Working II

One of my ‘good-job’ barometers is that I should feel at least a slight rush of excitement upon arriving to work.

In the late 1980s I was a Public Information Assistant at the United Nations in New York. A classy job title: I gave tours in English and pretty atrocious Japanese. The UN felt like

the center of the world. Rounding the corner from 42nd street onto First Avenue I saw and – on a windy day heard – 180+ flags of the world flapping wildly. My heart always skipped a beat.  I loved greeting the security guards with a wave of my badge as I entered the employee-only gate behind suited diplomats, loved eating lunch in the cafeteria overlooking the East river (and the food was good too). Opening days of the General Assembly were particularly exciting; I ran charming photographers around the building for photo-ops with heads-of-state and once shook hands with Vaclav Havel. When Nelson Mandela was freed, I stood with my colleagues applauding madly for at least 5-minutes as he waited patiently at the podium to speak.  The massive hall of the General Assembly shook with emotion and then, as we settled and he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop as tears streamed down our faces.  Amazing times there. I didn’t want to live in NYC anymore though, so signed on to a UN peacekeeping mission and went to Europe. (Another story.)

For the past decade I happily walk into the bookstore 5 days a week. Less momentous than the world stage but still thrilling to me, seeing full shelves, spending my day with books and book-lovers. Much of my work happens in a messy little office in the back so these weeks during the holidays of being ‘out on the floor’ (by the end of my shift – I often feel like I could be knocked out on the floor) are a nice change. I enjoy random encounters with customers, sharing favorite titles with the youngest to oldest reader. We are connecting over books. Well, mostly. There are times these days, I also feel like an electronics salesperson. But still, we talk about reading — pretty good for the soul if you ask me.

Working

My 16 year old daughter started her first job in the real world yesterday. I dropped her off and watched her walk through the dawn-lit, still empty parking lot to the small family-run cafe. Driving home I recalled my own first job at 16.

Nature’s Kitchen was a storefront Indian restaurant. It was just me and the cook, Singh – a gentle man with a young family back in India. He loved beer and the Average White Band. As soon as the last patron left, he cranked up a tape and we’d clean up to the blaring funky beat.  No table cloths on the 15 or so tables, just yellow paper placemat with scalloped edges, one set at every place. I remember this detail because for years I kept a little love note on a torn-off piece of placemat from an admirer I liked back. He probably scrawled it while slurping his mulligitawny soup. There were crushes, celebrities and crazy people who came in regularly. The glove lady was most memorable. She wore elbow length gloves and came back into the kitchen to boss Singh around. She wouldn’t place her order with me and only allowed him to bring her dishes out – probably because she had crowed at him to wash his hands first. She always finished her meal with the Indian pudding — a scary looking cream-of-wheat concoction  in a battered frying pan, kept warm but also drying out, at the back of the black stove. Thinking back, I’m surprised anything out of that kitchen met glove-lady’s clean neurosis.

Waitressing became my go-to job. It was easy to walk into a restaurant and get hired. Quick and cash, tips that back-in-the-day, did not get reported. I waitressed in restaurants, bars, country clubs and hotels for over ten years. My final job was at a fancy hotel chain as a unionized banquet waitress. I was relieved to no longer have to rattle off salad dressing choices or beers on tap. Sometimes I could go through the whole night only saying one word to the customers as I rounded each table with a heavy pot: “coffee?” Lifting the metal lids, balancing two plates on one arm, a the third in hand slid quietly in front of the diner, while at the next table, my colleagues did the same. It all felt so choreographed. Most nights, I enjoyed moving efficiently through the room in my little black polyester uniform with white ruffly apron, the night planned out – a beginning, middle and end around courses of a mass meal. Finally, worried I’d be doomed to this work for the rest of my life, I swore waitressing off and headed to Japan with the idea of learning how to make seiketei – Japanese rock gardens. But that’s another story.

I wonder how many of us finally land a way to make money that is really right for us? Something that gives us pleasure — or at least, does not defeat us body and soul? And for how long does it remain so? For now, I watch my daughters new pleasure at making bacon-egg sandwiches and coffee and hope she always finds a way.

