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I think that I really became an adult right about the time that I met my husband. I had been teaching for three years,
and I was about to finish up my masters degree. When I met Brian it all happened very quickly. We both were really in love
with each other. I was happy with my career, but he wasn’t. That was when I asked him if he had ever wanted to do
something really special. I asked him, “Don’t you want to say to your children that at the end of this day
I made a difference in someone’s life?” He agreed that he felt this way, and that is when he confided in me that
he wanted to be a firefighter, so we set about making his dream come true. I graduated with my Masters in School Administration
in May, we got married in June, and he became a firefighter in November. We thought we were really blessed in our
endeavors, but the future was only going to get brighter.
On December 3, 1975, I burst into the world kicking and screaming after my mother had been in labor for twenty-three
hours. This must have been some curse upon the future women within my family, because my first son was born unto me after
I endured twenty-two hours of labor. With my husband by my side holding my hand after this strenuous effort, we christened
him Gabriel Christian Olea after the archangel that announces to Mary that she is pregnant with Jesus. Gabriel has really
taken his name seriously. From the moment he was able to speak, he has done great things, and he has announced them to the
world with the ferocity of a lion. There is no timidity of a lamb in this child; he believes he shall go where no man has
dared to boldly go before. He is very brave and brilliant.
When Gabriel was thirteen months old, we were blessed with a second pregnancy. Gabriel took all of the growing changes
in Mommy’s body in stride with a growing curiosity about when this little wiggling creature would escape from within.
The one thing that we neglected to tell our son was that the baby would not be able to play when we returned from the hospital,
so he was very confused and highly disappointed when our second son, named for the archangel Michael, Michael Alexander
Olea was born. Gabriel was only twenty months old at the time himself, so when he came to the hospital to see Mommy and his
baby brother, he climbed up in bed with us and leaned over and slowly began to rub his head. That has been their relationship
from the beginning where you see one angel you see the other.
Gabriel is now 3 ½ and Michael is 2, and they are becoming more self-sufficient everyday. Since the boys don’t
need me every waking moment now, I am pursuing a PhD in School Administration from the University of Oklahoma beginning in
spring 2006. This is a daunting task for me, but it will be a defining characteristic for me.
My Hobbies
When I was a little girl, about eight years old, my Mother and I took knitting lessons and quilting lessons together. Since
then I have loved to do any kind of needlework, either cross-stitch, needlepoint, hardanger, knitting, or quilting.
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