A firefighter's wife

A Fireman’s Wife

A Fireman’s wife, the Padre said,
has nights of fear and days of dread
as she hopes against hope
that she can ably cope,
when the dark visions arise
from their blackened night guise
to tell of the dangers that he befell
when he answered the call of the bell.
And in her heart she hides a dread
that the day may bring a car of red
with the Padre wearing eyes full of sorrow
that say that upon the morrow
her husband, her life, will not return
and her soul will burn, her soul will burn.
Burdens more than a wife should endure
but her motives purely simple and simply pure.

She Loves Him.

Or in tears she will quietly be by his side
that day when a comrade has fallen, has died,
because it was his friend, the one who fell
and did not again hear the ringing of the bell.

She must show him her love but not the hurt that she does feel,
or the pain that she quiet suffers when from his grief he does heal,
or nary tell him that she kneels every dark night
after sunset, before the morn’s dewy light
willing his return to their happy home.

(Come home, come home, oh please come home.)
To the wife, the Padre quietly went on,
I vow the fear and the dread will be gone
when the morning sun comes with no car of red
and he is home safe, safe in his bed.
Show him your love and show him your pride
held within your heart that you feel inside
because he is your husband and he is the one
who does a hard job, one that must be done.

The Padre said to the fireman’s wife
“A woman who chooses to live such a life
must accept times full of fun and also full of pain
as well as times full of sun and times full of rain.
But know that the yoke that you quietly wear
is also a great burden that he too must share.
Be content with some comfort, for it be true
and do not be troubled nor your life should you rue
for your husband though he leads a valiant life,
holds higher than the heavens, you, his wife
and he would be resolute and first to agree
that you are the much braver, far braver than he.”



D.M.Bowles

What they did right(homsechooling part 2)

There is nothing I love more than watching my son explore his world.  Everything, at five and a half months, is new.  He delights in discovering new sounds he can make, playing with his toes, and working so hard on crawling.  I love this, and it's one of the reasons I want to homeschool.  I want to watch him discover his world all through his childhood, and I want to be the person who explores it with him.
So this has made me re-evaluate my homeschool experience, and identify what was done right.  There were four main things that, looking back, I could identify as making our homeschool experience a success:

We were individuals.  There was no canned curriculum in my home.  My mother spent countless hours over the years researching and studying out the best books to use.  And simply because it was good for me, my mom was wise enough to realize it would not necessarily be best for one of my sisters.  Our curriculums were tailored to meet our own needs, right where we were.  My mom also stayed away from going with the flow and using what ever curriculum was currently popular.  Just because something was popular didn't mean it was the best thing for our family.

We were flexible.   If something wasn't working, we found something that did.   Just because we owned the textbook or curriculum ddin't mean we would continue on with it.  If it wasn't the best thing, my mom found something that was.

We were not isolationists.   It is a wide world, and there is a lot to learn and see and do and be.  We never felt segregated from the world at large.  We were not super-sheltered, not isolated, and had large birthday parties.  We spent a lot of time with others, whether it was a homeschool gym class, Bible Quizzing, missions trips, snowboarding, plays, or merely spending the weekend at a friends' house.  Even though my sister and I may have been best friends, and are still close, we had plenty of other friends outside the family.  Why is this important?  I have seen many people who grew up very isolated, were not allowed friends outside the family, and now I watch them struggle to cope in a rapidly changing social environment.  Also, we were able to see the way other families did things, whether wise or unwise things.  There were things that other families did that perhaps were not allowed in my family, or were simply foolish.  We were able to see that, to know how what kind of adults those children and teenagers became, and know what we want in our own families now.  There were many things that I will probably be more lenient on than my parents were, and many things that I will probably be stricter on than many of my friend's parents.  And there will be things I will be stricter on than my own parents were.  But because we were not isolated form the world, we have a lot of experiences and knowledge to draw from now as we raise our own children.

