Life Isn't Fair

Life isn't fair in a hundred different ways every single day. "It's not fair",  is something I hear at school from students a lot.  It's not fair that she got the pencil with the new eraser, it's not fair that his paint tray is full of blue and mine is only half full, it's not fair.  I wish there was some way to make people come to acceptance, or maybe realization of the fact that life isn't fair.  It's just not.  Why does the notion that it is even exist??  When you get older it's other things; clothes, cars,  jobs, vacations, and houses.  Some of those ways life isn't fair are insignificant, and if you fret over them, it falls into the "sweating the small stuff" category in my book, and you should just get over it.  Other unfair things, though, are more significant.  Some people are born into nicer families, have kinder siblings, and wonderful, loving, involved parents.  Others are like the first grader who told me the other day, "my mom doesn't really help me with stuff".  Truly unfair.  But, that doesn't mean you get to quit.

In 2012, I had a nice little life and a sweet little nuclear family.  We watched G rated movies every Friday night, and I made us healthy organic food.  I worked part time at a preschool, worked out during the day, did all of my laundry from start to folded and put away on Fridays.  Everything was organized.  My husband was finding career success in a "newish" job.  He was receiving accolades, and things were looking very exciting for him.  He was assembling a team that invigorated him professionally.  He loved his work.  I had a marriage, and a husband.  My kids had a dad.  It really seemed that for our family things were looking up.  We had recently decided that I wouldn't return to teaching, as previously planned.  We were loving our life as it was unfolding.  (We had already had a job loss that took our life in a new direction, and were recovering from that, and it seemed life was good again.)

And then March 17, 2012.  My husband coached a lacrosse game, and made the kids lunch, and I went for a run, and then he was going to mow the lawn.  It was the last thing he ever did.  And now, my kids live every single day of their lives without their dad, and I am raising them on my own.  You want to talk about not fair.  THAT is not fair.  It is the kind of not fair that still makes me angry as I type this. It is the kind of not fair that is real.  It is not fair.  It sucks.  It is not a pencil.  It is life.  And it's not fair.  Just like that we are a family of 3 instead of 4.  It's not right.  It's not how it's supposed to go.  We got a raw deal.  And why?  We are nice.  We didn't deserve it.  My kids deserve their dad to be there for everything.  The list of things he has missed is already so long.....a wedding, and a grand baby are surely at the top, but braces, and puberty, and so many small insignificant, but major when they are your kids kinda things.  It is not fair.  My dad dying 9 month later, also not fair.  Even he died young by today's expectations, not fair, but not as not fair for me at 42, as it was for my kids at 8 and 9.

What am I to do.  Be mad?  Get angry?  Give up?  No, well yes sometimes.  But not permanently.  Those are not options.  Not reasonable, practical options anyway (and I am one practical girl).   Am I allowed to be sad, yes.  Am I allowed to wallow, no.  Am I allowed to grieve, of course.   I guess what I have done, or tried to do (more successfully at some times than others), is shift the sails.  It is so cliche' and yet so true.  A friend's husband said this to me at the wake.......he said, "it's not going to be the story you were writing, but you have to keep writing the story".  And so I am, writing it.  The good, the bad, the hard, the easy, all of it.

I try to do more of what I love now.  I try to tell people what I think, so they know, because you never know.  I expect less.  And not in a bad way (I'm just realistic).  My life is vastly different in so many ways, and they aren't all terrible.  They are just different.   My life is chaotic and hectic, and my laundry is rarely folded ever let alone every Friday.  My kids at frozen pizza tonight while doing homework at 9:30 after practice, and that is okay.  We miss our old life sometimes.  We love our new life and adventures sometimes.  I have found a new love and my kids love him too.  He isn't their dad.  We don't get a second chance at a nuclear family, and that isn't fair.  But, he is wonderful and has taught my son all about football (including teaching him who his dad loved and why), and gives my daughter lots of love and positive feedback and praise (which every young teen girl needs).  It is a mixed bag.  It isn't perfect.  You know why, because perfect doesn't exist.  No one is perfect.  Nothing is perfect.  And life isn't fair.  That is what I know.  And it is okay, because it is still totally worth it.

Life is so very worth the living.  I love my kids so much it makes me well up with tears and my heart  physically aches (and yet they make me crazy sometimes).  They are 12 and 14 (and 25!!!) and I still love every new thing they do, or learn, or discover.  I love this new grand baby (my stepdaughter's baby), who has no blood connection to me, like crazy.  I am so proud of her mother, and I know her dad is too.  I love to travel, and I am making it more of a priority because it makes me so so so happy.  And teaching.  It is a mixed bag.  It's hard.  So hard.  Okay, I think it is mostly hard.  But with it has come new friends, and new vision, and new experiences, and new empathy (and worry about the world....but that is another blog).  I'm not a stay at home mom anymore, my life isn't neat and tidy, but it is still so good.  We have a hole in our hearts.  And yet, we are okay.  We find joy because we look for it.  We find beauty, because I try to point it out to them.  We love because we are here and we can. We could just live in a mad angry place.  We got robbed.  It's not fair.  We would be justified in our anger.  But, that would rob us even more; of the beauty and goodness around us today.  Life is too good to live there.  I can't let it happen.  It takes work, and sometimes we visit there but we can't stay there.  Life isn't fair, and that is what it is.