Life Changes

Many, many years ago, when I was twenty-four, my third child

entered the World and made our family complete. She was an

exceptionally good baby, which was a great thing for me, because her brother was twelve months old and her sister was just going on thirty-six months. Life was very different then. Husbands worked and mommies stayed home and took care of the home front. It was a wonderful, magical time....a time before color TV, cell phones, X-Boxes, microwaves or a myriad of other mechanical wonders. I didn't even have a dishwasher in our first home, but I did have children! Wonderful, healthy babies that reeked of Johnson's Baby Powder, who cuddled into our laps and filled our hearts and lives forever. We did have times with Little League Football, piano lessons, horn lessons and gymnastic lessons, but our world was never held hostage by the demands of soccer, play dates, Lacrosse, dance, child beauty contests, organized baseball or any of the activities that young parents are filling the lives of their families with, after both mom and dad have worked a forty hour week. Our children filled their own time with the things they discovered along the way. Luckily, my children were raised in a time when you didn't lock your doors all day and their baseball games were played in a field that was mowed by the kids themselves. Neighborhood guys came over and called out "Staaccceeeyyyy" and she would head out for a street game of pickup football. So, this is the life of our youngest in the 60's and 70's and the family as we knew it.

She grew up without getting arrested, tattooed or living with anyone other than our family. She graduated from nursing school, married our son's best friend and embarked on a family of her own. Unfortunately for all of us, I had taken a drug called diethylstilbesterol during my pregnancy with Stacey. Girls born to moms who took this drug are called DES Daughters and are subject to vaginal cancer and multiple miscarriages. Stacey and her wonderful husband have suffered through five miscarriages, two children with unbelievable handicaps (one died at birth and one died at nine and a half) and they are the proud parents of a son, who graduated from Nyack College in New York in movie and video production.

They have worked with the teenagers at our church for the last fifteen to twenty years, while she was working part-time as a nurse and her hubby was with the Highway Patrol. Now, we come to the life changes. They sold their four bedroom home last year (in a really depressed realty market) and bought a much smaller condo. Her husband retired from the Patrol and she finished working at the gastro clinic last week. They leave for Kardern, Germany next Thursday to be dorm parents at The Black Forest Academy for the next two years. This is a school for children of missionaries and will fulfill her need for children to love. I am torn between being very proud of them and wondering whether or not I will ever see them again. God promised threescore and ten years, but I blew past that a while ago, so if this is the biggest life change for me.....Stacey, you have been holding a big piece of my heart for fifty-one years.....handle with care. I love you.