www.roanoke.com

This moth probably never planned on being dinner!

It's Terrific Tuesday again. How's everything in your neck of the woods?

Thirty years ago today I married my college sweetheart Bobby Benson and thought I would grow old along with him. I had just graduated from Radford University two weeks before and I grew up here in Botetourt County--an LBHS alumnae. All bright eyed and bushy tailed to begin my life and career, I had plans, big plans.

Today looks nothing like yesterday. Be adaptable. That would be my advice to all high school and college graduates. You may not be doing at all or living where you thought when you grabbed that diploma. Life will happen to you, I promise.

First of all, I had a degree in history that I used 3 years after college working in a research library in Lynchburg, Virginia. I moved to El Paso, Texas for a couple of years. I went back to school and got a certificate in aging and worked in adult day care. Those years were among the best of my life. I grew tremendously as a person and found out what lay beyond the mountains in Fincastle was pretty neat. When I moved back to Roanoke I worked for eight more years as an activity coordinator in adult day care. Other than being a mother, that is my longest running occupation.

Life creamed me. First we battled infertility for four years and major surgery twice. Infertility stinks.  I defied the odds and when what was broken got fixed, I eventually had four children! I lost three in the process. Miscarriage stinks. My mother died of breast cancer when I was pregnant with my oldest child. Cancer stinks, too. Three and half years later, my beloved died in a car accident on US 220 south of Roanoke. That knocked the wind out of my sails, but I adapted. Much to my darn dismay the sun came up again the next day. That's when I uttered, "Life stinks." I got up and lived anyway, I had a toddler and three year old to raise.

A year later I started dating  the first hubby's old  James River High School friend George Ewen. We married and with him had the last two of my children. I built a home on the family farm and brought the brood back to Botetourt so they could have a fun farm childhood. I hope they had and are having a good childhood. They are great kids.

Six months later, my father had a stroke followed up by Parkinson's Disease. During the raising of my children I took care of Daddy for 11 years and one month with the help of the good Lord, my brother, the Adult Care Center of the Roanoke Valley and several good women of Botetourt County. Daddy's girl has yet to quite get over loosing him. Death stinks, too but not as bad as Parkinson's or a stroke that debilitate. I learned along the way that there are worse things than death.

I also worked in a little freelance business in the course of that time plus managed to be volunteer of the year for the Botetourt County Town and Country Women's Club and the Breckinridge PTA.

I decided that I had always wanted to be a writer. I have kept journals since I was 9 years old. I took MALS courses at Hollins University and in 2001 I started my own little pub called "The Back Fence" and published  it until 2006. In 2003, I began the Front Porch column at the Roanoke Times Neighbors. A year later I left to became a reporter for the Fincastle Herald. Now over five years later I am a community journalist with the Botetourt View. I never have considered myself a journalist because I never took the first class, but I am a writer. Life is good when you are a writer. This job is a whole lot of fun. I have met many people and shared many happy moments with others and some sad ones, too. We are on the life trip together so just live the golden rule and life is good.

Better yet, I still view the glass as half full. Though plenty has happened and continues to happen, like old Jonah, I hope the whale will toss me up on shore again. I am loved by and love my family and friends. I have a ton of good memories that always outweigh the bad ones. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully will be better than the last one. If not, then I'll make the best of it and adapt.

It's called life, graduates.  It will take you places you never dreamed you'd go. Be prepared, be adaptable and live each moment to the fullest. It will stink and it will be good, but it will be your life. Love and be loved and most of all, count your blessings along the way!