairs. Momma took in sewing and made her own items for the craft fairs. We weren’t rich, but they managed to put a little in savings every month.
And then I was 22 years old and still living at home; but at least I was gainfully employed. And the few students that I could catch the attention of seemed to love me. And I loved them. I really did. The few awakening minds made up for all of the rotten stuff to the point I barely paid attention to it. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was meant to be a teacher and I was meant to be a teacher right where I was. Or so I thought.
Like for all things in life, there is a season. And that job was just the first change of season I was to experience. An extreme shortfall in the school district’s budget meant cuts … big cuts. And as one of the newest teachers at one of the worst schools in the district my job was one of the first to go. I wasn’t as loved as I had thought I was. No one even came to say goodbye as I carried my boxes of classroom stuff out to my car. Not even my favorite students. I was more disappointed than I had any right to be.
I came home with my pink slip completely shocked. I … honestly I don’t know what I thought but what I felt was betrayed. I was really in a funk for about a week and then Dad and Mom were there, with grave commonsense told me that life goes on, and helped me to pick up the pieces. But Dad’s retirement didn’t go far and they had come to count on the “rent” I paid them every month. At least I had been smart enough to save most of my first year’s salary rather than spending it on a new car and other fripperies. But I needed a new job and I needed one badly.
Here again though life seemed to be intervening in my personal plans. The school district wasn’t hiring. None of the school districts within driving distance were hiring. As a matter of fact, there was a hiring freeze in the school system statewide. I went to the private schools – not hiring. I went to the day care centers – not hiring. The economy was very bad and property taxes had plummeted for three straight years in a row; so did all the other revenue generating taxes. After two months of looking, and after overhearing my parents discuss how concerned they were about making all of their obligations as the cost of their medications went up yet again, I decided it was time to broaden my job search outside of education and childcare.
One of my friends from high school had become part owner in a family owned and operated housekeeping business. Her grandmother had started it in the 70s during that recession and had kept it running all of these years. Even with the cutbacks their customer base was still strong. I told Bea I would do anything just to bring in some money.
“Are you positive?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t keep living on my parents’ dime.”
“I thought you and Hank were getting serious about setting a date. Doesn’t his dad own that import-export business?”
“Were is the appropriate word.”
“Oh no. Not again.”
“Oh yeah. Again. Forgiving is one thing. Being a fool for the third time is another.”
“Same old reason?”
“Same old song. I told him no ring and ceremony, no canoodling. He wasn’t ready to settle down but he wanted all the fringe benefits that go along with it.”
“Did you know this one?”
“Sheryl Balducci.”
“Sheryl … are you serious? She has eight brothers. And they’re Italian.”
“How do you think I found out about it? I get a call from one of the guys as I’m driving home that there has been an ‘accident’ at work and that Hank couldn’t pick me up for our date that night. So of course I go tearing over to the hospital all upset. Thank the Lord I managed to stop myself from calling my parents. Daddy would have done more damage than Sheryl’s brothers did. Last I heard there was a rush-hush marriage and that Sheryl is due in about four more months.”
“Oh … my … gosh. Get out o’ here! Girl …”
“Like Daddy said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ I’m just sorry it took this long for me to see the light. At least my parents never say I told you so.”
“Honey, considering they’ve put up with the guy since we were in school you’re lucky your parents didn’t throw a party and take out a full page ad.”
Not ready for one of Bea’s lectures on my poor taste in men I said,“ So … do you think you can hook me up? With a job I mean. Full time, part time, even a few hours every other week … I just need to bring in some money before I use up all my savings, give me more time to find something in my field.”
Bea hemmed and hawed and I could tell she was debating something. “Look, we have this customer but he is a hard case. Real demanding. He’s a bachelor; likes the hired help to take care of things so that he can’t see they are taking care of things if you know what I mean. When he says how he wants something done he wants it done that way exactly, but if he hasn’t said he doesn’t want to be bothered with questions. I don’t know what the problem is but we are on the third girl with him in as many months and the latest one came in today and said she is quitting, that he is a pain to work for and asking for too much.”
At that point I would have worked for Attila the Hun and said please and thank you for the job. But talk about weird. It was three months before I even met my boss. I had a key, went in, did the work to specs, and left. It was one of the easiest jobs I’d ever had. I never understood what the problem was. I had regularly scheduled chores and then he’d leave a note on the dining room table about once or twice a week that he needed something specific. Do the work, check it off the list, and if there were special instructions because something else was needed and it was completed the way he wanted it to be there was always a little something extra in the pay envelope. It was a cakewalk compared to trying to teach six periods of forty high school students each on a daily basis and then deal with all the take home work and bureaucratic nonsense on top of it. Bea and her mom were pleased because that was the longest anyone had ever lasted, took me off my 90-day probation and I signed up for the simple health insurance plan but took care of my own savings plan with what little was left over by the time I paid my living expenses and gave my parents something in appreciation for their years of sacrifice for me.
