The Best Laid Plans

Toward the end of the week, sometimes I get twitchy. On my way to drop my daughter off at school today, I drove past a former coworker vigorously waving. Our daughters attend the same school. There, our similarities diverge though, as she is still employed.

We were two of the earliest arrivals to the office each morning, clocking in around 7:30 a.m. Often I would walk down the grey industrial carpet to collect her and we would trek roughly one-eighth of a mile to the cafeteria for coffee. Over many years, we strolled together through the multi-unit condominium complexes surrounding our office building during lunch. Work being what it was, there were weeks that we didn’t see each other literally, and then spells when we walked regularly, after which we ate, gulping down vegetable or turkey roll-ups in the windowed cafeteria. The lack of contact with her is one of the many things that I’ve had to reconcile myself with over the past several weeks, so needless to say on my way home, she was on my mind.

Pulling out of the tree lined street where the middle-high school resides, I envisioned turning right instead of going straight, and following the two lane highway around the rotary to work, instead of taking the pot-holed country road that leads me home. It took no effort to visualize myself in my Friday casual attire, striding through polished glass doors, greeting the receptionist and passing through two subsequent doorways to my former department. After traipsing past our coordinator’s cube, I’d enter my office and plunk my bag at my own blonde desk as I had on countess other mornings…

Nice try. A few days before the big RIF (and I mean days and I suppose now I understand why) the company finally went state-of-the art with their security system. My new but old picture ID (which I tossed to my desk on my last day of work) was packaged into a box and returned to me with some personal items, but of course has been deactivated.

That little scenario up above, well, it would have ended at the door.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I'm not pining for my previous job, but there is comfort in habit and as much as I am trying to develop new ones, the adjustment process remains ongoing. The plan today was to complete final minor revisions to some outplacement work, take a walk with a friend, and then come home and write this blog entry. The computer however prefers to do a security sweep rather then spend time with me, and since it has slowed down radically, I’ve abandoned my little cupboard for the laptop. No real crisis, the cubby simply happens to be where I’ve worn my work hat for the last month and a half. Settling at the table with the laptop, I realized that I am still waiting for a document to arrive by email before I can make those outplacement changes, so they are on hold regardless of which computer is available. I called today’s walking partner, but she has been offered a substitute teaching assignment that of course she must take. There is no issue, I’m capable of walking on my own and will.

This morning though, I’m slightly out of sorts because the thing about working so long for one place is that there is routine within the routine. A million times I arrived at work expecting to accomplish something only to have a crisis or change crop up that required a total schedule adjustment. It was easily done though because there were always things to move on to, other “to-do’s” to complete. After several weeks at home, the surface of me is attuned to my current situation and doing fine. Deep down though, the pattern feels tenuous. Every disruption to my carefully staged agenda takes thought and processing and planning. Sometimes I miss the ability to get things done without always having to think.

That said, I am preparing to walk now and in spite of myself, I’ll follow a new route.

Time on My Side

This is my forty-third piece in Middle Passages, and I still don’t know why the blog clock is wrong. Each time I complete a post, a display appears indicating when the document “went live.” Every day the time revealed is over three hours before I actually clicked “Publish Post.” And for those technicians out there, I write each essay in Word and copy it before opening Blogger and pasting it in. I considered not confessing this inaccuracy to you readers. (I do have readers, right? Anyone want to comment to assure me you are out there?) Then you would continue to assume that I possess the fortitude and dedication to thrive as a pre-dawn writer. Honesty though, is one of my attributes I guess, in spite of the fact that sometimes it feels more like a fault.

Anyway, for my own amusement, I took a little survey through the last forty-two entries and discovered that if you believe the clock, on at least eight days in the last six weeks I posted before sun-up. If you figure that it takes me close to three hours to write and edit one of these pieces and factor in that for the most part I have been crafting them in the winter when the sun comes up late, according to Blogger some days I must have started writing at 3:00 a.m. Has anyone been in my house at 3:00 a.m.? We control our thermostat with an automatic timer set to fifty-five degrees overnight. For those of you not living in New England, let me assure you that fifty-five in the middle of the winter feels like zero and no matter how many layers I may have considered wrapping myself in, the hands at the keyboard would have been rock hard ice.

Clearly I am not a fan of middle of the night cold, but to give myself some credit, I possess morning tendencies and do arrive at the computer around 7:30 most days. On Saturdays, since there are no lunches to make, I can get there earlier, but in the winter, I am inclined to grant myself at least an extra hour to snooze beyond my normal 5:45 alarm. However, if you believe what you read, my earliest posts occured on each successive Saturday. For example, according to Blogger on February 14th I finished writing and posted Middle Passages at 5:33 a.m. That would have entailed a wake up time of about 2:45 to write. I have this picture of me swaddled in the olive-green down comforter tugged from our bed (sorry Tim) dressed in baggy sweats, floppy wool socks and my LLBean suede slippers, tiptoeing down our narrow hallway to the paneled family room. The cat, optimistically sleeping above a cold radiator on the back of the navy couch, arches her back and gives me a “you have got to be kidding” look as I switch on the recessed lights.

