Bed of Roses or Snakes and Indians

 Bed of Roses or Snakes and Indians

 by Susan Doran -Shore

Life for Helen had never been a bed of roses. She seemed to always struggle. At school she had always needed to try twice as hard as anyone else to get, what for everyone else, was just so easy.

After agreeing to get married at 17 because she truly, believed that no one else would ever ask her, she began an overwhelming life of sadness and pain. However, the one thing she had going for her was her determination to never give up on her dreams no matter what anyone said she couldn’t do.

She had endured twenty years of a passionless and painful marriage for the sake of her two beautiful children until suddenly, one afternoon, every semblance of normality was ripped away from her in an instant. She lost her children, her home and her future. After all those years of fidelity, she made an enormous mistake, fuelled by alcohol, as she was later in life to find out was due to alcoholism, a purely innocent and naive flirtation resulted in a full -blown sexual misadventure. Somehow her husband had been made aware of the infidelity and had turned up, utterly unwilling to hear or listen to her side of events. It was as if he had just been waiting for an opportunity to wrench from her the only things that she lived for, her children and her home.

She got divorced, she made a big mistake and got divorced. The children stayed in the family home with him and she lived alone.

One day when she was at work in school, working as a special -needs assistant, she received a phone call from her son, their father had had an accident. He had been hit by a bus and was in intensive care. Life was going to change again. A week passed and her husband passed- away. Helen suddenly realised that she was now the sole parent and the sole breadwinner, the children who had worked hard to get to university would need supporting.

 Her memory of leaving school and being determined to never stop learning came flooding back and she decided there and then to go back to school. Enquiries were made at the local college about starting an A level course, she was accepted onto the night school class for English Literature, she was determined to work hard to achieve this in just nine months.

 The details of that day in August, that she entered the college reception to get her results, even now, 20 years later, are just as clear. She was handed the envelope and slowly extracted the piece of paper from it, she stood and stared vacantly, at the B on that piece of paper, she was mesmerized by it.

Suddenly Simon, the friend and lecturer who had persuaded to start all this, was standing looking over her shoulder.

 ‘See, I said you could do it’, he gloated.

 ‘Now you can apply at the university to be a teacher’.

 ‘What! No! I will just go and do a TEFL course that will be enough’, she replied.

 ‘Rubbish, you can do a degree, you will get accepted’, he insisted.

So, with that ringing in her ears she went home and telephoned the university and asked if there were any places left on the QTS degree course in English.

 ‘Of course, can you come along for an interview tomorrow at 3pm’? came the reply.

Three hours and much perspiration later, she was sitting, absolutely stunned, in her car in the university car park, with an offer of a place on a degree at 48 years old. She telephoned her children who told her that they were so excited that she had a second chance at life.

The following two years were very tough, on many occasions she was ready to take the easier softer way out and quit, but her promises to herself and her determination kept her going. She even failed her last teaching placement and one of the lecturers had told her that she would never make a teacher, but she didn’t listen she just kept on until it was completed.

At 52 years old, Helen’s life was just beginning again. Applying for positions was an uphill slog, many schools could not understand why anyone would want to be starting their career in teaching when most people were looking to retire.

However, little did Helen know that all this hard work was going to result in her getting a chance to fulfil a lifetime dream of being a missionary.

 One weekend, after another long week of supply posts that had sent her, here and there from pillar to post, a close friend of hers invited her to go along to a church to listen to an appeal from a school in Paraguay. ‘Where on earth is Paraguay’, she thought, as she half listening to the headmistress and wondered when the food was going to be served.

 As they were tucking into the sandwiches, Helen’s friend Viki suddenly introduced her to Gwen, the woman who had been giving the talk, as,’ my friend Helen, who is an unemployed Secondary English Teacher’. She was shocked. Gwen went on to ask one simple question of Helen, ‘Do you like sunshine’, to which she automatically replied, ‘yes, I love the sun’. ‘Well you will love Paraguay then’, was Gwen’s sunny retort.

Helen returned home late that afternoon to find her children sorting through their belongings that had all been stuffed into her tiny two bed council house after the family home had been sold. She immediately announced that she had been offered a job as a teacher at a missionary school in Paraguay and she was thinking about accepting, to which they both chirped up in unison, ‘why are you only thinking about it, you should go, not many people get a second chance in life, you deserve it, go for it’.

That was the 21^st of January, two months and many tears and mass leaving parties later, Helen found herself standing outside Collegio San Andres in Asuncion, Paraguay, South America. She spent two amazing and challenging years in this forgotten country experiencing everything from the gentle and passionate, Guarani Indians, the snakes to the muggings and the police corruption.

But that as they say is a different story!