Charity Snow’s story of triumph
by Megan Reed, Kelsey Merriam and Faith Mantia
ROME, Ga.—Charity Snow’s lucky break came when she was 17 years old.
 |
|
Charity Snow
|
Working at a Kroger supermarket in Cedartown when a pharmacy employee quit, she saw a door open. She said she asked her employers if she could learn more about being a pharmacy technician, continued working in the pharmacy field, and today, 13 years later, she is still a pharmacy technician at a CVS pharmacy in nearby Rome, Ga.
About four years into her career, at 22, however, Snow had to make a big adjustment. Twin daughters, Ashanti and Aleiyah, were born on Oct. 22, 2005.
“When I first got pregnant, the doctor told me I was going to have twins,” she said. “I didn’t believe him. He showed me the monitor. . . . I cried.”
An unexpected pregnancy – and twins, no less – meant an uncertain future.
Motherhood “was not my lifestyle at all,” she said. “I was adventurous, wanted to be on my own, trying to copy everybody else being in the streets and stuff.”
 |
|
Charity with her daughters, Ashanti and
Aleiyah
|
So she turned to her mother for support, moving back home to prepare for the birth. And she did so just in time: Ashanti and Aleiyah came early, at 32 weeks. The hospital kept her baby girls for one very long week.
“I cried when I would leave the hospital,” she said. “I was up there every day, making sure that they were fed and everything.”
But the real challenge came after the baby girls came home, as Snow attempted to manage both a career and motherhood, and do it without her girls’ father in the picture.
“Having a job and having kids . . . your job: they really don’t care if you have kids,” she said.
Although Snow was a little older when her daughters were born, she is not alone in her situation.
In Floyd County in 2012, there were 30 teen births for every 1,000 teens, according to the Georgia Family Connection. Nearly 15% of Floyd County households have no husband or father present, according to 2010 Census data.
Help from family
Snow does have help, however. Her mother and younger sister, Britney, stepped in to care for the twins. But it hasn’t been easy.
“They will do anything for me, but just trying to get a ride back and forth to pick up (the girls) when I’m at work was kind of hard, because my sister worked, my mama worked,” she said.
This difficulty increased when Snow moved out of her mother’s home in Cedartown, and into her own place in Rome, when her daughters were 1-year-old.
She said she wants to protect her twins, who are now 9 years old, just like her own mother protected her. (She also has custody of her 5-year-old nephew.)
“My Mom didn’t raise me in the streets,” she said. “I didn’t start misbehaving until I was actually 18 years old, after I graduated high school.”
Like her Mom, Snow said she is a very protective mother.
“She kept me in a bubble,” she said, referring to her Mom. “That’s how I keep my kids. I keep them in a bubble. I don’t want nobody to harm them.”
Helping her is her sister, Britney, who lives with the family.
“She feels like (Ashanti and Aleiyah) are kind of hers, too, because she’s been there the whole time helping me out,” Snow said. “Sometimes I feel like she doesn’t have a life because she is so busy helping me out with my kids. I think that kind of put her back some. She feels like it’s her responsibility to help me when it’s not.”
The father’s influence
Although 72% of black households in the United States do not have a father present, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Snow household is one of them, Snow’s daughters do get to spend some time with their father.
 |
Though the twins’ father doesn’t live with the family, he is in the picture again after years away, and Snow said she is grateful. He sees his daughters once a week.
“I think they understand that we aren’t going to be together, and they see him when they can,” she said. “His Mom, his family, they really help me out a lot, too.”
Daily challenges and triumphs
Snow’s biggest challenge is simply making ends meet and meeting the demands of each day, including getting the girls and her nephew to school, encouraging them in their studies, and putting food on the table.
“The bills are expensive,” she said.
To help her girls excel in school, Snow makes sure each Monday night they are at a free tutoring program at Greater Christ Temple administered by the church in cooperation with the Honors Program at Berry College. She drives them there each Monday night, waits for them during their tutoring sessions, dines with them at the church, then gets them home to get ready for the next day.
Providing relief and precious time together are weekends.
“We go to the park, go to the movies, go shopping,” Snow said. “They love buying clothes … They ask every day, ‘When are we going shopping again?’”