While making a cup of coffee earlier, a co-worker asked me what we are doing at the weekend. I laughed, and she frowned.
“Well, in comparison to your frame of reference, we don’t really have a weekend at all”
“You must do somethings you want to do”
“Not really. Football tomorrow. Swimming on Sunday. Washing clothes. Ironing. Washing up. Tidying up. Maybe take the kids swimming on Sunday if we can fit it in.”
“But that’s fun, right?”
“Two of us, three children, and two of them can’t swim yet. You can’t watch all of them all the time. You never get a moment to rest.”
She carried on making her lunch, and I carried on making my coffee.
“Can you remember what it was like before you had the children? Do you miss it?”
I had to admit that I did miss some parts of it - the lazy weekends, and the weekdday evenings where you get home from work and that’s it- the evening is your own. No Guides, Brownies, PTA meetings, teachers to see, children to fetch from friend’s houses, mounds of washing up to clear, washing to put through the washing machine, wreckage to pick up from all over the house…
While thinking about how our life revolves around the children, with their interests almost always being put ahead of our own, I started thinking about what would have happened to the children if they had never been pulled from their birth family by social workers.
Where would they be now ?What would they be doing ? What would have happened to them ?
It feels awful to say it - knowing that so many other children live the life that our children found themselves in every day - but the thought of where they might be nowscaredme. Knowing their story, and knowing the issues they have - particularly our youngest - I don’t really want to go there.
I guess it hit home this week when I realised I wouldn’t be spending the proceeds of freelance work on myself; I would be paying for swimming lessons for all of the children. Yet again sacrificing a new TV, or a new computer, or a video game machine, or some other such “stuff” in order to give the kids something far more useful.
The next time I feel bitter about everything I earn being burned up by everybody else, all I have to do is remind myself of that thought - where would the kids be now if we hadn’t adopted them.