Old friends and mothering role models, part I

My apologies for being so lax in my posting. I’ve been stupid busy at work and I no longer am able to post daily like I prefer. Ah life is such a pain in the ass. Regardless I promised my old friend Tabitha that I would post my story about her next and I have been trying to gather my thoughts on it. This is something I’ve been sitting on the back burner for months now but she posted a note on her Facebook account and I just had to sit down and write it. Yup, I’m a slacker. Plus this one may take a few posts because doing it in just one is going to be darn long. I ramble, I know.

A little back story, I was dumped in the state of Maryland (it’s where I finally divorced my first husband, he was military) for most of my 20’s. Got there in 1994 or so and left in just after the turn of the century (isn’t it wild that we can actually use that turn in our lifetime?). While there I was going to college and I refused to leave until I finally got my degree. 9 years and 7 colleges after graduating high school I did get that degree. Regardless I did it on my own which means a boat load of student loans and working. A lot. At a job that had hours around odd school hours. BTW I never ever want to go back to school again, I’m so done. I went through a ton of jobs but ultimately I ended up being a vet tech. Wild work and you meet a lot of people. One of the girls I met was Tabitha, she was a tech with me. She is such a beautiful woman (more on that soon) and she’s had a kind of rough life in her younger years filled with a not so bright mom and an abusive father. It happens and I am surprised at how the human spirit can survive some of the crap that gets thrown at it. Those people that commit crimes and then blame it on their upbringing are so full of crap. I see beautiful people like Tabitha and I know there is no excuse for not being a positive influence on society no matter your upbringing.

When I first started working with Tab she was single and a wild child. Parties, boyfriends, the whole nine but with a good head on her shoulders. I left her be about the lifestyle, she’s a few years younger than me and I know some just need to get that out of their system. She was going to the same community college as me (the one The Blair Witch Project came out of, ick) and she had a boxer named CeCe (yes Trailboss, another boxer lover, we’re everywhere). I’ll fast forward a few years here for the sake of boredom, eventually she got a boyfriend that was a math teacher/coach at a high school (why are math teachers always coaches?) and accidently got pregnant. It happens, trust me I know. So they became a couple but he was Korean, do you know anything about Koreans? They don’t respect women much and he was exactly the pompass ass that you’d expect from a classic Korean man. I did not like him. He didn’t respect Tabitha at all as a person much less a significant other.

She used a her student loan as a down payment and they bought a townhouse together and moved in. She got pregnant with her second child and he decided to marry her. Beautiful fall ceremony and he was very sweet through it. Then he, not so slowly, went back to being an insulting ass. Tabitha and I took a calculus II class over the summer after that second child was born. It was BRUTAL. I could barely hack it, note to anyone out there, never ever take any calculus (esp calc II) over a summer course. There is not enough time to fully grasp what the hell the concepts are. I remember staying up late nights at her dining room table trying to wrap our heads around the stuff and I don’t think I ever understood it. I ended up taking it over later and it was awesome, I love math. Tabitha had it harder, she had 2 young babies and a husband who didn’t believe in her. He didn’t think she could do it and told her straight up. Told her she was stupid too. God I did not like that man. I have no respect for people who call other people stupid when they are trying to educate themselves. I mean hell she was taking calc II and raising 2 young children. I don’t think there were 2 years between her kids, or maybe just barely. The only thing stupid she was doing was staying with his dumb ass. It is my belief that you can judge the value of a man by the woman in his life and how he treats her. If he doesn’t have respect for his significant other then he’s just not that much of a man. You following me there? Yeah.

She did stay with him though. She was in an out of school and basically doing what I was but with babies and without the help or support from her husband. Oh and his lovely college friends? They treated her like shit and talked behind her back. Their wives did at least, I didn’t like them either. Right before she had her second I threw her a surprise baby shower and invited the bitches. Foul little women. I know you aren’t ‘supposed’ to have a baby shower with a second child but her first was a boy and her second a girl. Plus if you have a friend you love I don’t care how many babies they have, a baby shower is in honor of them, a celebration of new life. These girls were nasty and complained before Tabitha came home for us to surprise her. I hadn’t dealt with people like this since high school and it was unpleasant then, needless to say it didn’t get any better with age. They shaped up after the party started though, they were obviously used to faking it. No surprise there. I never mentioned it to Tabitha, she was busy trying to keep her life together. Oh did I mention her husband hated the dog? Yeah eventually she had to get rid of her. Grounds for divorce right Trailboss? She found Cece a nice home with another family. Sad, that dog got on with the kids so well. They would conspire to get into the treats and snacks together. The oldest boy would climb on top of the dog and get into stuff in the kitchen. Boxers are such great family dogs.

I am going to save the more personal nitty gritty part of this story for the next installment. I read an article once where it was talking about how people bemoan not having a decent mother. It went through an explanation of how you need to pick people in your life to be your mothering role model. It was a great article and since I had a pathetic mother with no redeeming qualities to speak of I thought it pertained to me. Tabitha was my first role model. From very early on I saw in her what a mother was supposed to be.