A Quiet Thanks

I like Thanksgiving. Gathering with loved ones to reflect on gratitude, if only for a moment before digging into the scripted menu. What’s not to like about that? But this year, I am delighted by our plan for the day: Molly and I will search for an open Chinese restaurant and share a meal together, ordered off a menu. Later, stuffed with dumplings and rice, we will meet up with Rob and tumble across the street to share pies and wine with our dear friends from the neighborhood. I am grateful for the luxury of this day and my daughter’s emerging rebel spirit. Really, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays — but sometimes, the timing just isn’t right.

Molly is tired after an activity packed autumn with barely an evening to herself. And Friday launches retail madness month with harried, long work days. We are happy to duck out of any requirements – no place to go, nothing to make. Oh, enticing invitations came our way – and I even considered hosting myself – but when Molly said, “I don’t want to go anywhere.” my heart soared. Yes! I don’t either.  So why should we? The flip-side of the lack of doting relatives around to show up at Molly’s plays, concerts, graduations, etc., she and I are free of that feeling of requirements. We don’t have to go anywhere. We can do whatever we want. My siblings are the same as me – although we do keep Christmas day precious – they dutifully, and I hope with some glimmer of joy, make the trip out of the city to celebrate at our house – a homage to the only kid in the family.  Today, nothing is required of us and for that and so much more, I am grateful. I will reflect on that as I dig in to my … hmm, maybe I’ll have sushi.

Just a Story

The other day I ran into my friend’s mother, L. We’ve known each other so long and we have such a mutual affection, she is also my friend.  L is also a suicide widow — her youngest child was my daughter’s age when her husband killed himself. Her daughter and I became friends just after this happened and I recall the shadow of sadness that hovered over their home. But the other day when L and I stood in the bookstore parking lot chatting, she said: “It was 36 years ago. You know, now when I tell the story, I think ‘isn’t that terribly sad’ as if it were someone else”.  Time has turned an awful tragedy into a story she tells dispassionately.

For most of my life, I compulsively filled pages of my journal. I still have them all and sometimes crack a tattered notebook for a glimpse of what I was seeing and feeling during a certain time and place. But not much. I don’t really need to remember every joy or more likely, angst.  I recall wondering when I was in high school, why I felt the need to write things down, half-believing that if I did not record it, it didn’t really happen. Oh, if that were true! Now, when I think about writing — about N’s suicide, my bout with cancer, M’s premature birth — I realize for me, writing is a kind of alchemy.  As if by focusing on telling it, the once-unbearable loses the power to haunt me. The balm of time gets speeded up, a healing distance is created.  In telling the story, it becomes just a story. And perhaps, also remembrance.

Writer’s Block

This morning, I’m stumped. I write a sentence, start an idea and delete. Inspiration eludes me. I try to be disciplined about posting to this blog at least once a week and usually, something is percolating by the time I sit down at my keyboard. Something.

Nature never lets me down – some sweet moment in the yard sets me off on a trail of thought leading to something else I can put into words. Yesterday I picked a salad’s worth of arugala from beneath the newly fallen layer of leaves but beyond that, I don’t know what to write.

Arugala gets me thinking about food. I love to read about food but hesitate to write about it since I’m not really a foodie. But I do make a delicious and always different granola. I need to make a batch today as this bowl is the last of it. Oats mixed with a neutral tasting oil, honey, a dash of vanilla and cinnamon spread on a baking sheet in the oven. Turn often until browned to your taste. When cool, add the rest — nuts, raisins, coconut, flax and wheat germ for an even healthier boost.

So easy to make and much cheaper than buying it. I’ve also started making my own yogurt (also featured here sliding in next to my granola) seduced by this video from this site The Daily Grommet I sometimes visit when I should be doing other things.  It’s a simple thermos kind of thing easily improvised – but I was a sucker and bought the whole shebang. It came with two packets of yogurt mix made from the milk of New Zealand cows and did make 2 perfect batches – but buying more of these packets is pricey and defeats the purpose a bit. I’ve used a few recipes from other websites and have come up with some delicious, although still slightly runny batches.

