10 - Paula Hoskinson

23 minutes reading

I’ve known this woman for a few years, we previously worked together. I always admired her strength, the beauty she had and put into anything she did. The wisdom and motherly care she treated me with. I have learned and will never forget the term “fluff” she gently pushed on me whenever I lost my temper and used the… terms… taken over from my husband, man of the mill, in my office – and believe me, that office made me lose my temper multiple times a day, every single day. Then there she came, waltzed in, ginger hair and denim shirt, and my day was made. Some winter mornings she would just hop by to grab or drop a document, in her pink knitted hairband, fingerless gloves and men’s bibs, and would utter the words “can’t, I’m digging a grave”, like others say “can’t, I’m going for shopping”. She was something else.

For sure, she is one tough woman. At that time she worked cutting timber or digging graves besides being on the council of this dusty little town in Iowa, her adopted home – a real battlefield, and not only on meeting nights. She is a true pioneer woman working hard, being a devoted wife in an unusual kind of marriage often bad-mouthed by many, who also finds time to live for her passions. She is not the kind of person who ever sought the easy way out; she has always been more like the type who spoke her mind and accepted challenges, going out of her way to find the right solution to those.

I have always been attracted to people like that, I have always tried to stick around people like that, so no surprise that today, 2 years after I left that office, we are still friends. Her life has been “nothing special” for anyone else but herself, but I have always found her path courageous and a great example of following one’s heart to be happy. So, I made the decision to include her in my Attagirl!-series in 2024, booking her for the blog all the way back at the start of the year.

She is a real-life, flesh-and-blood woman, the lady next door, life-smart, with a proper compass in her heart, someone who dared to follow her instincts so that today she lives the dream she had as a little girl. Alright, not exactly that dream, she is still in Iowa; but if we give it a thought, a pretty close one Read her story and meet the lady I have always considered a mentor of mine. Paula Hoskinson, natural-born redhead standing tall (it is crazy, everyone is so tall in this country!), speaking honestly, doing whatever she starts doing at full throttle.

Created with love – read with delight.

Hey Paula, it is a huge joy to welcome you here as the Attagirl of the month of October!
Hey Kami, who would’ve thought we’d end up here together! It’s a great thing you do, Attagirl!, and I am so proud to be given the opportunity to be part of it.

The pleasure is mine, Paula. You are absolutely the right person to present to the readers.
Thank you. So, how do we start?

Well, the routine is to start with your childhood, if there were any circumstances that were outstanding and turning you into a certain direction, towards a certain dream. What were you like as a child?
Oh, my family was really stable and the members have always kept together, even to this day. I am the middle of three siblings, I have a brother 2 years older and a sister seven years younger. We grew up in an old farmhouse in the smalltown Lehigh in Iowa, at the end of a dead-end gravel road. A huge house with sucky heating, I remember that. We did not have a lot of money, but I never considered us poor. When I did not eat, it was because I would be a picky eater, and I still am, haha, but we always had enough on our table. True, we never really went on vacations, but we always had so much fun with my parents and neighbors. In the winters we would play cards or board games, together. I really had a great childhood. I did have chores, the dishes, cleaning, and what I hated most, cutting wood for heating. And it was a lot of wood cutting, believe me.

When I turned 16, I started to take jobs and contributed to family finances mainly through buying my school clothes: shirts, jeans. But it was alright and I always wore what I liked.

Sounds like you had a nice childhood.
Yeah, I did indeed. We kids all understood our roles in the family and never really rebelled against those. That’s how we could ease our parents’ burdens a little bit we did that gladly. It was a small price in exchange for the genuine good times we had together.

Was there any difficulty, anything that gave you a headache as a child?
I would say, no, but yes, there is this one thing which I think gave me a lot of headaches at a time. I was a redhead. Like a true redhead. Not an orange or dark red-haired kid but a real ginger one. Which meant I never went unnoticed. And that meant that should I have taken part in any mischief; I would definitely be the one remembered. I could never blend in. I could never remain unnoticed. Not that I was a bad kid or anything, but still. Parents, by the way, kept together back in my childhood, so on those few occasions that I was caught up in some mischief, by the time I got home my parents would already know and that would never be cool. So I did try to avoid trouble but there is only so much a kid can do…

Haha, okay, I see. So tell me, what was this ginger girl dreaming about as a teenager?
Oh boy. Well, for one, I loved being in the kitchen. Back then we did not really have cooking shows like today – today we have separate channels for food and cooking. When I was a child, there was only one show, the one with Julia Child. So when I saw her on TV, I immediately decided to have my own show in our kitchen. And my audience/director/aid was my mom. I baked, I loved baking, and acted like I was on my own show, announcing every step in the process, and it was so much fun!