Education was a priority.  While I am making a concerted effort to not criticize anyone here, one of the things my sisters and I observed in other homeschooling families was that school did not seem to be a priority.  Waking up at 11 am after staying up half the night does not make education a priority.  Training your daughters how to sew, can, cook and clean while neglecting literature, history, math and science does not make education an priority.  Not requiring your children to finish their workbooks/textbooks/homework does not tell them that you think education is important.  And not striking a balance between good and worthwhile activities and staying on course with your schoolwork does not make education a priority.  Requiring your older children(usually daughters) to run your household and take care of your young children does not indicate to them that you think either parenting or education is important.  
None of these were factors in our homeschool.  Our schoolwork was of the highest academic quality.  It was finished.  It was important.  Why, after all, would you make the time and financial sacrifice to homeschool, if you didn't think education was important?
I have a child now.  A goofy, wonderful, happy, lovely little boy.  He may not be as academic as I am.  He may want and need to spend lots of time with his dad learning how to fix things and build stuff.  He may not be able to sit still very long and need lots of time to run and play.  Every situation is different, but I truly believe that if I stay flexible, accept him as an individual, allow him time to be and learn from others, and make sure he knows that he and his edcuation is so important to me, I think he will be fine.

Josh at 5 months old

Lots of people say they have the cutest baby in the world.
I really do.

College...for everyone?

I wanted to clarify something in my last post. I am a huge proponent of higher education. I do not believe that every single person needs a bachelor's degree. I have a B.A. in philosophy, writing and drama. My husband has an associate's degree in criminal justice and is a class or two away from a second associate's in fire science and is one class from an associate's in paramedicine. He also has carpentry and construction skills, and does not need a bachelor's degree. He hated school, hated classrooms, and about gave his dad a heart attack when he announced that he was going to college. It wouldn't surprise me if my son has no interest in classrooms and college, and if so, I don't think he needs to attend.
Some people need to go to college. Some people don't. What everyone does need, whether male or female, is a way to financially support themselves. For some people that's a bachelor's degree, for others it's a paramedic certification.
What I completely and totally disagree with is this notion that I keep running into in homeschooling circles is this concept that higher education is somehow worthless. I don't disagree that a home based business is valuable, but I also know that a lot of times, being your own boss can take more time and money than working for someone else. I saw a great deal more of my father when he had a job for someone else's company than when he had his own engineering firm. I also believe he probably made more money, especially once taxes were factored in. I think this is probably true of many businesses--it's the owners that work the longest hours. This isn't what we're aiming for.

I also disagree, totally, emphatically, forever, with the concept that women only need certain domestic arts and have no need for college. I love being home with my son. I have no interest in pursuing a career this time. I am forever thankful that I have a bachelor's degree and that I did not marry until I was 27 and did not have my first child until I was 28. It's not for everyone, but it was great for me, and I am sorrowful when I learn of other women who never had the opportunity to postpone marriage and children to pursue education, travel, and other interests. I firmly believe that my son will benefit from semi-older parents with a lot of life experience. Again, this is not for every woman. But saying that staying home until marriage, learning only what is needed to run a home and do the basic homeschooling, and not working after marriage is so so dangerous. Why? Because it pigeonholes women. It is just as dangerous as saying that every person should pursue higher education. Not every person should. Not every woman should be a stay at home mom. Making a blanket statement based on generalities is never right, and no one lifestyle will ever be right for every family.

So what do I believe? That education is important. That college is often a wise decision. That some people should pursue trades and careers that don't require higher education. That my son is the greatest thing in the world, and I am thankful I am financially able to work only one or two days a week, or none if I choose. I believe that putting my son in day care is not a wise choice for my family.
I believe that every family and situation and person is different. Should my son want to go to college, I will support that wholeheartedly. Should my son want to finish formal schooling at 16 and become a carpenter, I will support that wholeheartedly, too. Should I have a daughter, I will support her efforts to be self-sufficient and able to support herself, without relying on a husband, whether that involves college or not.
No one thing is right for everyone. And I truly believe it is very dangerous to say that it is.

Mountains

I did something yesterday that I've never done before.

I walked into my supervisor's office and told him I was having a hard time dealing with a recent call. That I've started having nightmares about Josh--that I walk out of the living room and come back and find he's crawled into the middle of the road. That he rolls out of bed again and gets hurt. That I put him in bed with me and accidentally suffocate him, or that I'm not watching and he chokes on a raisin.(Note: I do not allow my five-month-old to eat raisins. However, he puts everything he finds into his mouth.)

I think all moms have these fears.
I think paramedic moms have these fears with accompanying memories. Not only do we worry about our child running into the road, we see the face of a little child hit by a car. Not only do we worry about our child choking, we see the face of the little girl and how we tried to protect her airway, and couldn't. We still worry about the neighbor's pool, but we also close our eyes and remember the still, cold feel of a two year old underneath our hands as we tried, unsuccesfully, to force life back into her wet body.

