Roanoke teen mom seeks answers for future [The Roanoke Times, Va.]

Dec. 25--Rachel Glisson graduated from Roanoke'sPatrick Henry High School in June.

She didn't graduate with honors. She didn't accept her diploma with grand plans to attend a university or join the military. In fact, days before the ceremony Rachel, then 17, said she didn't know what the next steps would be for her and Alexander May, her 2-year-old son.

Six months later the teenage mother said she still does not have all the answers.

"I do want to do something with my life. I just don't know what that is," Rachel said recently from the porch of her mother's southwest Roanoke home.

In the meantime, Rachel, now 18, is working part time at a restaurant, and Alex attends an Early Head Start child care center. Rachel is saving money for an apartment and car repairs. Her brother gave her a used Volvo about two months ago. She said she is paying for insurance but the car is inoperable.

"I can't drive it," she said. "It's leaking gas bad."

Rachel lives with her mother, who was also a teenage parent.

"She is doing her best to take care of Alex when she feels it's her motherly duty. But she is still a teenager," said Mary Pickel, Rachel's mother.

Pickel helps Rachel care for Alex when she works the dinner shift.

"She's still my designated baby sitter," said Rachel, who would like to rent an apartment near her mother's home.

She figures she can afford about $600 a month in rent and utilities, but that will take most of her salary.

Rachel went to work this summer at Burger in the Square on Brambleton Avenue in Roanoke County. She works about 30 hours a week -running the cash register, carrying orders to tables and tidying the dining room.

"She is very personal with the customers, which is something we strive to do," said Anita Wilson, who owns the restaurant with her husband.

"I am really proud of her," Wilson said. "She is doing a lot of things girls her age wouldn't do to better herself."

Rachel said she would like to take classes at Virginia Western Community College, where she applied for admission but has not taken the placement tests required for registration. She is in a holding pattern because she does not know what type of degree she wants to pursue. And she acknowledges that she is not sure she is motivated enough to balance school, a job and being a parent.

Without a car, Rachel relies on someone to give her rides twice a day to Alex's day care and to take her to and from work. Sometimes it's her mom, an uncle or friends.

Pickel said she wants Rachel to go to school and she doesn't want her to move out with her towheaded grandson until Rachel is sure she is ready. But Pickel said she knows she cannot make those decisions for her now adult daughter.

"It's going to happen when it happens," Pickel conceded. "But he [Alex] is welcome to stay with us as long as he needs to. That option's always going to be there for her."

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