Thirtysomething

The Lucky Ones

For awhile I've wanted to post about someone I know, but she previously worked for me, and it didn't seem appropriate. She doesn't work for me anymore. I'm sad about that.

Let's call her Ellen. Ellen and I are almost the same age, and we have similar personalities. But our similarities end there. We come from different racial, socio-economical and religious backgrounds. I graduated from college, got a master's degree from an ivy-league institution, am single and have no children. Ellen got pregnant as a teenager, dropped out of college, finally got an associate's degree and eight years later is still working on a bachelor's. She has two children. We would always joke that although she and I were the same age, that her children would be able to babysit for my children one day. We also joked that at the rate I was going I would be in a retirement home by the time my children went to college, while Ellen's kids would be off to college by the time she was middle-aged.

I greatly admire Ellen. Unlike most teen-aged moms in urban settings, she didn't give up on school entirely. It's taken her awhile, but she's getting there. She's held down stable jobs. She's a very hard worker. She refused to go on welfare, knowing the vicious cycle that comes with it. Both her children have the same father and, after some struggles, they've stayed together as a happy family.

Ellen is incredibly lucky. It doesn't turn out that way for most people like her. She's broken most stereotypes. I'm aware of how hard that can be.

I think the trick was that Ellen always put her children first. She tried to better herself only so that it bettered her children. She continued going to school, so she could get better jobs, so that she could make more money, so that her children could have better things. There was a time, after her first child was born, when she ended her relationship with her child's father, because she was young and didn't want to be tied down anymore than she already was and also, he couldn't hold down a job. And who needs that?

Ellen looked at me in amazment when I would walk in from lunch with bags of clothes from yet another shopping adventure. It floored her that I spent money on myself. But then, who else was I going to spend it on? That was a concept she didn't get. Ellen couldn't remember a time when she didn't have a child and didn't have to worry about feeding them, clothing them, providing for them. She would say that she couldn't imagine not having children, but would follow up with "But that's because if I did imagine it, I would probably become bitter about the carefree life I didn't get to have."

Ellen would gush about how proud my family must be of me, educated and successful. But I countered, that it was easier for me. My background steered me in a direction where everyone around me finished college, everyone was pushed to succeed. For Ellen, to accomplish what she has, continuing her education, raising two children, becoming an adult at a young age, that was was much harder. She had so many more obstacles than I did, that I told her that a comparison of she and I was like comparing apples and oranges.

She's one of the lucky ones. But then, I think she made her own luck.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 7:10 AM