So I followed my husband's request and went and talked to my supervisor. It helped. A lot.
Sometimes, especially as people who do things like run into burning buildings and deal with the messiest, grossest parts of humanity in the back of our ambulance, I think we start believing that we're different. That it doesn't affect us the way it does normal people. That all those calls just fade into the distance, all the hands we've held, all the things we've done to people's bodies in futile attempts to save their lives. But I don't think it does. I think we learn something from each patient, even(especially?) the ones we lose. I think that each time we have a call, it is just a culmination of all the calls I've had before. Everytime I walk away from a call, no matter how BS or serious, I take something of that patient with me--some small lesson I've learned.

And sometimes you hit upon that culmination and can't move past it. That's when it's okay to hold out your own hand and grasp someone else's. It's okay to ask for help to get up over that mountain so you can move on.

Overwhelming stuff....

Josh is sleeping, Rob is on a fire call, and I'm sitting here working on my paramedic refresher. Every three years, we have to go back to class and re-pass a refresher in order to keep our certifications. Fortunately, I got into a little different program that New York state is trying out, and I earn continuing education credits during those three years and then do a core class online. It's working out well; instead of spending Saturdays away from my family, Josh and I lay on the floor and watch the videos and do the quizzes and reading material. Okay, I do that, and Josh plays with his toys and drools on the keyboard. But he thinks it's great, and laughed all the way through the training on snowmobile accidents.

That's my kid.

This refresher is going to take a great deal of time. I'm trying to devote two hours a day to it, in case I go get my critical care paramedic certification this spring, or decide to take a class or two towards my master's. And, mostly, I just want to get it done and over with long before my paramedic certification expires.

But it's just one more thing to add to an ever growing list. I can't seem to keep my house clean with only two walking people living here. I find that I just want to get rid of stuff. And I'm starting to go crazy waiting for the money for the upstairs carpet, because we're trying to cram a 2300 square foot house into just the downstairs, and the boxes are starting to pile up.
Mostly, I want to move into a house that has a better design, and closets, and STORAGE, but that's going to be several years down the road.
And I am trying to sell a bunch of stuff on Ebay to save up for carpets, and I sold quite a bit, but then I found a whole lot of stuff that I wanted to buy and...oops. Spent more money than I had planned, and now I still have a lot of clothing and things I want to sell.
Plus the regular cleaning and baby playing and dirty diapers and cooking and organizing.

Sometimes, it's just all completely overwhelming.

time

It has been such a long couple of weeks. My great-grandmother suffered a stroke on Thursday and passed away on Friday. She was 98, but in good health, so it wasn't really an expected death. I had been meaning to get down to see her for weeks, but...it never seemed to happen.

Then after we decided that I needed to dramatically scale back at work, we got slammed again--nobody is working overtime anymore, so that's around eight grand we're losing, plus we got notified that there aren't going to be hours at our per diem job where Rob has been working at least a 24 hour shift for over a year. This is a drastic pay cut for us, and I can't quite figure out what we're going to do. I won't put on here what we were making together with the overtime and per diem job, but we were quite comfortable. So now I'm struggling, trying to figure out what to do.

And then.

Driving home today with Josh in the backseat, just a few miles back into my county, a vehicle in front of me hit a little four-year-old boy.

What am I to do? I'm a paramedic. I pulled over.

But I had nothing with me, not even a pair of gloves.

I asked a friendly looking bystander to please go check on my son, sleeping in his car seat in the back of the car. I attempted what stabilization I could, and prayed that the ambulance would get there soon. I borrowed a firefighter's radio and tried to contact my crew coming in what we had and how bad it was. I tried to keep my voice from shaking on the radio, tried to keep the thought that could be my son out of my head.
And when the helicopter lifted off, after I did everything I could do, and so did the firefighters and the ambulance crew and the helicopter nurse and paramedic, I pulled my son out of his car seat and held him close. The wind from the helicopter blew his hair, and he smiled his big gummy smile, and kissed me on the cheek.

Mommy, he said in his four-month-old talking way, I know that you are my mommy, and I love you.

And I kissed my beautiful little boy back, and looked over at the other mother standing there, watching her little boy, now very badly injured, lift off into the sky to get to a hospital where they could help him.

Oh, my precious little boy. Everythign else faded away in that moment--worrying about the money and the hours and the time and all of that. I get to wake up tomorrow morning to a happy, beautiful, whole baby son crawling onto my chest and kissing me till I wake up and smile at him.

There is nothing in the world that is worth giving that up for.