This weeks question is about my parents again!
What kind of work did your parents do (farmer, salesman, manager, seamstress, nurse, stay-at-home mom, professional, laborer, and so on)?
From when I was born until I was 6 years old, my dad was going to school to become a Physical Therapist. During that time he worked with my Grandpa Don, doing what he'd done in high school before, working as a brick mason. I don't remember this myself, but my mom told me when I was older that he would go back and forth between working and taking classes. We moved to Houston when I was 5 for him to go to Graduate School, and then when I was 6, he got a job in Pasco, Washington as a Physiscal Therapist for Columbia Physical Therapy. He has worked at that same clinic for the past 14 years, and I believe he's the manager now. I remember visiting his clinic every once and a while as a kid, usually to do the yard work around the building. The company's owner, Richard Wright, would pay each of us per hour that we worked if we would weed/sweep/wash windows/ect. After we were done working, there was a hot tub inside that my dad would fill up and we would swim around in there for an hour or two. Sometimes Dad would roll a TV in and we would watch a movie while we sat in the hot tub. One year, Cameron decided he wanted to go to the clinic's hot tub for his birthday.
After I graduated high school, my Dad hired me to work as a PT Aide in his clinic. It was such a fun experience working with and for my dad after hearing so many stories about crazy patients. I learned a lot from watching him interact with people and caring about them. Even though his job was to take care of people's physical injuries or weaknesses, my dad is a fantastic listener, and I watched a lot of people confide in him and get some emotional therapy along with their physical therapy.
My mom has been stay-at-home mom ever since I was born. I remember many times my dad telling us how lucky we were to have our mom at home and how much she had sacrificed for us, but I didn't truly appreciate it until I had Jasmine. I'm sure my mom was a lot like I am: she had dreams and goals and a career she had been planning on persuing, but she gave it up because she loved us enough to put us first. I have such fond memories of playing with my mom and spending my days with her, and I am so grateful she was able to be at home with all of us. She's worked a few random part-time jobs that I remember; she was a gymnastics coach when I was 6 or 7, and then again while I was in high school, and she worked for Sunset View Elementary school for a year. Right now, while still doing everything she's always done as a mom and wife, she's taking online classes to complete her degree. If I can be half as successful a mom as she's been, I will have lived a happy life. I know my life was so much richer having my mom always home with me.
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