The Family Plan
We sat on her mother’s couch visiting about our evening. I knew I wanted to ask her to marry me, but I was so worried that she might laugh me out of the house that I stammered and delayed. I told her that I wanted to tell her something, but I was afraid. She used every wile she could think of to get me to speak up and eventually I did. I said, “I think....” And paused, very nervous.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know if I want to tell you what I think.” I was extremely unsure of myself.
“I’ll wait until you do.” Now the pressure was on me.
“I think I want you to be my wife,” I finally got around to saying.
Oh boy! What a response that elicited. There was a little scream and she ran out of the room. What had I done? I wondered if I had offended her. I wondered if she was gone and had left me sitting on her mother’s couch. I wondered if she’d be back. I wondered if I had made a complete fool of myself.
What really happened is that she ran to the back of the house to tell her parents that I had proposed to her. But I didn’t know that. I was bewildered. I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave? Should I apologize and say I would never do it again? My thoughts were running amuck.
Then she returned. She had a smile a mile wide. She was bouncing. She was beaming. She jumped onto the couch next to me and yelled “YES!” I still hadn’t asked her to marry me. I had only told her what I wanted. I never did propose, officially. She, and I guess I, just assumed we were now engaged. Whew! I could breath again. My sweaty palms could dry. My anxiety could quiet. My nervousness could quell. I was in love!
From that time on, I couldn’t stay away from her house. I was supposed to be taking evening classes at the local community college, but I didn’t find the time because I was always at her house. I needed to be close to her. We went on dates in the evening and talked and talked and talked. We talked through the night sometimes. We couldn’t get enough of each other.
We were both 21; both working part time. I tutored English as a Second Language for Spanish speaking middle school students. She taught chorus in several elementary schools. Neither of was financially prepared for marriage. Both of us thought things would work out. Neither of us understood the pressures family life would bring. But we knew we loved each other. We knew we had much in common. She was an accompanist of great skill. I was a conductor of mediocre skill. We both loved music. We knew we wanted a family, but we never talked about how many children we would welcome into our family. Secretly I thought 4 would be enough. Secretly she thought 7 or 8 would be about right. But that discussion never entered into our conversation together until our family was complete. Then we talked about what we were thinking about those years ago.
Early in our marriage we were advised to plan our family wisely. Not the number of children, but how to prepare them to be good, profitable citizens. This article is an attempt to describe how we approached our family’s plan. It is my hope that it will be of benefit to those who read it.
“Preparation”
In our minds, preparation is one of the most important concepts of our “Family Plan”. We sat together and we considered how we would raise our children. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We knew we would raise our children in the Church and that we would follow the advise our church leaders give to us. However, it seemed to us that there was not much instruction as to how to accomplish the advise given. So we began to lay a plan.
We decided we needed to prepare our children in four areas: Educationally, Emotionally, Spiritually, Physically. We were not willing to advocate our responsibilities to other entities, but we would permit them to assist us in raising our children. We looked for the talents each might develop, and we searched for the current interest of each.
Each year, at the beginning of the year, we would “retreat”. We would leave our children with a family member and check into a motel with our computer and books and notebooks and set a plan for the year for each of our children. The first year was pretty easy. We didn’t have any children as yet. Then as each child came, we prepared a plan for each. The following chapters will offer samples of the plans we made for our children based each year.
Some of our plans were more interesting. We had to allow for the “special” needs of some of our children. Some of our annual plans were very generic. As our children got older, our plans became less detailed, because they each began to present their own characters and our overall goals began to be met.
Having said all that, our goals were good, but our follow-through was not stellar.