Perhaps however, this image is not so far-fetched. Pen on Fire author Barbara DeMarco-Barret tells me that any writer can find fifteen minutes to practice her craft. Reading her book this week has offered me some acceptance that even when I have to give up this luxury of plentiful writing time to get back to paying work, I’ll be capable of fitting it in.

With some help from an old coworker, I have committed to myself that I will. We had company coming last week, so I finally consolidated the two boxes from my former office and shoved the remaining container from the dining room to the living room. Someday I’ll decide what to do with the contents. While picking through though, I discovered the brown 8”x11” envelope that holds the detritus of my old bulletin board. There are pictures of flowers drawn by my toddler daughter, a birth announcement for someone who had to wait a long time and a photo of a little girl from New York whose mother is my inspiration. Inside that packet, typed in bold Ariel print on plain white paper rests a quote by George Eliot that this aforementioned coworker sent me before he left the company for a career as a stay-at-home dad. It goes like this: “It is never too late to become who you might have been.”

Maybe, when I do get back to work I’ll purchase a heavy wool sweater and thermal sweats and set my alarm for 3:00.

Fingerless gloves, anyone?

Home Schooling

My Australian sister retired recently and signed up for a journalism course at a local college. One of her first class assignments incorporated writing short descriptions of pictures found on postcards. As I mentioned yesterday, Pen on Fire by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is my library indulgence this week. At the time she wrote the book, the author taught creative writing at the University of California, Irvine, and the end of each chapter offers exercises designed to assist would-be writers. Early on, she recommends that writers describe a scene from a postcard. Imagine that. Fourteen thousand miles apart and the homework is the same. OK, I’m in. However, since I don’t have postcards lying around it will have to be my calendar page, hanging on the inside door to the computer cubby. I’m setting a timer and we’ll all see what comes out—although my typing is God awful so I promise to edit the piece before displaying it below.

***

At the edge of the water garden, two Adirondack chairs balance in the shadows surrounded by moist undergrowth. White seats blend with white tipped hostas; creeping begonias blossom baby white below. In the woods a dogwood bleeds red through the dark pines; closer in, loosestrife, invasive and purple tangles at the side of the pool. The plump buds of gold tinged cushion spurge surround a single yawning lily and ornamental grasses bend forward as if to sip. Quoi or carp or goldfish must swim somewhere but they hide under waxy lily pads; behind a centered stepping stone. In my mind, a little girl dressed in pink summer seersucker braces one arm on granite fieldstones, reaching eager fingers to the quick water bugs that draw ripples on invisible skates. She has run ahead of her mother who strolls barefoot on this sultry morning, hand coiled around a mug of sweetened tea, breathing the dew smell, the green, the freshly cut grass, the faint mint of lemon thyme that mounds beside the pond. Somewhere a frog honks softly. Muted cicadas ratchet up their chainsaw whine. Cool grass tickles; humid air swallows; embraces. Quiet, shade, peace, morning--the calendar says March, but here in my cubby, the rendering is New England June.

Calling My Bluff--Sort of

It seemed like a work morning today. I had an early outplacement meeting and woke up realizing I forgot to put gas in the car. Then before breakfast I reviewed my notes from my last meeting and remembered that I hadn’t completed all of my homework. The resume was done, the “areas of expertise” document was complete, but the draft networking email had no checkmark next to it. So in between layering together a chicken roll-up for my daughter’s lunch and cooking oatmeal with raisins for me, I fired up the computer. My daughter scuffed out in her fluffy pink slippers about five minutes later, wet hair scrunched into a towel turban. While perched at our kitchen counter bar waiting for the milk to absorb into her cereal, she asked: “Is that computer on? I swear I turned it off last night.” As the color in my cheeks bloomed beyond their normal pink to fuscia, I explained that I turned it on because I forgot some of my outplacement homework due today. Shaking her finger and smirking, as expected she parroted myself back at me, “You know Mum; you shouldn’t leave your homework to the last minute.”

She is right, of course. As I scrambled through the development of a quick email letter designed to market available me to my network, I tried to figure out why, when I finished the other two assignments so much earlier in the week, I had allowed this one to drop off the radar screen.

The networking email is designed to inform (or remind) my contacts, that I am no longer with my previous employer. The completed communication should point to my “brand” (I am an “X” with skills in “YZQ”) and will either request a quick meeting or seek recommendations of individuals that I may reach out to. The written piece is not a difficult task to accomplish so what it comes down to is this. I spent the last several weeks preparing the tools for success in this networking process and then conveniently forgot to complete the very last step. Hmmm. Perhaps some self-analysis is required here.

