Thoughts About "Growing Up"

Carol & George 1973

Today's post is written specifically with "the original five" grandchildren in mind, but will, hopefully, provide food for thought for the rest as well as they approach their later teen years. As I've listened to seniors this year, expressing their disappointment over missing out on their senior year of high school due to our "shelter in place" lockdown from the Covid-19 virus, I've thought a lot about each of you and what your futures hold. Andi and Cari are 17; ready to begin their Senior year in the fall. Ethan turned 16 this week and Dylan and Sarai will join him before the year is out. You're all driving, learning to drive or thinking about learning to drive. You're starting to think about whether or not going on a mission is part of God's plan for you. You're all, hopefully, thinking about your futures as you choose classes in school and begin to think about what's next after graduation. As you should be! It's important to think about what you want to do and where you want to do it. We all need goals.

Grandma, the Nerd
working on Calculus with
Shakespeare text underneath

I never questioned whether or not I would go to college. I never questioned what I wanted to be. From my first day of Kindergarten, I wanted to be a teacher. By the time I was in Junior High, I knew I would be a Math Teacher. I never questioned that goal, until my Senior Year of High School when I learned the State of Illinois was going to abolish the rule that high school students had to take 3 years of high school math. I knew I was the exception in my love for math and I could literally, do the math. Just taking my own high school into consideration and thinking about how many math teachers there were, I realized that there would no longer be a need for as many math teachers and it would be difficult for me to find a teaching job. So, I began looking for another career goal.

National Honor Society
Jr & Sr Years

My ACT scores were all good; especially math, where I got a 35 out of 36 possible points. I outdid the SMARTEST guy in our graduating class! Because of my scores, I was named an Illinois State Scholar and I had colleges and universities recruiting me in state and out with scholarship offers. I chose an alternate career in Occupational Therapy and began focusing on colleges that offered an OT program.

After graduation with high
school friends 1973

I worked hard all through high school. I kept a good grade point average, but I also learned how to have fun. Losing my mom halfway through my Sophomore year, I took on the family finances, the grocery shopping, the cooking, assisting my maiden aunt and babysitting my niece and nephew who lived downstairs. Wanting to honor my mom, I remembered how much she enjoyed going to football and basketball games to watch my brothers play, so I began going to the games. I remembered our school fight song that she taught me to sing, with enthusiasm. I worked on the Homecoming float and the prom committee. While I was still a quiet nerd, I found my own core group of friends, who had interests similar to my own, and I learned to have FUN!!! 

Freshman Year at College
Dorm Fun & Friends 1973

So, why am I telling you all this? Because I worry about kids in high school these days. I see teenagers taking on too much; worrying too much about the world, their futures and life in general. I see too many kids working their bums off in high school to graduate with college credits so they can graduate from college EARLY! Or, I see kids so overwhelmed with it all, they become paralyzed at the thought of what they'll do with their lives and find NO FOCUS for their futures.

If you see yourself in one of these examples, all I can say is STOP!!!! You are young. You have time. Take time to get to know who you are; what your strengths and weaknesses are; what you really ENJOY that will give you a lifetime that you will enjoy and feel rewarded. Each of my children, your parents, approached their post-high school lives by going to college, but that's where the similarities ended: 

• Megan started with a focus in political science and saw it straight through for four years, earned her bachelor's degree worked a few years and then went back to law school and earned her Juris Doctorate while working as a manager at Levi Strauss and raising three kids.
• Sami started out with an intent on college and getting into nursing school, but met the love of her life early on. She left school with an associates degree, a husband, and a hiatus from school to stay home with her kids until the youngest was established in school and then went back to complete her schooling.
• Brooks, the creative one, headed for college with full intent of becoming an Interior Designer. She was headed that direction but hit a roadblock named Josh. She chose to alter her career goals to become life goals and has dedicated hers to supporting a husband, raising five kids and keeping an organized, functional home. She still has the knowledge and skills she learned in school and life, but now uses them to improve her own home and, on occasion, using her skills to help others decorate their homes.
• Brandon & Barton, I'm lumping together, because they started on the same path. Both of them, through high school accomplishments, received scholarships to go to Southern Utah University, majoring in vocal music performance. That worked for them through their Freshman year at college, but when they were coming home from their missions, neither one of them wanted to return to vocal music or southern Utah. They both graduated from BYU-Idaho and then pursued their career goals to become an optometrist and a pediatric dentist. 
• Grandma started college as an OT major, switched to Special Education after my freshman year, switched to Elementary Education after my sophomore year, taught for 2-1/2 years after I graduated, substituted on and off in three different states for sixteen years and finally ended up as a manager for Walmart who taught other managers how to do their jobs! I ended up teaching, but not in a way I EVER would have imagined in high school.

College Graduation with
Zeta Sisters 1977

Some of you will want to go to college; maybe even graduate school. Some of you will be able to meet your career goals through a technical school or apprenticeship.  Some of you may go right into the workforce by finding a job with a company that you like and find your success right there! Some of you will change your life goals 2-3 times and that's okay. Some of you may decide to be a stay-at-home parent while your spouse works outside the home. All of these are acceptable, worthwhile goals, but you do need to have a goal; something to work toward. (I will say, however, that if you want the stay-at-home option, you do need to still have a career goal in mind. There are never guarantees with that option. You may not meet your eternal companion right away. You may be widowed at a young age like your great Aunt Amy. You could, unexpectedly, find yourself divorced like Megan or me. You have to have a plan to support yourself should you find yourself in any one of these circumstances!)