If I wasn’t slightly embarrassed to tell you what I was reading I could write about it. But put it this way: I am reading said unnamed book (currently on the best-seller list) while I watch television (Jon Steward, Stephen Colbert) – it’s not deep or particularly good and we’ll leave it at that. I did read a delightful book (not in front of the tv) recently by a Jennifer Wilson who took a sabbatical from her life in the States to go live with her husband and two little kids in the little town in Croatia where her ancestor’s came from. Running Away to Home  often made me laugh out-loud – she’s very funny with a self-deprecating humor. Jennifer affectionately captures this tiny little village and the characters who live there. I appreciated the glimpse of Croatia – so much a part of my life still tangled with memories of sadder times.

Were I traveling of course there would be no shortage of inspiration, but for now I am content with armchair journeys and following the delightful accounts of not one, but two of my friends’ trips to Thailand. Coincidentally, they were both there in the middle of record rains and floods — but still had great adventures. Check them out.

So there, I’ve written a post. A reminder to myself to just start writing.

Wisdom in a Wall

The leaves of our big maple tree seem to be plunging from their branches. I can see other trees in the distance also raining foliage.  Perhaps shedding quickly lest more damage be done by premature snowfall. Were such a thing possible, it looks like a mass tree anxiety attack manifesting in this strange storm of spinning, torpedoing, floating leaves. Just watching the chaos almost triggers one in me: my heart rate increases and jaw sets.

CHANGE seems set on fast speed today. There is catching up to do. (although we actually gained an hour with clock shifts) Or else? Why the anxiety? That’s the question that gets me. It’s an abstract sense of things happening out of control — and maybe those things are not good. That’s my default. But, rather than let my day get railroaded by this irrational anxiety, (triggered by falling leaves?? yikes) I will finish yesterday’s project of rescuing a tree from bittersweet.

Yesterday, with my heavy-duty lopper and a few choice cuts with a chain saw I cleared the lower trunk of the oak.  The woody vines were so thick, this strangling sucker must have been there for years. How had I missed it?  The tree is set by the road, ambiguously close to my neighbor’s overgrown plot and surrounded by the privet hedge and a sprawling forsythia we mostly ignore. Not until yesterday did I notice the trunk of this oak tree was being swallowed — the orange berries gave the culprit away.

For over an hour I tore at and chopped at the vines, pulling branches and years of debris away from the trunk. I followed the trail of bittersweet, yanking, pulling, cutting — and uncovered a beautiful stone wall. Smothered for years, these great old stones set tightly together, have been here, invisible beneath the bramble.  A forgotten foundation weathering crazy seasons, storms and bittersweet. From my window, I cannot see the stone wall just beyond the hedge, but I know it is there and remembering it, my heart slows. The leaves continue their frenetic fall. I breathe easy. 

Too Soon

Unlike yesterday’s leaden start, this morning’s light is bright and stunning. From the warmth of my bed, newly made with a winter quilt, I push the curtain aside to see the tree-tops from a nearby wood. Swaying in the wind, still-green leaves shiver on the branches they clung to through yesterday’s freak snow storm. Downstairs, I peered out at the yard, surveying the damage: a large branch down, fallen on our raised bed. It broke off of a tree we’ve discussed taking down so we could have more light for the new veggie patch. Nature has done the work for us. The only ‘line down’ is our laundry line that had been attached to ‘Weepy’ our 10 year old willow tree, now laying across the lawn. Weepy had been struggling these last few years, only a few sad sprouts of live branches, an almost silly spray of green. Clearly dying, it still supported our drying clothes and towels through the seasons, its distance from the house was an easy pull on the line from the porch.

After donning rubber boots, I stepped outside into the slush to retrieve the newspaper. The frigid air smells like winter. Squirrels frantically scramble around and up trees, their cheeks fat with supplies. In the distance I hear a flock of geese protesting as they fly, “Too soon! Too soon!”

Changing Seasons, Stocked Shelves

Foliage-drama is lacking this autumn. Summer droughts and rains, hurricane Irene are all reasons cited for this ‘blah’ fall. Even the usual spectacular reds of my maple tree have yet to appear, the leaves dropping more brown than red. But the flip side is that days are mostly warm and we’ve yet to turn the heat on or even start a blaze in the fireplace and there is still a meal’s worth of swiss chard to harvest from the garden. 

