I met up with Shanie at a laundromat on a Sunday afternoon. I started talking to her as she was on the hunt for empty washers and dryers, checking load size and numbers of quarters needed. Her daughter and niece Peyton, both less than a year old and five weeks apart in age were running around the obstacle course of laundry hampers, carts, and aisles of machines.
“My oldest was only two months old when it all happened. I never really experienced having one child. As soon as I gave birth to my first baby, I had all three of my brothers and sisters.”
Shanie was only 18 when her mother had a nervous breakdown. With the risk of her siblings being separated into the foster care system, she got full custody of her siblings who were 16, 12, and four at the time. Her youngest sister Journey is a heart patient who needed surgery soon after this ordeal, and Shanie got everyone through it.
“From birth to 18, my mom was a good mom. She taught me everything I know. But as soon as I turned 18 she just stopped. She said, ‘you’re going to be ok Shanie, you’re a smart girl.’ I said, ‘mom, what about Journey, what about her surgery?’ I never thought I would have to get the paperwork to get my sibling’s custody. I had to enroll them all in school.”
“As time went on my sister had her own baby, she’s on her own to feet, her own place. My brother, he’s living with my mom now. But we make it work, between the kids. If I have to work, if my sister, she doesn’t have school, she helps me. I help her with her baby, my brother, he’s a single dad. The mom is around but she’s not around. She don’t even do her baby’s hair. He does her hair, everything.”
Shanie put herself through pharm-tech school and works at a Safeway pharmacy now. “I decided to do that after I had the baby. I wanted something different in my life. I didn’t want to work at Mcdonalds, I had all the jobs, I just thought, if I can go to school, then I can work for what I went to school with.”
Shaking my head in disbelief I asked her how she does it all. “It’s hard, it’s a struggle. I love it though because no matter what I’m always gonna be comforted by my kids. Right or wrong they’re gonna look at me like I did no wrong. It’s a lot… laundry, grocery shopping, hair, I have all girls, so it’s a lot of hair - my job, just keepin up with myself. Right now, at this very moment, I’m doing three things, cooking pot roast, washing clothes, taking care of my kids. So by 9 o’clock the kids will be in bed, they have clean clothes, food in their belly, played, and the end of the day, they’re happy, they’re sound asleep with no worries after one person just ran all day to get things done. As long as i see them smile, i can smile.”
