torn hose: a mother's story

A Quick History

Torn Hose: A Mothers Story

by: Sabrynabrooklynne

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Lori, and I'm a thirty-seven-year-old mother of two teenagers.

I was married when they were both born, but unfortunately, ours has been a one parent household for the past eight years.

My oldest is Rachel, my seventeen-year-old daughter. She actually finished high school a year early and now she's taking classes at the community college and working a part-time job. Not that she needs to, but she insists on helping pay for it. The younger is my son Raymond who is fifteen years old, and a high school sophomore.

We live in a small German/Polish town just south east of Dallas, Texas.

My husband, before his untimely fatal motorcycle accident, was co-owner of a rather successful regional soft drink company. Now we weren't rich by any means, but I didn't have to work and we were able to put away a good amount of money in investments that would allow us to continue to live comfortably if the business was suddenly no longer there.

Most people would say we were pretty well off, my husband and I called it comfortable. We did live like no one else, 100% debt free. We didn't believe in using credit. My husband called the interest payments on credit balances 'stupid tax'. His philosophy was, if you weren't willing to save up the money first so you could buy it with cash, then you didn't really need it as bad as you thought you did.

Just after he died, his business partner and I sold the business to a high profile international food and beverage distributor for twenty-five times its average yearly earnings and stock options equal to two percent of the yearly product profits for each of us. I immediately invested ninety percent of my half of the money in slow growth mutual funds and domestic stocks.

Now, I work a part-time job doing what I love, activities coordinator at a large retirement community. Not because I really have to, but you can't expect money to always be there if you are always taking away and never contributing. Not only that, I'd go insane if I didn't have something to do regularly. I'm the kind of person that has to stay busy.

When I'm not working I spend twenty or more hours a week, volunteering at the nearby children's hospital.

Rachel and Raymond, they have their similarities, they both study hard, and have strong work ethics. Their dad taught them well, but aside from that, they couldn't be more different.

Rachel has loads of friends, girls, and boys, no boyfriend or anything, just friends. She's always been an outgoing and all around friendly person. I also consider her one of my own best friends.

Raymond, on the other hand, has very few friends. He's more of a loner, finding it hard to get close to anyone outside of his sister and I.

He has maybe two male friends and two friends who are girls, familiar and friendly, but he isn't very close to any of them. He never mixes with other people, it is as if he is very shy, but that's not really it, he's more of a lone wolf type that prefers to keep to himself if anything. Even when one of his friends is over, it's very quiet in his room with one playing a video game on the console while the other has his attention focused on a PC game. Very odd to me.

Anyways, that brings me to my story.