Life can be exciting and rewarding, but actually life is just a long learning experience that many of us just do not understand. When things go wrong we have to find someone to blame, but when things go right we hold that as one of our successes. When you are growing up you do not think of the things that will be tough, or challenging to endure, you dream of the good times and the rewards that you will gain while you grow old. I grew up dreaming like every little girl does about getting married, having children, living in a big beautiful house, and going to fantastic and beautiful places on vacation. I never thought of the trials and tribulations that I would face or have to live through. My parents while raising me never clued me into the problems of day to day life and neither did they ever tell me that things would not go the way they were meant to be. They did what they felt was right and raised me with dreams and hopes for a wonderful life with good times and peace. Little did I know what life had in store for me when I set out on that journey on my own.
I can remember when we first moved to Washington and the things that happened to us. They were devastating. We had decided a year before we moved there that we would not go unless one of us had a job. We saved money and we applied for jobs, and within that year I was offered a job with my tribe as the payroll accountant. I had 6 yrs experience with accounting and was thrilled that I would be working with my tribe. So we moved and the night that we left Ohio I became very ill, thinking it was just a cold we travelled on anyway. All across the country I just got sicker and sicker. We arrived at our friend’s house in Redmond a few days before I was to start my job and I started feeling better. So I thought maybe it was just nerves, after all I had never met any of these relatives, being adopted as a baby. I started my job and began getting sick again and about a week or so after I began working I met my real brother. He lived on the rez and so he asked if we wanted to stay with him at his house, which meant a shorter drive for us. Everything seemed so perfect and finally I was where I had been born, around my family and meeting new people every day.
Then all hell broke loose. I disagreed with the Finance Director about putting a million dollar check for the tribe in his personal account for a long weekend and went to the health clinic and was told I had to stay home from work and they loaded me up on medication and sent me to my brothers. A month later when I returned to work, I found that I had been fired while on sick leave. So I started to help my husband with the little Espresso Stand, and my brother being a devout alcoholic got into a screaming match with us and we ended up leaving his place. We started to stay at the Espresso stand, sleeping in our car at night. The Veterans director offered us a place to stay in a building they had at the Stommish grounds. We had very little money and our life was so unlike what either of us had ever experienced. Soon things got worse and worse and worse. I was meeting many of my cousins but they were no better off than me. One of them suggested that we go to town and have a free lunch since we hardly had any money for food. We were getting food from the food bank on the rez but that did not go far, and most of our money went into supplies for the Espresso stand, where we hoped it would soon take off and we could get out of the rut we were in. Our car had broken down and we had no way to get anywhere, so we had to rely on family who took pity on us to take us to town and help us get the supplies that we needed. Times were very tough then and nothing like we had ever been through before. We both thought that we were going crazy and that some day we would wake up for the horrible nightmare that we were stuck in and things would be all a bad dream. We just kept on trying and hoping and praying for our life to somehow move in a good direction so that we could find our way back to a decent and healthy life without all the troubles that we seemed to be living in at that point.
We started going into town at lunch time and my cousin rode with us and showed us where to go. We would go to a couple of churches that offered free lunches to those who could not afford it. I began to notice that many of my cousins were at these places and that is when I first felt amazement at the fact that so many had this on their life schedules and only one of my cousins mentioned and made sure we got there to share in a decent meal. At first I was very embarrassed because all the homeless and poorest of the poor were there, but the food was hot and healthy. After a while I began to look around and started visiting slowly with the other people around me. I soon noticed that many of them were like us, just down on their luck with no hope of getting out. Oh there were others also who seemed to be making a living at being poor, and those who were hopeless lost in bottles and needles, but that did not seem to matter. We all were doing the right things but things are tough when you are at the bottom of the barrel.
We finally got stuff going and years later we now live in Missouri with a home of our own and land we are buying. My health is better and what was wrong with me is totally another story. But my point of sharing this with you, is that you never know what is around the next corner. You never know what cards you are going to be dealt from the dealer in the sky, so if you can help out those who are in need, even if it is not Christmas. I learned a real lesson from that time that I will carry with me forever. Life is not a bowl of cherries but rather a road that we all travel and some do so in big beautiful new cars and some in broken down jalopies and some even walk.