I also was an avid fan of horses, I rode as much as I could, and I was dreaming about my prince on an any-color horse – I just wanted him to be a rich horse rancher in Montana. He was my dream husband. I imagined myself being with the horses all day, baking for my man, who would make it possible for me to stay home and be financially safe., in forever-love. I was dreaming about him – but I never even had a boyfriend. I never considered myself good-looking, so the confidence needed to befriend boys was missing, too.

Hah, I bet you ‘re a Yellowstone fan!
Haha, I do like that show! Waiting for the new season to come out.

A few more weeks, I guess. Mid-November. But now tell me about your life after high school. What was it you were preparing to become?
In all honesty I was not preparing to become anything special. I was looking at a future that could give me the most based on my experience and abilities. I went to business college but could only cover the finances for one year and then I had to make the hard decision to leave. After applying for a ton of office jobs in the hopes of satisfactory work hours and benefits, I took a job at a hospital in the radiology department. I was an assistant, a transcriber, who typed up X-ray reports for the doctors.

I did great. And in time I became a full-time employee as an admitting assistant . Now there I had this supervisor who took me under her wing. She saw the leader in me and made it for her mission to teach me, train me for a greater role. For whatever skills a leader would need. To understand business,  to carry myself properly, to understand whatever it takes to manage others. I ended up as the head of the admission department.

You see, this sounds to me like a real Attagirl’s story. True, you never planned to work at a hospital for a career, let alone to become the head of admissions, but you grabbed the opportunity that life threw at you and made the most out of it. That is one thing I try to show fellow women. We may not always be at the place we have imagined, but wherever we are, we must aim at making the most out of it. Learning as much as we can because we will never know when we can use that knowledge in the future. Tell me what happened afterwards.
Well, I need to clarify something, these years I had been married.

OK, well, what difference does it make? A lot of us were married in our, I would assume, 20s.
You are right, I was just another woman married in her 20s trying to build a career. But my marriage was very unhappy.

Would you mind sharing a little more about it? I am not the best person to talk about relationships, in all honesty, I have always been on the safe side, like one foot out, in every single relationship I had. I also know, though, that a stable relationship is essential in a woman’s life. Or no, let me rephrase that. Once we decide to be in a relationship, if it only takes away but does not add, it can destroy us. Me. (This is why I have been one foot out all the time, I guess, ready to flee…) So, if you don’t mind, would you tell me what the problem was?
Certainly. He was somewhat older than me. The relationship lasted ten years. Five years of courting and five years of the actual marriage. The guy was completely…for himself. Only he mattered. My will was never considered. My needs were never considered. At some point it became clear that he had been cheating, since day one. For like ten years. After finding out, I tried to be a good wife still. But then…

But then…?
Then my dad died. My dad died and it opened my eyes to the fact that life is short. Not only short but one can never know when it will end. His battling cancer made me understand that my marriage would never improve. And when he died, I made the decision to divorce. I was 27. I had been with that man for a decade and things just kept gradually getting worse. I could see the flashes of my moms, my grandmom’s eyes, I knew they knew, and when my dad died, my mission became to get out of my hopeless situation. I felt like being a single woman would be much less bad than being tied to a man in an unworthy marriage. So I filed for a divorce and moved back to my mom’s house.

I hear you, Paula. Good for you, really. So here we are, you on the highest step of the work-ladder, in your pencil skirt and high heels while extinguishing your relationship with the man who you have known intimately for ten years. What came next?
Well, not next, more like in the meantime, I had this horse. And I was looking for a place to board him. I heard about this guy who had the proper set-up for boarding horses and I approached him. At first he turned me down but then got back to me saying he changed his mind and I could use his property for my horsie. I went there as often as I could, to ride my horse and maintain him, and met the guy himself on and off. He ran a tree-cutting/grave digging business, was successful and very popular in the neighborhood. He was also in a long-term relationship with a woman living with him. I was as considerate and decent as one could be, setting any boundaries that needed to be set.

