A Boy and a Girl
My husband and I were both raised
in middle-class homes. I was born
in New Mexico three and a half months early, weighing in at over 2 pounds. I guess my first feat to accomplish in this
life was to live. When I was less than a
year old, my parents and I moved to California so that Stanford could pick me
up for a research study as I was born with my lungs extremely underdeveloped. Children born as I was didn’t live long in
the mid-80’s…. Until they realized (through my study) that moving to sea-level
will allow the lungs to grow the remaining essential components needed for
breathing. Once I was medically stable,
my family and I moved to Colorado. What
a beautiful place to grow up. It was a
small, quaint town where everyone knew what was going on with everyone
else. The mountain scenery was like what
you would see in a painting in an art gallery… just plain breathtaking. I moved back to New Mexico in the middle of
my freshman year of high school, and moved yet again right before my senior
year of high school to Texas. No, my
parents were not military…. We just moved a lot. I do come from a broken home, which is not
unheard of these days. My mother and
father have both been married three times, and thus I have one half older
brother and two half younger sisters. My
parents both loved me dearly no matter what and I was very blessed for
that. My junior year of high school is
when I learned of the private university.
It was very academically challenging, and as just an average student, I
longed for that challenge. My father decided, before my senior year of high
school, to have an important dinner conversation. He took me to one of my favorite restaurants
in town, and I ordered my favorite dish.
He then proceeded to tell me, “Just like your brother, I will not be
paying for your college education”…. It was a formal dinner meeting… to discuss
that I was to somehow be responsible for my future. Despite this talk, I decided to apply to the
private university. I did not really
expect to get in, until I checked the mail on a March afternoon… I had done it.
Now I just had to figure out how to pull it off.
My husband, Studmuffin we will call
him, was born in a small Texas town and that’s where he stayed for the majority
of his childhood. He was born at over 9
pounds (quite the opposite of me). He lived
with his grandparents for the majority of his childhood and they were wonderful
to him. He also comes from a broken home, as his father has been married three
times and his mother twice. He has two half-brothers and one half sister. He
was sporty growing up. He was the
quarterback of the football team in middle school, played tennis and golf. One afternoon, his junior year of high school,
he was at a family gathering when his father called him into a back room. His dad then proceeded to say, “There’s no
money, and we cannot afford for you to go to college. You must go into the military to fly jets.”
Studmuffin then took note of the glasses on his face and knew that wasn’t an
option for him. He also, in that moment,
recalled that his half brother and sister (one in grade school and the other a
toddler at that point) already had their college paid for by his father who got
them a college fund. As a product of
divorce, Studmuffin’s college fund was wiped away in court proceedings (just as
mine was). Most of Studmuffin’s friends
were going to this private university.
Angry with his father, he applied to this private university to spite
him. On Valentine’s Day, the day after
his 18th birthday, he got notification that he had been accepted. Now he too had to figure out how this would
work. He just knew that it wasn’t the
military as his father wanted, so he would do anything to make it happen.
