One More Perspective

Despite overhearing my Mother in 2022 tell her Friends I made $500K per year, I have actually never said nor made anything close to that.  It happened at my Mother’s 70th Birthday Party weekend my Wife and I threw for my Mother and her Friends at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, for which we paid entirely with the awards points I collected across a full decade of business travel. 

In fact, as a career US federal government employee, my salary information is actually online.  Zero privacy; no need to get creative with it.  Where did she get the idea I made such a salary?  I’d only be guessing.  I do hope noone actually believed her.  No one, including her.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, there was a bigger picture I only put together over time. 

I grew up in a stimulus-rich environment.  In Hungary and as a child, my stated job was to learn.  My Father led this charge.  Perpetually.  He was always in teacher mode.  Always. (“You are so intense!”  “What, me, really?  I can’t imagine why…“)  He slung around proverbs and sayings about lifelong learning like floating bumper stickers; the message and the environment were inescapable.  Hungarian baseline education (except regarding the country’s molested history), was already pretty good.  My Father was relentless in teaching me, on top of that.  I walked away with the imperative (and keen benefit) of childhood learning.  When I began school in the US, I was in the 9th grade and academically at least two years ahead; in life experiences, I was easily 10 years their senior.  This wasn’t because of my own brilliance.  It was due to how I was launched in my particular Family, with my Father, and in the Hungarian education system.  Why am I sharing this?  When I became a Mother, I placed similarly significant emphasis on childhood education for my three Children (while shielding them from my accelerated life experiences).  In the US, and in particular in Oklahoma, this meant making affording private school a priority.  The three kids combined attended 22 years of private school, with easily half of my gross annual salary in those years going to their tuition.  We absolutely lived in a smaller house and drove “normal” cars to accommodate this important investment.  I was extremely proud of this and wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Then as life does, this private school advantage for two of my three Children became a developmental imperative.  As it turned out, they had learning differences, something that stood out at our private school but would have been brushed over in a public school as not severe enough.  I was once again tremendously grateful for my federal government job, the stability (then!) and benefits it provided, because I was readily able to pursue the Specialist support my Children needed.  This took form in the expertise of Pediatric Neuropsychology, Audiology, Occupational Therapy, Chiropractic care and Counseling my federal government health insurance largely covered.  My Children also required a gluten-free diet to function optimally, which at the time meant obscure and expensive grocery-shopping, limited available products and lots of (my) home cooking and baking.  I did it all without hesitation.  My vision never waivered; I believed my providing a solid start would pay dividends toward college and the rest of their lives.   

What was one (of many a) thing I didn’t do?  Personally save for their college. 

Oh, I thought about their college every day.  It was the destination never out of my mind.  We were on a marathon to college, right or wrong.  …and I had taken full responsibility for the building-blocks.  What about the Children’s Fathers you may wonder?  Well…they declined to help in paying for private school, as the law permits them to do so.  They both stuck to the minimum child-support requirement, with promises of doing more for the Kids’ colleges, but declining to codify that with the courts.  Once again, the law fully permitted that, too.  My Husband2 maintained he would always help above the minimum if requested.  I never requested.  When the Twins were old enough, Husband2 switched to:  “I will help them with college when they (the Twins themselves) request it.”  I am not aware the Twins ever did. 

By the time the Twins’ Senior year of High School came around, we were operating in a lot of misspeak and fog.  Unbeknownst to me, there was a whole alliance my Mother led that enveloped my former Husband3, my Children and my Sister and others, such as my High School best Friend.  At the time COVID-19 was in full bloom, so was the undermining and sabotaging, with me as the proven Villain of this movement. 

It was hell.  I was caught between invisible forces and my own Children, working with partial information and a lot of one-point failures.  …and I had no college savings to turn over with the exceptionof a few high-school years’ savings that amounted to about $5000 each.  I tried to explain how this had worked, that my focus had been on K-12, and the assurances I had from their Fathers regarding college, but it made no difference.  Remember that $500K I supposedly made?  Yeah.  In 2022, it finally made sense why, in my Mother’s stories, I had to make that much money.  That way I could be a Supervillain.  Greedy, narcissistic bastard me withholding college tuition. 

Looking back, would I do things differently?  Not spend years of private school and Specialist money in favor of college savings?  No.  I don’t believe I would do this differently.  I am proud of the schools my Children attended, even if my not having college cash to hand over was just another way I failed my Children.  I’d gladly die (alone) on that sword once more. 

My oldest has been out of college for a few years, undergrad and grad school he pulled off by himself.  He is proud of himself for that, as am I.  In his case, my original plan mostly worked, though there were detours in our relationship for a while.

My Twins are walking their own paths now too, and I have little to no insight.  I soothe myself by believing some of their strong academic foundation and support comes in handy along the way.  Though it breaks my heart the key people who knew this strategy all along were more interested in their own agenda, I can trust all of my Children may one day see things not as those had been prematurely and inappropriately presented to them, but from at least one more perspective.