A Look Back - Part 4

This is the fourth installment of a short series.  The intent is to keep the blog entries brief.  You can read parts 1, 2 and 3 in the archive.

PART 4

Madonna & Child
Maria B. Davis

Let's jump back to my kids and the reason I started my journey of re-discovery, community volunteering and organizing. I enjoyed and still enjoy caring for my children.  I'm glad that I have been there for their first steps, their first words and many other "firsts" in their life.  As I watched them grow from infancy to elementary school, I became keenly aware that they would eventually grow up and leave home to continue their own life journey.  They are my world, and I hoped, and still do today, that someday they would have their own children who would be their world.  When my last child entered elementary school,  I decided that in order to take advantage of opportunities that might arise in the future, planning and doing needed to start now rather than later.  I wasn't even sure who I was anymore.  Wishes and dreams that I held long ago were no longer the same and this journey of re-discovery developed by simply "doing" and figuring out just what I enjoyed or didn't.  I did, however, know that I wanted my community to be a better place for my family to work, play and live in.  That became a mission.  Sometimes I am paid.  Many times I am not.  This, although at times, a difficult aspect of my life,  has allowed me the flexibility to be fairly independent creatively as well as given me flexibility of time.  I chose to be the main caregiver to my children.  In choosing this, I have given up things, but gained so much more.   At times I have failed miserably.  I have had projects that have taken so much time that it created disharmony in my family which was never, and is never, my intention.  I've made many mistakes and had my successes.  Time can be, and I believe is, a person's most valuable gift to someone.  It goes forever forward and never back.  Once given it cannot be undone.  Many of my regrets live in time away from my family.  I hope not to accumulate more as I serve them and my community.