What makes me think that despite those boundaries set he became important to you?
Haha, because your antennas are sensitive…? We became friends over the horse, true. He boarded him for me, and I visited frequently, obviously. But when my divorce was decided on, I informed him and said I’d take my horse to my cousin’s, who had offered to board him in the meantime, to avoid any unpleasantness or gossip. But he said, no, you don’t have to move your horse because of that. And so I left my horse, Horizon, there. And slowly things started to change.

We started to share more and more, we had great, deep conversations. We started to open our eyes to each other. Like man-woman eyes, replacing the friend-eyes. Soon he ended his relationship which had not had much left in it to offer for them way before anything grew between us. But with the situation changing he felt the need to put an end to that part of his life.

Would it be fair to say that, in both of your lives, getting to know each other helped you get out of the relationships that had already been doomed, and you both gained clarity by meeting each other? I am asking that because I know this is a situation a lot of ending marriages face, when the ones wanting to end it are criticized, even marked as cheaters, even if no actual cheating happened. Missing to look at the ones left, who in reality have done little to work for the relationship, other than complaining and expecting the change from the one who finally left. Thus feeling betrayed and hurt.
We can say that getting to know each other did have an impact on both of our relationships, yes. With the purest intentions though, as we never planned to leave those for each other. But life happens, emotions happen, and when a relationship is not strong enough and has gaps, those gaps might be filled by the most innocent-intentioned new-coming person.

So well-said, Paula.
Thanks. Even though I never intended to drive a wedge in a relationship, I was just getting out of my terrible marriage myself, I got billed as a home-wrecker, a gold-digger. Keith, my now husband, was pretty successful in his business. And me, the little ginger, half his age, literally, had to be the evil. It was tough. Even my family was very worried about me because of the age difference. But in my family we accept each other’s decisions even if we don’t agree. And we are there for each other even if the decisions we did not agree with did not turn out well…

That must be an awful situation in a small town. How did you cope with it?
First of all Keith was very supportive. I never really got hurt by the gossiping, or the gossipers, I’d rather say I got stunned by those. I only can get hurt by people who I care about and fortunately those people care about me, too, so they would rarely hurt me on purpose. So that was that. Keith would get angry about some stuff more. So that was that. And then both of our families were very helpful and kind. Having your family around in hard times exceeds anything else when it comes to healing. And on top of it all, we worked our tails off all the time. We were on the road all the time. Either for cutting someone’s timber or digging for a funeral. The preparation, the trips, the work took our minds off of stupid little unpleasantries quickly and easily.

Did the decision to get into a relationship with the double-your-age Keith turn out well?
Yes, I’d say so, haha. We have been married ever since. My divorce was really fast as I didn’t seek anything from my ex financially. My wedding with Keith happened very fast, too. He has this wise thought, in a marriage there is growth. Either growth together, or growth apart. We have been growing together for 32 years now, and thankfully it never seems to end.

What was it that grabbed you about Keith?
Haha, oh boy. Well, he was good-looking, of course. Smart. Wise. And calm, which was a great completion to my own fiery temper. And he was funny, oh my god, he has such a great sense of humor. And then he liked horses. When we got married, we started to have a number of draft horses. And a cart for them to draw. For one of my birthdays he surprised me with two miniature donkeys. We also had quarter horses. He loved animals and so did I and this was a very important connection between us.

You got your rich horse rancher after all, right?
We can say so, haha. In Iowa, though, but I don’t mind Iowa, in all honesty.

OK, so you got married to Keith when you were like, what, 28? What came next?
Well, I decided to leave my job at the hospital and join Keith in his business. I did the admin work, but not only that. I grabbed the chainsaw and helped him out in tree cutting. I hopped in the excavator and dug graves. I did anything and everything that needed to be done for both businesses. I worked like a man. Was it tough? Hell yeah. Winter was the worst, for graves you needed to thaw the dirt first, before you could dig. That equipment was really heavy, it was such a hassle. We did not even pursue tree cutting in the winter, we did all of it in the spring-summer-fall seasons. Tough, tough work. With a lot of sacrifices. You cannot really attend your own family’s activities on the weekends when there is a funeral for someone. Like weddings, for example. Work comes first. But we were a team, the best team, understanding each other from winks of the eye. Together we could solve any issues.

