I've had a few achievements, achieved only through sheer grit and determination - I've waned a little in recent times I'd love to get that grit back
Raising my Child alone without any financial help from her father, my ex husband, and putting her through school and college, myself...so now she's a hugely successful business woman.
Corny as it may sound...marrying my husband. It changed my life in more ways than I could ever imagined.
For me it was hiring four people over a 25 year period that turned out to be exceptional. I take no credit for their success, just hiring them. They all went on to write books and become paid speakers.
My work. At my job, I helped quite a few people get better educated and prepared to earn a better living for themselves and their families.
Managing to make it through my daughter's teenage years without throttling her. Parents of teenagers understand why wild animals often eat their young.
@Mary Robi Ouch! But, understood, and agreed! My sister, born 12 years before I was, all but drove my folks bats. When she was 13 she ran away from home with a girlfriend classmate (I was only one year old), and after several weeks, my folks must have been beside themselves. The girlfriend made the mistake of calling home, her mother called mine, the call was traced, and my Dad wound up taking a bus to Oklahoma (from Chicago), to bring my sister back. Found the girls in a jail! My sister refused, as the story went, but my Dad was firm (no doubt!). She went back to school. Visits to our house during the day by a Truant Officer occurred several times, demands made to explain her absence from school. My folks blamed "bad friends". At 15, she announced she was marrying a Sailor who had just gotten out of the service, demanding my folks consent. Refusal, she said, would mean they would elope. They consented. I was then 4. Year later, as my Dad tried to teach the new SIL the trade of Tool & Die Maker, I became an uncle. One night, ~ midnight a strange noisy clattering, horns blowing, the gang from high school were calling for my sister to go riding with them.......she did, leaving a 2 month old infant and bawling husband back in our middle bedroom. After a number of tense arguments, in the chill of Autumn, my BIL wrapped his kid up in blankets, put him on the front seat of his old Buick, and left for home in Pennsylvania. Within a short time, his mother contacted mine, telling her she still had several of her own to finish raising, please come take the baby back. Agreement was, my sister would go to work, my Mother would raise both me and Danny at home, my Mother never worked. 15 years later, out of the clear blue, Danny's father called my Mother asking if he could come see his boy! Discussed with my sister, then remarried with a 2nd. son, 11, said OK. Can you match as weird a story as this? There is a surprise ending, if anyone cares to hear it! Frank
I can not say I have accomplished anything worthwhile other than raise two kids who turned out as well as they did and credit for any goodness in their lives or their accomplishments would have to go to my wife. I was a nondescript parent nor did anything worthwhile during my work history.
@Bill Boggs I was already driving my own car, attending DeVry Technical Institute for Electronics, my little nephew then 15, had been told his "father", my sister's 2nd. husband was not his real father several years earlier. In dispute to this day is "who told him". He doesn't remember. My sister & BIL (both now dead) claimed my MOTHER had told him, a fact I would dispute to my dying day. On Danny's 15th. birthday, Aug. 2, 1962, his real father pulled up in front of our house, my Dad at work, Danny awaiting this shakily, my Mother welcoming it, me, at 20, unmoved, I'd seen it all! We had been sitting on the front steps, I urged Danny to go down to curbside. His Dad Phil alighted as did his 2nd. wife, and a son of their own, 4 years younger than Danny, named Mike. Phil stood as though made of stone, extended his arms to his boy and wept. They all spent the day together, going I know not where, returned Danny to out house, and left. This emotional time was a real tear-jerker........and, the event was thrown up into my face over 30 years later as my sister (Danny's mother), lie dying in Chicago's West Suburban Hospital, by my BIL: "That bastard should never have come back here", he raved at me in private, "Lois HATED him!" As I thought to myself, sure, A. H., she hated him enough to bear his child....... As I left her bedside to leave for the airport, late evening, she called me back: after a LIFETIME of animosity she grasped my hand, saying "goodbye".......she must have known the time was short, but I could not perceive it.....I went to the airport, where I heard my name being paged. My wife, calling from Phoenix, my younger nephew in Flagstaff (AZ) had called her....my sister was dead. Two hours earlier I had held her hand the first time in maybe 50 years...... Rest of the airport story is a joke; America Trans-Air refused to refund my return ticket to PHX, my sister lay dead 20 miles away from me, older nephew was in Kansas, younger in AZ, so I flew home to AZ. Older nephew picked me up in KC, drove us to the funeral in Chicago. Ours was a DYSFUNCTIONAL family, as defined by my younger nephew, having two degrees in Social Psychology. I was a part of it. Two nephews remained close to me all these years, three nieces, their sisters, have refused to communicate with me for 20 years, on orders from their father, my BIL, who hated me deeply behind my back, treated me civilly all my life, for reasons I never understood. Both nephews will again unite with me next month, Dan flying in from Kansas, Mike driving down from Flagstaff, and all three of us know this may be the last time.........ever. Frank