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I recently read an article by Babble blogger Alice Gomstyn about Sonya Romero-Smith, a kindergarten teacher in Albuquerque who helps her students that are living in poverty. The first questions she asks them each morning are: “Did you eat?” and “Are you clean?” It shocked a lot of people — but not me.
I happen to be one of those educators, working in a title 1 middle school in a very high-poverty area. When I say “poverty” here, I’m not talking about a family whose dad has been laid off from his job or a family going through divorce or sickness. I’m not talking about a sudden, temporary, or even long-term shortage of money. I’m talking about families who have lived in poverty for generations. Families who don’t know anything but poverty. Generational poverty is very different from families experiencing hard times — mainly because they often view education as a stressor, and school a place they do not belong, making it extremely difficult to end the cycle.
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I’ve been divorced for five years and I only recently started dating again. Now that I have, I’ve come to the realization that I waited too long.
I think it’s important to take time to heal from divorce. People need time to adjust to the major changes that divorce brings: different living situations, moving, financial struggles, and having to share time with your kids. Divorce is a death of sorts. It’s the death of your hopes, dreams, and beliefs that you will spend the rest of your life with your spouse. It takes time to go through the grieving process. It’s wise to wait a year or so, so that you can evaluate your life, take inventory of who you are, change the things about you that you don’t like, and discover what exactly you’re looking for in a partner.
However, if you wait too long, some things happen that make dating more difficult.
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My sister told me that her kids’ school was canceled last week because of the extreme weather. They were having their third snow day in a row and she sounded a little twitchy on the phone. It almost made me reluctant to rub in the fact that I live in Orlando where the temperature was a balmy 75. Almost. But I lived in Chicagoland for 41 years before moving to Florida so I remember firsthand how taxing it can be to entertain the kids when they’re stuck in the house 24/7 because of the snow and/or freezing temperatures.
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Yesterday, while filling out a form online, I was asked for my birthdate. I entered the month, the day, and then moved my mouse over the year. My birth year was nowhere to be found. I hit the down arrow and started scrolling. I scrolled. And I scrolled. And I scrolled some more until I found the ancient, prehistoric year of 1970. I took this as an irrefutable sign that I am OLD. I lamented to my friends that I do not like this whole “scrolling to get to your birth year” business. We agreed that we are officially old, but we refuse to admit it to the world. These are the lengths we go to in order to prove we’re young parents (even though we know the truth!) …
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