Those Good Ole Boys
I’m not sure why there was such a rush for girls to be engaged by the time they were seniors in university. It was called the “senior panic” in the one I attended, and that was down in sunny South Carolina, with the moss laden trees, and melt-in-your-mouth biscuits. I was somehow immune to this mentality when I arrived, having no pressure from family nor friends back home to consider such a thing at the tender age of 21. Maybe you never had this panic either, but down in the South, it was there full force, engaging the most studious female into dividing her attention between her studies and the pursuit of matrimony. It must have affected GPAs notably.
So what, you say? Well, the point I am trying to get across as I reminisce about those Good Ole Boys, is that we need to slow down and ensure we have an adequate education before jumping into the role of wife and mother. Too many students got married prior to graduating, and never returned, willing to take up the apron and live the blissful picture they saw on the Dyck Van Dyke Show, until they realized even Laura Petrie had an education to be a smart asset to her marriage even if she never had to test the waters of the financial world and acted too naive about money matters.
Having a university degree helped me cope with these years since being a widow. With the ability to be in the workforce where I am hired because of my degree and not in spite of one, I am able to support my family. Being the sole bread winner isn’t any fun, but I am grateful for all the money poured into my education, whether from my dad or from the many part time jobs I held during university.
My grandmother, the best there was, drilled it into my head when I was growing up, to have something to lean back on, some skill, even if it was teaching piano like she did in the Old Country, when the war came and food was scarce. She crocheted, she cooked, she sewed, and she taught piano. She kept a family together when her husband was captured by the enemy, not all by herself, but with the help of her children, they all survived.
You may not have many skills or much of an education. If so, it is not too late, but it will be harder to get one if you have children to support. It can be done, however, just gather supports around you because you’ll need a strong support group to boost you.
We owe it to our daughters and sons, to be good at something, to have a skill or trade or degree in something more than Facebook competency. Any one of them could end up being a widow or widower all too soon. An eduation is worth pursuing before pursuing that ring, because having the latter without the former is like jumping off a ship into a tempestuous ocean without having the ability to swim.