But it’s time to get ready. Today, we will cover the draftiest old windows on this house with plastic.  I’ll retrieve wooly sweaters and corduroy pants from a plastic bin I happily packed away back in May. With far less pleasure, shorts, cotton blouses and flowing skirts (I rarely wear – but somehow, always imagine I might) will get tucked into storage until next spring.

Like the squirrels, I have been hoarding sustenance for the long, dark nights ahead – making piles throughout the house of books to see me through the season.  I picked up Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty from the sale bookshelf at the library (my bus-man’s holiday) because I enjoyed State of Wonder and this ode to her friendship with fellow writer Lucy Grealy has often caught my eye. I also picked up A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah for $2 – a former best-seller I never read. At work I have snagged a few advanced reader’s copies including Thrity Umrigar’s new The World We Found and a first novel by Ayad Akhtar, American Dervish described as “A stirring and explosive debut novel about an American Muslim family struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.”

Bring on the cold nights and light the fire, I’m ready to read.

The Woods

I don’t feel my age (just north of fifty) except when it comes time to visit the stable of doctors now assigned to me. Check-ups have gotten more complicated over the last 10 years or so, especially since a slight bout with breast cancer in 2004. Few of us seem to be able to dodge that diagnosis for long anymore thanks to all the intense screening we submit to. And once in this lousy club, regular, thorough scanning means check-ups that were once uneventful are now fraught with anxiety about what might be found this time.

For instance, yesterday I had a mammogram, bone density and ultra-sound.  Tomorrow I will get the news – hopefully a home-free card for one more year. Or maybe it will be a call-back — for another squishing in the machine or worse, a needle biopsy. I hate those. Hate it all – but try to breathe deeply in these waiting days, savoring the preciousness of thinking I am perfectly fine rather than drown in dread.  But the thing about accumulating years is the increased vulnerability to illness, sadness, tragedy. Once in this part of the forest, we never really get to be ‘out of the woods’ again. I try to focus on patches of light through the trees.

PS: All clear!

Stories to Tell

For ten years now, I have been a board member of a group that works to give little libraries to children who might otherwise not own a single book. The goal is to give at least 10 books over as many months to a child participating in some kind of literacy program. Hopefully, they will develop a life-time love of reading. First Book Fairfield County has provided about 10,000 books a year to children living in financially challenged communities that border the wealthiest towns in this county.

Our group of volunteers has worked together for years. We get together once a month or so for about an hour to review grants, award them or to organize our next fundraiser. We are fond of each other and share a passion for getting books to kids. We also share an easy, warm rapport. But I recently discovered, there’s plenty we probably don’t know about each other.

Last night we held a wine tasting at a beautiful space at Bridgeport University with a view of the Long Island Sound to knock your socks off.  While moving glasses and spreading table cloths, one of my fellow board members and I gabbed about our high school juniors and their college search process. He is a fantastic mortgage guy, warm and generous and funny. He grew up around here, and I always presumed, had spent his life in these suburbs working conservative banking jobs to provide a good life for his family.  The usual story. But I was wrong.

“I told my son, he can go anywhere he wants — and he says he wants to go to Sacred Heart and live at home! As soon as I turned 18, I was on a ship to Africa,” he said.

“Really? Where in Africa did you go?” I asked, always curious to hear about people’s world travels.

“Dakar.”

“Why Senegal?” I asked.

“I’m a tap dancer and I went to meet up with a cruise ship. You didn’t know I was a dancer?” He looked at me incredulously. But how would I have known he was tap dancer? He’d never shared this information, turns out, with any of our group – but I quickly did and we all looked at our friend with new eyes.

An award winning tap-dancer, he worked on cruise ships, traveling all over the world. He was once in a movie with Sandra Bullock. But the best part of the story was:

“I met my wife on that first cruise. I was 18 and she was 16 and lived in California. But we wrote letters for 2 years before we saw each other again – and now we’ve been married for 20.”

With a look of love he glanced over into the corner where his beautiful, vivacious blond wife laughed with friends.

“A tap dancer!” I kept repeating – retrieving my jaw from the carpet. I watched my friend move throughout the night, his grace, his ease, his adoration for his wife and it all made sense. Knowing just that little bit about his adventures has lent a richer dimension to my perception of him. And now, I wonder what amazing stories you have to tell?

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers: