Long, long ago, in possibly my middle school time, I read this poem whos concept has stuck with me all these years. I don’t remember much about it just that it was about a mother and daughter talking after the death of the father and husband. The daughter asks “How will we survive?” And paraphrasing horribly the mother pretty much says “One day at a time.”
That’s kind of how it’s been for my family these past few months.
Now, don’t worry, nothing horribly tragic has happen to us, thank goodness. But, to keep a long story short my husband hasn’t had the best of luck with work. It hasn’t been an easy past four months. More often than not we had to take one day, and a few times one moment at a time. Sometimes I would have loved to have traded these months for prosperity and the assurance that a good job brings… sometimes I don’t.
It is said that retrospect is 20/20. Things become clearer about your life after you’ve gone through it. You can see the forest for the trees. Looking back right now I still don’t understand why my family and I have to go through this difficult time, but I can see that we’ve actually done really well.
Some days it feels like I don’t know how we are going to get through it all, bills, babies, more bills, sickness, horrible jobs, rough nights, and so on. Then the next day comes and we’ve made it through that day. Often with snatches of sleep and on the brink of sanity, but we survived by some miracle.
When October ended I was looking at our calendar at all the recorded milestones of our twins, appointments, and events I realized how much we have achieved, survived and witnessed just within that month alone.
My little girl was showing signs of developmental delay in her large motor skills. You see, at the end of September she hadn’t rolled over yet. Then in the middle of October, with help of physical therapy exercises she had finally rolled over, both ways. Her brother was leaving her in the dust when it came to large motor skills. I was afraid she was going to be far behind due to her and her brother being premature. I’ve just had learned that she does things on her own pace- much unlike her me growing up. (I didn’t learn to ride a two wheeler bike until I was eight-years-old)
Now, as each month passed kids are soaring along and bills were being paid because we had the money because of the generosity of an unknown person or people helping us along.
These past months sacrifices have had to be made as we’ve survived one miracle at a time. Sometimes I don’t know how we've been so blessed; we still have a roof over our heads, a good running car, our health (no counting the ocassional colds that come with winter) and we have gained several new talents and have gained a gratitude for the help we’ve received, the smaller things.
We’ve had to be humbled and reach out for help- which isn’t easy for us. For my husband and I, it’s important to us to be self-sufficient, but we exactly can’t do that right now if we want to survive. It has been a humbling experience. I just hope we can pay it forward or back all the kindness we’ve received.
And like I said we have gained new skills along the way because of this hard time. A few times I’ve had to improvised dinners with what I could scrap together in our cabinets. Several times I’ve created meals that are now our favorites. I learned to make soup, homemade noodles, spaghetti sauce, tortillas, and bread. I have learned how to patch up clothes, entertain my kids with things around the house; since we can’t go and buy a bunch of toys, and much more…
Now, I’m not writing this blog for people to feel sorry for us; that is far from my intent. I want to tell people who may be going through something similar or will go through something similar that it is possible to survive, even when the end is not in sight.
Just take one day at a time and you will be taken care of one miracle at a time just as we have.
