To the Brink, but not Back...Yet

By Al Horn

As I veer ever closer to the maddening edge I can't help look back at the path that brought me here today. Much has happened since the last time I posted.

A year ago we took in my daughter and her two kids as she moved out of the trailer her and her husband had been living in. We had been expecting this to happen but not for a few more months. At about the same time, we took in my wife's son. He was also a mission of mercy. In less than a week we had went from a house of four to twice that number. As expected, something had to give.

I love my four grandchildren dearly. At first they got along well because they didn't see each other very often. At the end of the first week things were still relatively calm. At the end of the first month my wife was about to go over the edge as the decibel range shot up dramatically.

Where she had been dreading surgery for months she was now welcoming the excuse to get out of the house for a few days. Pain pills helped to maintain the isolation for about a week after she came home. As the pain began to recede her thoughts began to shape a plan. It would be expensive but well worth the peace of mind.

By December we had helped the daughter move into a trailer of her own. We bought it, she's paying for it, and will one day take over the loan. Good for her, good for us. Peace was in sight. Or so we thought.

Two weeks later a hard freeze came and a lack of maintenance on the family car brings a blown engine. This is the same car being used by my wife's son for work. We also get the final bill for the retaining wall we had built during the spring, summer, and fall (another story for another time). We bought another car and continued to careen down the fiscal highway.

At Christmas time our daughter in Phoenix announces she has gotten her life back on track and wants to put together a plan for getting the children we have been raising. We fly (more money spent) the kids to Phoenix at spring break and everything looked good as far as her financial capability was concerned. The desired bonding took place and we started making plans to drive them and most of their stuff to Phoenix at the end of the school year. We were beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately the light was attached to a train bearing down on us. Two weeks before we were to pack things up, our daughter calls; things have fallen apart. A business partner decides he wants to run things his way and it did not include our daughter or her husband. Everything they have stuck into a new house and the business is gone overnight. Rather than wait a few more years to get back on their feet, they ask if they could move here and start over. What are you going to say to two kids that are expecting to live with mom?

Having them has been an expensive proposition. The plus side is they have completed the bonding with the two kids while allowing my wife and I a gradual emotional release of the two young wards we have been nurturing for the past three years. In a few days they will be moving into a house about ten miles to the west. This distance matches the two grandchildren to the north.

We will have our home back. Well, aside from the son living down in the basement. He quietly comes and goes. We hardly notice him. As we start reclaiming the life we knew before we became 'parents' again, we have the benefits of grandchildren close enough to see on a regular basis, the freedom to participate in adult activities without trying to find a babysitter, and a built in house sitter when we want to run off for the weekend to play golf or attend a writing conference.

The price we have paid financially, mentally, and emotionally might have been well worth the cost.