The Path to Now, Part 2

Continued from The Path to Now, Part 1...

By late 2007, we were seeing that work opportunities were going to be slim, and all signs were indicting that it would not be a temporary problem.  After five years of pretty much exclusively doing new construction, subcontracting for other contractors, we started looking at the possibility of expanding our focus.  We advertised and did some bidding on a couple of smallish residential remodel projects, but quickly realized that everyone and his brother were doing the same, and we could not really compete.  I had already began to look for part-time work to help deflect against the smaller income that we were already seeing; however, not many local retailers were interested in hiring at all at that point - they were feeling the beginning of the pinch, too - and those that were looking were not interested in my limited availability of evenings and weekends.  With two small kids, and no family close enough to help out, I was stuck.  Once we saw how incredibly devastating the recession - not yet labelled that, but still - was to be for us we saw that the only chance we had to get through was for me to bring in a larger income than I could working part-time.   The only problem?  Child care.

We sat late into the evening one night, crunching numbers and brain storming.  How long could we pay the bills if Mr. Four Walls was completely out of work? (A few months) How much would full-time child care cost for the girls? (A lot).  Did we have anyone that could help us with them? (Yes).  Phone calls were made, family meetings held, and shortly before Christmas it was decided that Mr. Four Walls' mother would move in with us, live rent-free, and care for the girls so I could work.  She agreed to doing this for two years, and as we had no clue as to what was on the horizon, we figured that was as good as anything.  We contemplated putting the house on the market right then, but didn't want to panic.  Prices were already falling, there were several houses in our neighborhood already for sale, and we figured that it would be hard to break even since we'd just moved in the year before.  Besides, if we found that we were too tight for very long we could list the house then.  Prices were bound to stabilize soon and then we could list the house if needed, right?

I began to hunt for work in earnest, and Mr. Four Walls continued to work all of his contacts to line up work for the business.  He was coming up completely empty.  We made the very difficult decision to lay off our sole employee, and Mr. Four Walls kept trying to find jobs.  It became pretty clear in the first part of January 2008, though, that nothing was coming our way for several months, and even then no one would commit to anything.  I was going on interviews, and was also selling Pampered Chef in the evenings.  One evening as I prepared to leave for a Cooking Show hosted by the wife of a friend from high school, we talked it over and decided that Mr. Four Walls should start to look for work at other companies.  As an employee, not for our business.  The discussion was quick, and I left for the show.

While chatting with my friend that evening, I mentioned our situation.  He said his dad was working for a local design/build firm and had just been mentioning that they were looking for a carpenter.  He called him right there, and Mr. Four Walls had an interview the next day.  By the end of the week he was hired.  It was a reasonable wage.  Even so, it was a substantial decrease in income compared to what we had previously made.  It became even more important for me to land something full-time.  The last week of January I was offered my current position as an administrative assistant/bookkeeper, and so began my journey as a full time working mother, commuting 80 miles a day.  Combined we were still making quite a bit less than we did before, but in the next few months we could see that we were going to make it work, at least for a couple for years.   By then, we figured, things were bound to have improved in the housing market.  We planned to then either sell the house or go back into business for ourselves, or even both. 

Overall, we were feeling positive about how we were landing.  It was going more smoothly than we expected having Mr. Four Walls' mom live with us. We both settled in pretty quickly with our new jobs and liked the positions and those with whom we worked. That's not to say that life was not without it's challenges, especially for me. I struggled emotionally with leaving the kids.  I'd never really been away from them on a regular basis.  I mourned having to give up working in Jellybean's kindergarten class, and the special time that I had with Miss Florida on Jellybean's school days, when it was just the two of us - a rarity for a second child.  The girls adjusted, but they both had their struggles, too, and to this day still cry sometimes about me having to go to work. 

I never wanted to be a working mom, full-time at least.  I had a working mom, a wonderful mom, growing up - but I could see the struggle and how thinly she was stretched,  and I wanted more for myself and for my own kids.  I never had the desire to be the super-mom shown on the t.v. shows of my childhood: Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Who's the Boss.  Even as a child, all I could see when I watched those funny, smart, articulate women was how much they were missing with their kids.  However, finances dictated that I work, as they had dictated that my mother work (oddly enough I was five when she went to work full-time, and Amelia was five when I went to work full-time...strange...).  So I prayed and sucked it up, waiting for God to step in and make it all better.  I'm still waiting on that.

I'll continue to tell of The Path to Now in yet another entry.