The only thing I knew about my boss to begin with was that he was in his mid-thirties, some kind of investment counselor that made pretty good money dealing in very conservative portfolios (Bea’s mother did her retirement funds through him), and that he could be very particular about what he wanted and didn’t want.
Part One - 1: How Did I Get Here When I Started There?
Where to begin? That’s a million-dollar question right there. In the last two years my life has been turned upside down. Everything has moved so fast that I never even bothered to sit down and try and make sense of it. Until now.
One of those annoying philosophical questions that occasionally occurs to me is “Who am I?” I hate those stupid questions, they tend to take all the quiet and self-assurance away that I’ve managed to build since the last time it came up.
If I had to pick a word to describe how my life used to be it would be “normal.” I wasn’t from a broken home. I never had some tragic occurrence scar me for life. As a matter of fact I was the much loved and much waited for child. My mother called me a miracle and my dad called me his little darling. My Mom was forty when I was born and Dad forty-five; they’d given up having any biological children and didn’t have the financial resources to afford adoption so they did a lot of volunteer work only suddenly there I was when they least expected it; Momma was five months along before they even realized she was pregnant.
I’m an only child but not of the spoiled variety; my parents kept me pretty well grounded. My name is Leah Helainna Hambrick. Don’t ask me to explain my middle name; it was some wild hare that my parents came up with by putting together Helen and Alainna which were the two names they were trying to choose between. My middle name was probably the only wild hare my parents ever had if you want to know the truth. I loved them both and appreciated them for who they were but my friends all thought they were old and stodgy.
Contrary to many stories of single, late in life babies I had a really fun home life, just not what my peers were used to. My life was very traditional with strong role models in both my parents. My mom taught me the art of homemaking from the time I could stand on a chair and stir the pot. My dad taught me to be mechanically inclined and how to fix most everything, including changing my own oil and brakes when it was needed. We went camping, hunting, and fishing together as a family. As a matter of fact, we did most everything together as a family. Divorce was never a word I even heard muttered in my home.
By the time I went to a public high school I was so painfully normal I began to resent all of the attention that my peers were receiving for their seemingly endless supply of problems and angst … both real and imagined. Daddy quickly tired of my desent into adolescent idiocy and sat me down one day to explain how my friends were wasting their God-given lives on that sort of foolishness and then went on to tell me I had a choice to make. Was I going to flop around thinking I was a fish out of water or was I going to expend my life’s energy swimming upstream in order to fulfill God’s plan for my life? Put like that my friends started looking pretty silly and it was like being the only sober person at a wild frat kegger. I got over myself in fairly short order and got on with my life.
The only part of the idiocy I couldn’t seem to give up was my high school sweetheart. Hank was a “great catch” when we were in high school. Later … well, not so much as I was to find out the hard way.
Other than my parents’ occasional homespun homilies, I had a normal education that was supplemented with a rich home life, church life, and with extracurricular activities supporting the goal of producing a well-rounded child. I graduated with honors from high school, continued to live at home while I went to college, and graduated with a double major … a BSS in Social Science Education and a BS in History. I was all hot to make history come to life as a High school teacher. Yeah right.
Daddy tried to warn me. He said that he hadn’t thought much of a lot of the kids I went to school with and didn’t see that the latest crop were any better. Momma tried to warn me. She had been a teacher’s aide for 19 years before forced to take early retirement when she got pregnant with me as well as other health issues. My favorite professor tried to warn me by saying that I was too pretty and innocent and that I would be better off in Early Education until the new got rubbed off of me. I didn’t listen; I was too full of idealism and dreams.
My internship should have awoken my sense of self-preservation if nothing else had, but it didn’t. The kids were rotten, the school was over crowded, the equipment was archaic … but I loved it. And my dad hated it. I was 21 years old and still living at home; still Daddy’s little princess. I graduated with honors so finding a job hadn’t been as hard as it might have otherwise been, especially as I was willing to take a job at an “under-performing” school. By that time Dad was fully retired but the pension wasn’t enough to pay the bills so he made knives and did a lot of woodwork and carpentry that he sold on Ebay, at gun shows, and at craft fairs. Momma took in sewing and made her own items for the craft fairs. We weren’t rich, but they managed to put a little in savings every month.
And then I was 22 years old and still living at home; but at least I was gainfully employed. And the few students that I could catch the attention of seemed to love me. And I loved them. I really did. The few awakening minds made up for all of the rotten stuff to the point I barely paid attention to it. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was meant to be a teacher and I was meant to be a teacher right where I was. Or so I thought.
