Unexpected Change
- Rosetta Mandisa
- Sep 2, 2019
- 3 min read
Well, my life has not been what many people would call normal. For much of my adult life I was raised in a two parent household. Both my parents worked, made a good living and provided well for my siblings and I. We didn’t want for much and we had every thing we needed. I grew up in a quiet area just outside San Francisco. We were surrounded by family. I can remember sharing many birthdays, holidays and get togethers with my family. There was always food, plenty of deserts, music, card games, domino games and wall to wall people. My cousins and I ran in and around the house until our little hearts were content or until one of the adults yelled at us to sit our behinds down somewhere. Yep, growing up with my family had been lots of fun. Much of that changed when my parents decided to divorce. My mom would still take us to visit family but It wasn’t the same.
While we were still teenagers ourselves, my sister and I moved into our own apartment. Crazy to think about it now that we were actually able to do that and Child Protective Services didn’t come along and snatch us up. So to say that I grew up fast after my parents’ divorce is an understatement. Even living on our own, I still went to school everyday and graduated with my high school diploma. I was determined to go to college even though I had no clue how to go about doing that at the time. Eventually, I enrolled at San Francisco State University and was on my way to a degree in business.
After about a year, I became pregnant with my son. Although graduating from college was an important goal for me, raising my son was my top priority. Throughout the years, I’ve worked many jobs, started and stopped school more times than I can count, and lived in more apartments than anyone I know. Eventually, I made it through college, found a stable job and watched my boy graduate from high school as well. I had done my job as a mom, achieved some of my own dreams along the way and was all set to have a pretty easy going life. After all, one of the upsides to having a kid so young was that I was still pretty young after he was grown and gone.
As always, life has a funny way of changing your plans! However, I truly can’t be upset about this unexpected change because I get to be a part of my grandson’s life in such a special way. Now, I never pictured myself as a grandparent that would be raising a grandchild but here I am. While my son and his son’s mother try to work and get their young lives sorted out, they asked if I could help by taking care of my grandson. Truth be told, my first thought was to say, “absolutely not!” But then I remembered all of the times my parents, sister and brother-in-law helped me out when I was raising my son. It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child and my boy needed his village.
So…here I am, being the village and grateful that God has blessed me to be in a position to be able to help, and to be able to have this time with my grandson. While, it might seem like fun, I have no idea how someone in their late thirties to mid-forties or later could have children. This has been a major adjustment for me. I don’t think I knew what tired was until I had a full time three-year-old in my house. Things that used to take me five minutes to do now take an extra thirty minutes! I had forgotten how much energy it takes to raise a child. I am, however, grateful that I don’t have to do this as a single grandparent and that my love is here to help out as well. As I sit here writing this at 11:46pm, my love is asleep on the couch. I am wide awake because he took over grandparent duty this afternoon so that I could take a nap. What was supposed to be an hour-long cat nap, became a two and a half hour sleep session because “you looked exhausted, babe”, he said.
Finding our new normal…:)
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