Later, having arrived at the outplacement office with time to spare, I sat in the car reading my newest library book, called Pen on Fire by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. The book is billed as a “busy woman’s guide to igniting the writer within.” In the face of the fact that I am none too “busy” these days; this seems like a book calculated to help keep me more so. Just before I stepped out of my car for my appointment, I read this: “Listen up. Forget about the destination—or at least lock that worry away in the back of your mind. The journey is the thing. The act of writing because you love doing it, because you like how you feel when you are writing—that’s reason enough.”

I’m staring at myself today and trying to acknowledge a little bit of truth. Unfortunately though, it’s a truth that doesn’t come with a steady paycheck. Is it possible that I didn’t finish the email homework because the lack of that piece holds me up from initiating the process, from speaking to people with the ultimate goal of acquiring gainful employment?

Can it be that when all the networking preparation is said and done, I’m wondering what job out there will be any more rewarding than this?

Confirmed

My father’s father was a writer; his uncle was a writer too. This heritage courses through my veins, propelling me to sculpt words in the hope that they will be published someday. Prior to my dad’s death, I strived toward that end, in part because I felt that if my writing appeared in print, the grandfather I never knew would come alive for my dad again through his own daughter’s words. In my fantasy, Dad opened the Sunday magazine section of our major newspaper and discovered his daughter’s byline. It didn’t happen before he left us and yes, my work has made it into niche publications since. But I have continued to send pieces to that mainstream daily, convinced that success there will convey a tribute to my father and confirm my legitimacy as a writer.

So here is the thing.

Our daughter was confirmed in our church on Friday. This ceremony was the culmination of ten years of religious education with the final two focused on preparations for this event. To celebrate, we invited her Godparents for an early supper prior to the service, and the phone rang relentlessly while we were catching up. Grateful for caller ID, we ignored repeated attempts from “Private Callers” based out of Florida, rolling our eyes each time the phone chirped at us.

It rang one more time as I was crushing garlic for scampi. Wiping my hands, I reached to turn off the ringer but caught a glimpse at the caller ID display indicating an unknown local number instead of the toll free digits that had been plaguing us all afternoon.

I do believe in intuition and mine told me to pick it up.

And, as it turns out, it was an editor from The Boston Globe Magazine, the publication which has politely ignored the pieces that I have been submitting for the last several years. You see, I wrote an essay last Sunday, edited it like crazy Monday and Tuesday and sent it in on Wednesday. The Friday call was an acceptance.

After cheers all around for our daughter’s accomplishment and an unexpected champagne toast for me, my husband said: “I know the name of your next blog entry. You can call it ‘Confirmed.’”

And so it is.

This one is dedicated to Tuck.

The Week in Review (6)

Things I have learned:

We know more than we think we know. Sometimes we know more than they think they know too.

We all need to give ourselves credit, even for the little things.

Every time we step out of our comfort zone we grow.

There are approximately 65 days until Memorial Day, when harbor breakfasts will undoubtedly have started again. Will someone tell that to the brazen patch of snow that continues to adorn our shady backyard?

It frightens me to say this, but sometimes even laundry can be rewarding.

Stay optimistic and good things will happen. More on this later.

Practice

This one is an exercise for me.

It is 8:00 a.m. on a summer Sunday and we have been to our own church already, a service scheduled for golfers, but we don’t golf. Having given thanks, we’ve purchased hot coffee and fresh bagels and driven to the harbor. The silver-shingled porch on the locked sailing club doubles as an outside chapel; we tiptoe past short-sleeved worshippers gathered on wooden benches, hymn books held wide. As the gangplank descends below; “Amazing Grace” floats from behind.

In front of us, the Meggie Lou bobs in the corner, wedged between a flooded rowboat and the splintered planks of a timber dock. Brown ribbons of ocean froth skim her waterline and the plastic detergent container that serves as a baler floats in the rainwater pooled in her stern.

Beyond the boat, a still harbor mirrors a low hanging sun and bleached blue sky. Red hulled lobster boats, the Janice Marie, the Sally Anne, Prime Ribs, point together like graceful ladies into a wind we can’t feel. Seagulls cark among themselves; an engine mumbles and throbs in the distance. As Tim mops up the last of the wetness, I untie the bowline, balancing one foot into the dinghy and pushing with the other, heaving us out. The motor catches, coughs, and catches again.

It is 8:15 a.m. on a Sunday morning and we are sitting on the jetty at the mouth of the harbor gripping cardboard coffee cups in two hands. The warming sun blesses our shoulders as the water laps and smacks at the granite boulders beneath. Morning rays shimmer and catch on green ocean swells--way out, Minot Light stands guard like a remote sentinel. Seabirds chase early fisherman returning with their catch and the banter of clam diggers echoes as they fork at distant flats.

Closer in, we enhale the aroma of yeast warm bagels as we peer into our white paper bag. Church is important but this is another Sunday benediction.