Like for all things in life, there is a season. And that job was just the first change of season I was to experience. An extreme shortfall in the school district’s budget meant cuts … big cuts. And as one of the newest teachers at one of the worst schools in the district my job was one of the first to go. I wasn’t as loved as I had thought I was. No one even came to say goodbye as I carried my boxes of classroom stuff out to my car. Not even my favorite students. I was more disappointed than I had any right to be.
I came home with my pink slip completely shocked. I … honestly I don’t know what I thought but what I felt was betrayed. I was really in a funk for about a week and then Dad and Mom were there, with grave commonsense told me that life goes on, and helped me to pick up the pieces. But Dad’s retirement didn’t go far and they had come to count on the “rent” I paid them every month. At least I had been smart enough to save most of my first year’s salary rather than spending it on a new car and other fripperies. But I needed a new job and I needed one badly.
Here again though life seemed to be intervening in my personal plans. The school district wasn’t hiring. None of the school districts within driving distance were hiring. As a matter of fact, there was a hiring freeze in the school system statewide. I went to the private schools – not hiring. I went to the day care centers – not hiring. The economy was very bad and property taxes had plummeted for three straight years in a row; so did all the other revenue generating taxes. After two months of looking, and after overhearing my parents discuss how concerned they were about making all of their obligations as the cost of their medications went up yet again, I decided it was time to broaden my job search outside of education and childcare.
One of my friends from high school had become part owner in a family owned and operated housekeeping business. Her grandmother had started it in the 70s during that recession and had kept it running all of these years. Even with the cutbacks their customer base was still strong. I told Bea I would do anything just to bring in some money.
“Are you positive?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t keep living on my parents’ dime.”
“I thought you and Hank were getting serious about setting a date. Doesn’t his dad own that import-export business?”
“Were is the appropriate word.”
“Oh no. Not again.”
“Oh yeah. Again. Forgiving is one thing. Being a fool for the third time is another.”
“Same old reason?”
“Same old song. I told him no ring and ceremony, no canoodling. He wasn’t ready to settle down but he wanted all the fringe benefits that go along with it.”
“Did you know this one?”
“Sheryl Balducci.”
“Sheryl … are you serious? She has eight brothers. And they’re Italian.”
“How do you think I found out about it? I get a call from one of the guys as I’m driving home that there has been an ‘accident’ at work and that Hank couldn’t pick me up for our date that night. So of course I go tearing over to the hospital all upset. Thank the Lord I managed to stop myself from calling my parents. Daddy would have done more damage than Sheryl’s brothers did. Last I heard there was a rush-hush marriage and that Sheryl is due in about four more months.”
“Oh … my … gosh. Get out o’ here! Girl …”
“Like Daddy said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ I’m just sorry it took this long for me to see the light. At least my parents never say I told you so.”
“Honey, considering they’ve put up with the guy since we were in school you’re lucky your parents didn’t throw a party and take out a full page ad.”
Not ready for one of Bea’s lectures on my poor taste in men I said,“ So … do you think you can hook me up? With a job I mean. Full time, part time, even a few hours every other week … I just need to bring in some money before I use up all my savings, give me more time to find something in my field.”
Bea hemmed and hawed and I could tell she was debating something. “Look, we have this customer but he is a hard case. Real demanding. He’s a bachelor; likes the hired help to take care of things so that he can’t see they are taking care of things if you know what I mean. When he says how he wants something done he wants it done that way exactly, but if he hasn’t said he doesn’t want to be bothered with questions. I don’t know what the problem is but we are on the third girl with him in as many months and the latest one came in today and said she is quitting, that he is a pain to work for and asking for too much.”
At that point I would have worked for Attila the Hun and said please and thank you for the job. But talk about weird. It was three months before I even met my boss. I had a key, went in, did the work to specs, and left. It was one of the easiest jobs I’d ever had. I never understood what the problem was. I had regularly scheduled chores and then he’d leave a note on the dining room table about once or twice a week that he needed something specific. Do the work, check it off the list, and if there were special instructions because something else was needed and it was completed the way he wanted it to be there was always a little something extra in the pay envelope. It was a cakewalk compared to trying to teach six periods of forty high school students each on a daily basis and then deal with all the take home work and bureaucratic nonsense on top of it. Bea and her mom were pleased because that was the longest anyone had ever lasted, took me off my 90-day probation and I signed up for the simple health insurance plan but took care of my own savings plan with what little was left over by the time I paid my living expenses and gave my parents something in appreciation for their years of sacrifice for me.
The only thing I knew about my boss to begin with was that he was in his mid-thirties, some kind of investment counselor that made pretty good money dealing in very conservative portfolios (Bea’s mother did her retirement funds through him), and that he could be very particular about what he wanted and didn’t want.