Friend #38 - Laurie

One of my long-time friends moved to a new neighborhood in Ahwatukee.  Laurie and my friend, Angie, were introduced because they used the same realtor and live a few doors down from each other.  Since the homes are new, the women have leaned on each other as they are exploring all the nooks and crannies of their new houses.  Angie invited me to see a movie with her and at the last minute, asked Laurie if she would like to tag along.  Angie knows I’m on a mission to meet new friends this year so she figured I wouldn’t mind.  And I didn’t.

Originally from Chicago, Laurie grew up the youngest of three children.  She graduated with a degree in math but trained in IT right out of college.  Laurie had planned on moving in with a friend of hers and staying in Chicago, but her mother begged her to go to open interviews for a life insurance company based out of California that was doing interviews in the Chicago area.  To appease her mother, Laurie went.  They didn’t have time for her that day but liked her resume enough to ask her if she was going to be in California anytime soon.  As luck would have it, Laurie had a planned trip to California in two weeks so she scheduled an interview and she got the job!  The salary they offered her was double what she was making in Chicago and the company was also offering to pay full moving expenses.  Laurie was thrilled!  And her parents were thrilled.  Laurie didn’t know it at the time but her mother was secretly plotting to move the entire family to the west coast.  Which is exactly what eventually happened.

 Laurie spent her twenties living and working in California.  By her thirties, Laurie was ready to settle down.  She met a man she thought she could love.  They got married.  Then they got pregnant.  By that time, Laurie’s mother had a new plot.  She wanted the entire family to move out to Arizona, specifically Ahwatukee, Arizona.  Laurie spent her pregnancy secretly flying to Arizona on the weekends to help with the house she and her husband were building.  She wasn’t planning to go back to work after her maternity leave.  Her husband already had a job in Arizona.  But just after their son, David, was born, her husband lost that job.  In order to keep medical benefits and financial support for her newborn, Laurie was forced to keep her job in California.  That meant flying out every Sunday night and flying back every Friday, leaving her newborn in Arizona. 

Laurie’s parents and her grandmother took care of David for the first nine months of his life.  Laurie’s husband wasn’t much help.  He often complained that the baby kept him awake.  He wasn’t very good at being a full-time dad.  After nine long months, her husband finally found a job and Laurie was able to quit her job to become the full-time mother she had always wanted to be. 

But things weren’t so rosy on the home front.  Laurie’s husband was extremely resentful that he was the only bread-winner in the house.  He complained it was too much pressure.  As Laurie busied herself taking care of David, the couple grew apart and she suspected her husband of cheating long before she found the unassuming woman’s voice on her answering machine telling her husband which hotel she was staying in.  By that time, Laurie knew the marriage was over. 

“Your girlfriend called,” she told her husband, nonchalantly.  “She left the address of the hotel she’s staying in,” she said, handing him the piece of paper.

Later that night, Laurie drove to the hotel and saw her husband’s car sitting in the parking lot.  Silently, in her car, she cried.

It was a nasty divorce.  Her husband emptied out the bank accounts before she even considered it a possibility.  For a while, she and David lived off credit cards in order to keep him in the only home he’d ever known.  In the middle of the divorce, Laurie’s soon-to-be ex-husband found out his father was dying so he rushed back to Oregon, but at the funeral, he informed Laurie he had decided not to return to Arizona.  Laurie thought of that as a blessing until the judge in their divorce case ordered her to put her five-year-old on a plane alone once a month so he could see his father. 

Laurie was also faced with having to find a new job after having been out of the work force for a few years…but that’s when she caught a lucky break.  The life insurance company she had worked for in California, called to see if she would consider returning to work.  They were still based in California but in the 1990’s there was this new thing called telecommuting and since Laurie was in IT, she could work from home in Arizona.  In the beginning, the company did require her to fly in once a month in case there was an issue with month-end but eventually, even that came to a close.  Laurie credits the money and stability of her job to be one of the things that got her through such a difficult time in her life.  And she loves the analytics and the challenge of figuring out problems. 

The other thing that got her through such a dark time in her life was her family.  Every Saturday, they still meet for lunch at 12:30 to catch up on what has happened during the week.  David is basically grown.  He just graduated from college.  One of the reasons Laurie bought a new house is because she is ready to begin her life as an empty nester.  She has a light in her eyes and a buoyancy to her spirit.  I could feel her excitement for this new phase brimming.  It doesn’t mean she loves her son any less.  One of the reasons she wanted chat with me was because I’ve reinvented myself a few times job-wise.  David now needs to find his first ‘real’ job and she wants to help him.  She just doesn’t know what advice to give him in this modern world because she’s been with the same company for so long. 

This house she just bought is the last house Laurie will ever buy.  Now that she’s raised David, the hard work is done.  She no longer has to sacrifice and make the tough decisions because no one else will.  Finally, she can be at peace on a job well done.