|
October 26, 2003 ~ A Change of Plans
Sunday.
Note: This entry is a conclusion to the grad school fertility dilemma and the decision we made regarding it. If you've not read those yet, you may want to do so now.
When you write an online journal and put snatches of your life and your thoughts up there for other people to read, those other people start to get to know you pretty well after a few years of reading. And sometimes those people have online journals as well, and you read theirs too, and you get to know each other well. Communication outside of the entries brings further understanding, and you form very close friendships.
Well, over the last week, one of those friends picked up on a few key thoughts that I'd hidden from myself, let alone the world, and he held those thoughts in front of me and made me face them. Even though he didn't want to. Even though what he had to say was far from tactful and could have possibly been hurtful, and tactless and hurtful are two things that he most certainly is not. I sent him a disarming email saying, essentially, "No, really, I'm okay, I'm feeling much better about this, thanks." He knows me better than that, though, and could see right through that "no, really, I'm okay" smile, so he persisted.
I won't relate exactly what he said, but, suffice it to say, on Friday night, he redirected my thoughts by, yes, a few well-aimed hard words, but mostly by simply asking the questions that he knew I needed asked, giving the advice that he knew I needed to hear, and tempering all of that with a gentle compassion and understanding. Someone willing to walk that tightrope is one hell of a friend.
As a result, he helped me find a path that felt right, when before every direction had seemed dark and grim. So, what does this mean?
After listening to what Grouse had to say and talking with him quite a bit about it, I had a long and very serious talk with Morgan. We've come to some conclusions. There's been a pretty major change of plans.
Here's the tentative idea. This year, Morgan will take the GRE, then apply to (and here comes the surprise) Western Carolina University (local) to start classes next fall towards a Master of Arts in Teaching, for the high school level, with a concentration in social studies / history. Morgan wants to teach. High school isn't quite what he had in mind, but it would be a job in which he would feel fulfilled. Meanwhile, I will still be working at the college, he will be working in a Grad Assistantship program, and, of course, making money in whatever other innovative ways that we can come up with. WCU is not too expensive, and we could handle those costs fairly well.
Near the end of his two-year stint at WCU, we will start trying to have children, and we will hopefully succeed. He will become a high school teacher for the next eight or so years, until our kids are school age. Then I work while they're in school, and he goes to Grad school for religion, as he is dreaming, with the added advantage of teaching experience and one Master's degree under his belt.
This way, Morgan doesn't have work a meaningless job for years and years. He wants to teach. He'll be teaching. We can have children while I'm still younger, without the worry of the waning condition of my fertility. Morgan still gets his chance at Grad school, just delayed a bit. (I swear on all that I hold holy that he will still have his chance. We will make it work somehow). The only thing that we really give up, if we can get this to work, is our wish to home school our children. Not a huge sacrifice, all things considered.
I wish that I could convey in words the sense of peace and quiet joy that I now have. I've been smiling for two days straight.
Oh, yes. It's going to be hard. We're going to struggle a bit, and probably be poor (though we're quite accustomed to that). And it most certainly won't go precisely to plan.
But we'll be happy. We'll both be happy.
|
|
