I left home when I was 17 years old and I have been responsible for myself ever since. I can remember my life before having kids. I remember me, not as a mom or a wife or a daughter. I remember ME, my dreams and how I would sit there at times imagining life and what I wanted from it. 

As I sit here by the pool, watching my children play, I can almost see myself again. Not the mom in me or the grandma that I hope to be. I see me as I once was. I don't feel any older. I might feel smarter and I know I have experienced and learned a lot. But right now, I still feel as I am looking at my life through a window... everything that has happened, was something that was happening to a young girl who loved, who married, who gave birth ...