Famous Couples Dance 1976

My real goal with this post, is to discourage all of you from trying to grow up too fast! You may think you need to have so many college credits before you go to college to avoid/reduce student debt. I get it. But, no amount of money is worth your happiness. No matter how mature you may THINK you are, no twenty-year-old is really ready to enter the workforce full of adult responsibility. Kids who attempt that, typically end up moving back home with Mommy and Daddy, unable to face a career or a world on their own. 

Senior Year Christmas Elves

I thought I was the most mature twenty-year-old EVER! I've already told you some of what my responsibilities were after my mother died. I thought I could handle ANYTHING! The thing that I learned through four years of college was that I wasn't ready to handle everything life had in store for me. If anything, those college years helped me to learn how much I still didn't know! My thought processes were challenged. My fraternity helped me develop leadership skills, taught me to become better organized and gave me lifelong friends in a safe environment with advisors who let me make my own decisions, but were available to help me back up from my inevitable stumbles. Your parents view me as a strong woman, but that strength didn't come naturally. It was developed over time, beginning in high school, increasing through college and reaching maturity through the gospel.

Zeta of the Year with
Our Zeta Hero 1976

So, all my little loves. Work hard in school. Not just at your schoolwork, but work hard at figuring out where your interests lie. Work hard to learn about a lot of different jobs/careers. Be open-minded to what jobs match your natural skills and interests. Don't choose a job just because it earns a lot of money. Don't turn away from a career that matches your interests just because it may NOT earn a lot of money. Take the time to learn what is right for you; take the time to have some fun along the way; take the time to create some memories as you go through the times of your life. I love you all! (Sorry it's kind of sappy, but the message is a good one.)

Thoughts on Memorial Day

Memorial Day has been a lot of different things in my life. Many see it as the official beginning of summer. In Jr. High, we were taught that Memorial Day signaled that it was now socially accepted to begin wearing our white shoes and carrying our white purses, rather than the black or brown of the rest of the year! Raised with the fact that Memorial Day originated as a day to honor those who have died in service to their country, it was not a day that I was accustomed to going to family members graves to visit or place flowers. Few are aware that the day was originally called "Decoration Day," as Civil War survivors began to honor those lost in the war by decorating the graves of the fallen. Over the years, the day and manner of honoring those who had lost their lives has changed (read the history of Memorial Day here: 

  https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history ) 

but it officially became the Federal Holiday that we know today on the fourth Monday in May to give federal employees a three day weekend in 1971.

As I've said, I didn't grow up going to visit family graves on Decoration Day, because none of my family members had served in the military. I was recently discussing this with my cousin, Norm, who was about to enlist in the Air Force when he received his acceptance letter to DeVry Technical Institute. He was able to complete his education rather than being absorbed into the heated conflict in Viet Nam. My brother, Al won big in the draft lottery when they drew his birthday, December 4 as #1 in 1968. He certainly would have been on his way to Viet Nam had his first son, Dan, not been born in June, 1967. Al's classification changed from 1a to 1y.

As Norm and I continued to think about the fact that none of our family had had to fight in any wars, we came to realize that his father, my Uncle Henry, was too young too fight when World War I broke out, and too old to be drafted for World War II. My dad, however, was of a prime age to be drafted into World War II. At 19 years of age when Pearl Harbor was attacked 7 December 1941, he was supposed to enter the service. The day of my parents' wedding, after the ceremony,  Dad had to go with Grandpa Zielke to the draft board office to verify that Dad was needed to help on the family farm as the last son at home. As farmers were needed, he received a deferral and Dad was able to return to  his wedding reception!

I share this information, not to brag that the men in our family managed to "dodge the draft" at every turn, but rather in gratitude; that we have been spared the sorrow of losing any of the young men in our family to the evils of war. My family history is fairly young to America with great grandparents born in Germany, Poland & Prussia, but in doing my family history, I have come to realize that they came to America to flee the wars and oppression of that time. As we've come to realize in recent years, had they not left their homeland when they did, they would have been trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. With that knowledge, having seen the evidence of those times that still exist, I can't take the freedom we have in America for granted.

I'm blessed. My children and grandchildren are blessed. My parents and grandparents were blessed to not have to been active in any of the wars, then or now. We've had the Memorial Day Picnics. From 1967-1974, every Memorial Day weekend was spent on Lake Siskiwit in Cornucopia, Wisconsin as my dad and Uncle Henry opened our family cabins. Those weekends were spent preparing for fun on the lake, campfires and a summer of fun! We had neighbors on Lake Siskiwit: Walt and Emma Westphall. I knew that they had lost their only son on a submarine in World War II, but it didn't really hit me until the day we went to visit them in their home in Aurora and I was faced with a picture of a handsome, young man in uniform, a pretty young woman and an adorable, smiling baby girl. At that moment, in spite of my youth, it hit me that their dead son was a REAL person and his daughter had never seen her daddy again after he left from that visit, while I took for granted all that my father was and did for me and our family. 

While my Memorial Day holidays have always been celebratory in nature, I have always been mindful of those who were lost in the wars and thankful that none of my family had been a part of any of it. In recent years, two young men who married into our family have served in the Army. My son-in-law, Joshua Gailey, has recently been discharged from service while my niece's husband, Andrew Powell, is still in service. Once again, however, we have been blessed in that neither Josh nor Andrew has had to face active combat, but they were trained and had the Army given the order, both would have gone to do their duty.

I'm grateful for an America that provided freedom for my ancestors, that has enabled generations of Zielke/Staffeldts and Hill/Haags to live and prosper and pray, for all its faults, that the America that I know and love continues to exist through the lives of my children, grandchildren and generations to come.