Why is the past tense…?
Because we officially quit last year. For a year now we have been happy retired people.

Haha okay, so how have you spent yor past year?
We have all our time on ourselves! And no, we are not glued together. We believe in the “live and let live” principle, in personal freedom. Keith likes to spend time on our farm where he has cleared the shed, repaired the fences and cut some timber – once a tree cutter, always a tree cutter. He also tries to keep the pasture clean. We rent out that land and he loves to maintain it for the cattle raisers renting it. At the same time I have my beautiful black camper bus and I go camping either with my sister, or alone. Keith stays away, he is not a caping type bloke. I still love baking and I bake a lot of cookies for a lot of purposes. Especially in the wintertime. I get orders from friends and organizations, events. It is my true hobby and I love seeing people loving what I make.

And I sew. I love quilting. There was a time I would be on the go every weekend for shows, I was invited by small towns all over Iowa to present my dresses on my family members as models. The outfits were modeled on the Victorian era and told stories, which I would present to the audience with a mic in my hand, while my mom and cousins would be marching on the stage to give a better look at the pieces. It was fun – until it felt like an obligation. As soon as I had to do it, I stopped finding joy in it and slowly I just let it go…

That must have been very interesting, but I imagine a lot of work, too. Designing and sewing all those dresses, and then the travels… Do you have anything left on your bucket list?
I do! I have decided to learn something new every year. This is how I have already taken a yoga course, a tap-dancing course – yeah, I know it sounds crazy in Iowa but oh well, that is what I wanted, so that is what I did! I would love to buy an old pickup and fix and drive it. I also plan to take a self-defense class. It would be unwise to not notice how dangerous life has become and for a woman spending so much time on her own, going to a lot of places alone, this is the least one can do for herself. I also am planning to take a chocolatier class.

Oh, let me know when you do that, I would love to join! That’s something I myself have been wanting to learn. I am sure they have one in Des Moines. I’ll look into it.
Yeah, certainly, let’s do that together!

And then there is this council-thing…
Yeah, it adds some to my obligations and sometimes I don’t even know why I am doing it. People can be very mean and critical and when you are a council member, you are the one exposed to all that criticism. It is sad, but it is what it is. I think it is just natural, there always needs to be someone to blame. But oh well. I have one more year, I will continue doing my best to add to my town – and then it will be over.

And, finally, I have my morning walks, one hour every morning, regardless the weather…

I remember that!
Yeah, I still do it. That is my little health program, not much, but there is no way I’d miss it.

Your life seems to have had quite a few tough times where you had to expose yourself, where you had to gather courage to move on. We all have our rough paths and have developed something to balance or resolve those. What is it that has worked for you, how did you try to solve those hard situations?
I am a communicator. I do myself a favor when I try to put the pieces together and summarize the situation, it makes it easy for me to find the root cause – and through that the best solution. Talking it out helps a lot. I am lucky and grateful for having my mom and family, who will hear me out whenever I need to discuss something with them. My boss at the hospital, who took me under her wing, my mentor, we can say that, was a similarly great listener. A beautiful personal relationship evolved from this work-relationship, and we could discuss everything. Unfortunately she passed away a few years ago, a great loss of a great person. I could always rely on the advice of these people.

Paula, at the end of this conversation, tell me what your advice would be for those who are stuck in a rut and know they have a tough decision to make, maybe even know what it should be, but do not dare to take that big step just yet.
My motto is, life does not come with a book to learn from. We need to experience it all. So dare to experience. Go out, invest into that study, take that job, start that business, fight for that guy and bask in the love you create together. Visit your parents, apologize to those who you may have hurt. Life is short, it is way too short to be unhappy. Go, find happiness, grab it, hold onto it, take good care of it. Happiness is the ultimate goal, and we are not guaranteed to have a long life to enjoy it, so the sooner you find it, the better. Make the most out of it.

Thank you, Paula, for the magnificent time. Thanks for sharing these bits of your life, and the wisdom you have gained from it.
Thank you to you, Kami, for asking me, it was so much fun. I like Attagirl!, I can identify with the activity very much and I am proud that I could become part of it.

Paula has no links to share so if you would like to find out more about her and her life, please feel free to contact me.