While growing up I remember how excited I was when the weekend arrived and I didn\'t have school. We would roam the countryside exploring, playing with neighborhood kids, just having fun. When it got close to dark, we would listen for our mom or dad to honk the car horn which told us to get home within 15 minutes. When we heard 2 honks, we\'d better be less than 5 minutes from our country home. 3 honks and we were in deep do-do! :\'(
My wife Eda\'s memories of weekends were of getting up very early and going with her family to the market where she would get \"parked\" and try to sell the small bars of soaps, small bags of asine (salt) or whatever her parents had bought that week for resell. She grew up poor and vividly remembers going to bed hungry many times. Now Eda is very careful with her purchases and is a real bargain hunter.
If I am gone from this world before her, we have set up not only her future monthly income, we also have purchased properties in both the USA and in the Philippines. Hopefully between these two countries she will stay comfortable in her declining years.
As I\'m 25 years older than her, the odds are high that this is the way it will work out. But right now we are battling an early stage of cancer found in Eda this year. Eda is fatalistic and now thinks that I will outlive her!
Things happen to you and yours in the middle of your \"written in stone\" future planning. We try to stay flexible and stay open for what comes along.
As they say in the USA Midwest: \"who knows which way the wind blows when it snows\"...
Billy