Would I Recommend Becoming a Later Mom By: Lori Loesch
Would I recommend becoming a later mom? When I had Faith I was 42 years old. My son was 11 and my husband was 49 years old. We were in the peak of our lives. It was 2004, the home building industry was booming. We were making more money than we had ever dreamed of making. Life was good. Even with a premie baby, life was settling in and I felt young.
Three years later, the township got rid of the four-way stop signs and installed traffic lights. Our house was at a cross roads. We had traffic at two sides of our house all day and night. The cars no longer stopped, they sped by at breakneck speeds. One night, in the middle of the night, a car took the turn too fast and totally knocked off the water plug in front of our house. Faith’s physician was trying to make me feel less anxious about her health issues, and said that she has a better chance of getting hit by a car in front of my house, than she has of contracting RSV, a sometimes fatal virus that premies can get. He lived up the road in the next neighborhood, and drove past our house several times a day, so he knew the road well. As a new mom, and having a daughter that was nothing like her brother, this was a fatal reply. Faith’s brother, Jules, clung to my knee at all times. When we were in the front flower garden, he never ventured toward the road. Faith on the other hand, didn’t cling to me and would run away, never stopping, as I called to her. She was 2 years old. I worried that she would get hit by a car.
In 2007 we moved to the country. Mostly because Jules was in a charter school and didn’t want to go to the large State College High School. Another reason, we really, or I really wanted to live in the country, and have goats, chickens, and the like. My husband, went along with the idea, I feel he was trying to talk himself into the whole thing.
I can’t say if it was the move to the country that depressed me, or if it was the economy that collapsed. I feel it was the economy. My husband is a developer, builder. The mortgage companies and the banks, and there was a senator, I think it was Senator Dodd, that thought everybody deserved to buy a home, and people were getting loans that were above their means. My husband saw the fall coming. He said it just can’t keep going like this. The housing market CRASHED, and it has been crashed for the past 7 years. Hummm…Obama’s been president for the past 7 years. My husband, praise GOD, is one of the few builders still building in our area. I think there’s just 3, now. Most, lost their fortunes, and I know there are people out there that couldn’t care less about builders. However, builders are people too. They have families and no one wants to take a pay cut.
Taking a business away from a man, is the worst thing that can happen. It happened to my strong, narcissistic, husband, and nearly killed him, it might still kill him. We don’t know. Seven years ago, David, my husband was in the beginning of a development, of town homes, again thank GOD we weren’t building mega houses. There were few buyers at that time, people were scared and the greedy bankers were crashing one at a time. Too much uncertainty. The bank, that David had been with for more than twenty years, forced his hand to turn the town home development into a rental development. This nearly killed David. Think about it for just a minute, he was building 50 town homes, and was going to rent them. We put out the money, and now we’re getting a monthly rent that barely covered the mortgage. We’re not getting a big payday. Those days are over. As it has turned out, thanks to David’s intelligent business sense, we made it through those years. He was paying his sub contractors and employee’s out of his, very own savings, our retirement money. Again, thank GOD, he had saved so much money, but he watched as the savings, our retirement, dwindled down. It’s been rough. Someday our kids will have money coming in, hand over fist, and I’m glad about that. Unless of course, the economy falls further and there are no renters for our rental properties. What would have happened if we didn’t rent, and tried to sell 50 town homes? I don’t want to think about that scenario.
So, was having a baby later in life a good idea? Yes, it certainly was, however, the economy forced us into a depression, and I’m not getting any younger and my legs and shoulders hurt all the time. My daughter apologizes for asking me to do things with her. She didn’t tell me about the Ram’s walk, because she didn’t think I’d want to come. This is terrible to know that I have been this mom. I volunteered at my son’s school, for every field trip, science, fair, and school activity. I even went in once a week, for a few hours to help out in the classroom. Now, not so much, and I hate it. Is it depression or growing older and slowing down?
We are currently building a beautiful, single family home development, in Bellefonte, Pa. We are hopeful that it will be a success. The homes are smaller than what was being built seven years ago. Personally, that’s a great thing. Excess, is not always a good thing, I know, my home is 6,000 square feet. Why? We could live in much less space, and we have. The nineties ushered in, opulence. We got sucked in, too. We had just had our first born, a son. Our home, was 900 square feet. That is not a typo, 900 square feet. It was getting a little crowed, with all the baby items, carseat, swing, bassinet, and crib. Opulence, did the baby need all those items? Not really, no. Our neighbors were building huge houses. We wanted one too. So, we remolded our 900 sq. ft. home, into a 4000 sq. ft. house. Notice home vs. house. Home is where the heart is, and I loved our cozy small home. Two German Shepherds, Three cats, in the yard, a baby and hot water radiators, that we could sit on to warm our bums and our mittens! It was a farm house that David’s grandfather built in 1902. Again, not a typo. We had history at that home. Grandma’s flowers, her fifty year old roses and peonies. Opulence. In Twenty, Twenty hind sight, I can see that having a large house, and money, didn’t make my son any more popular in school. I guess because I grew up poor, I thought, that was the reason I was unpopular. It wasn’t, and that’s a whole other blog! My daughter laments about not being popular. I had hoped she would be in, that clique, since her brother was not. I thought I did all the right things to ensure she would be in the popular crowd. We are who we are. And what does popularity have to do with anything? School is a place to learn and do, and home is where the heart is. I wish I would give my heart to this house, but I really haven’t. Oh no! here pour, the tears, that make it more difficult to see what I’m typing! In all seriousness, the economy has crashed, and I have learned a lot about life and people, about how depression can seep into your veins and you don’t even see it, until it’s almost too late. People need jobs. We need to feel worthy of something. Give us work and we will thrive, again.
Shalom
Tags: bankers, economy, greedy mortgage companies, homebuilders, opulence
