The End of the Tunnel

It may be the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures... It may be that I've had three days off in a row...

Or it may be that I'm beginning to see some light at the end of this dark tunnel I've been traveling through...

Whatever the reason, I awoke this morning feeling  ~dare I say? ~ hopeful ~ for the first time in a long while.  As if the tipped axis my world has spun upon for the past four months might be starting to right itself.  As if I might begin to breath easy once more, to stop looking for danger and disappointment around every corner, to actually smile and really mean it.

The heavy anvil of heartache may be lifting, my friends, and I'm delirious with excitement.

Looking back on the things I've been writing here, I see how deeply enmeshed in sorrow I've been.   I want that to change in the days ahead, want to find the source of my writer's eye once again, and particularly want that source to focus on the positive aspects of life in general.  I want to believe that life can be bright and beautiful, that some of my dearest dreams will come true, and that I will be happy again.

 For the past three years, this space has been where I've come to express my feelings about life in general and my own in particular.  I think each one of us has a unique personal story that bears telling to the world, a story that reflects a deeper meaning on this roller coaster ride we call life.   We travel the road together, my friends, and sharing our experience is a way of learning from it and making it meaningful.  Sometimes the days are dark, and we need to huddle together to find a glimmer of hopeful light.  And when the darkness lifts, we can't wait to share the joy and spread the beacon of hope.

In the weeks ahead, look  for some changes here at the Byline.  Perhaps a makeover, a shiny new space to match this shiny new beginning that's rising in my spirit.  

I want this journey into the future to be a happy one.

And I hope you'll all come join me.

Women at Work

Last spring, I was sitting a lunch with my co-workers, several of whom are young mothers, and they were discussing the woes associated with finding (and keeping) good daycare/preschool situations.  "This is the third preschool we've gone to this year,"  Anna moaned.  "Josh had just gotten to know the teacher and made a few friends, and now they're closing!"  Not surprising, of course, but the stagnant economy here in Michigan affects daycare and preschools too, and they find themselves unable to stay in business. As this discussion swirled around me, I reminded myself to give my husband a hug, kiss, and a big thank you when I got home.  For what? you're asking.  Well (and I apologize if this offends anyone's feminist sympathies), for working so successfully and so hard all those years ago when I was a young mother, so that I could stay home with our son and not have to worry about daycare and preschool.  I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, of course, and especially not when he was away from home long hours, or traveling for weeks on end.  Looking back, however, life was quite a lark for me in those days.  I was able to set my own schedule, play with my child as much as I liked, dabble in music and writing as much or as little as I wished.  I had family and friends nearby for support.  Life was good.

I didn't remember to thank Jim that night, and although it occurred to me to do so quite a few times over the ensuing few weeks, the timing wasn't right for some reason, or our conversation got sidetracked before I found the words to mention it. 

And then came July 1, and my husband lost his job.

About a month later, I'm offered the opportunity to increase my own part time work into a full time position, with a nice raise in pay. 

So now I'm the one away from home, working long hours.  I'm the one who feels pressured to meet deadlines, to skirt around the boss'  moods and temperaments, to work according to someone else's schedule. 

I'm the one...and I'm not liking it so much.  Here's what's bothering me - I really, really miss the freedom and flexibility to live life on my own terms.  Dwelling deep within my outwardly placid and agreeable nature, there is a small rebellious streak that despises being accountable to another person for my time.  It's this demon that ties my stomach into knots when my boss gripes that I haven't properly cleared my schedule with her.  It's this demon that brings a string of  stifled curses to my lips when a huge assignment is passed onto me because someone else dropped the ball.   It's this demon that brings tears to my eyes on occasion as I'm driving into the office and thinking about how much I'd rather be home drinking coffee in my favorite chair, or walking in the park with my dogs.

But now I'm the one who goes bustling out the door every morning while my husband stays home drinking coffee and reading e-mail.  It's actually a common phenomenon, I understand, especially here in Big 3 territory, where so many wives of unemployed automotive company workers are now the breadwinners of the family.  It seems that women's jobs, so often centered in service type industry and professions, have been spared more often than those of their husbands.  The husbands - mine included - are now picking up the slack at home, learning to handle all manner of domestic duties.

I've always considered myself a "working woman."  Even in the days when I wasn't bringing home a regular paycheck, I was involved in numerous activities inside and outside of my home.  When I first began working for pay about 15 years ago, I was able to retain a good balance between the work I was doing and the demands of my family and personal life.  Now, for the first time, the balance is skewed in favor of work, and this is where the difficulty lies.  But this is the lifestyle my husband lived for the better part of our marriage.  He spent years of his life eking out small bits of personal time from his hectic and demanding schedule.  I don't for one minute begrudge him some time now to rest and regroup, for even though it was forced upon him against his will, it is well deserved after 30 years of relentlessly hard work.

The other day I stumbled in the door, exhausted and grumpy, and tossed a satchel of reports I'd carted home onto the couch.  "I've never thanked you properly before," I said to him, "but I'm doing so now. I don't know how you did it all those years."

"Did what?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"Worked every darn day!" I said.  "I could never have done that.  And I really appreciate it."

He shrugged.  "You don't think it about it really," he answered.  "You just do it."

Ah, so that's the secret. 

You just do it.

Stacked Up

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite games was playing office.  Our first home had a half-second story, one big room tucked under the attic, with a sloping ceiling and one small window that overlooked the sidewalk.  There was a wooden desk tucked into that alcove, with an old-fashioned manual typewriter and a vintage adding machine, the kind you operated with a pull down handle.  At the age of 3 and 4, you'd find me up there happily pounding away on that old Remington, writing all kinds of "important" letters, and adding long columns of numbers. When I was a bit older, we moved to another home, but my home office went with me.  My dad had a big desk in the basement, with lots of drawers - he didn't use it much, but I surely did.  My typewriter (by now I'd graduated to a Smith Corona electric) was seated smack in the middle, and I used one of my dad's cast off electric adding machines (I can still hear that funny little whirr it made when you pressed the "=" sign.) 

Yes indeed, I  loved playing office in those days.  Sometimes I pretended to be a lawyer, other times a magazine editor.  But whatever make believe career I embarked upon, they all required lots of paperwork, because I loved paper.  My fervent wish in those days was to spend my life playing with words on paper.

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for.

Fast forward several decades to 2009, and I find myself sitting a desk every day, my computer with a large flat screen monitor front and center, calculator at hand, and absolutely surrounded by paper.  Stacks upon stacks of paper.

Not only does my daily job require tons of repetitious and seemingly redundant paperwork, the events of the past three months have found me drowning in a good deal of personal paperwork as well - namely, all the paperflow involved in settling my aunt and uncle's estate.

How does one cope when one's dream comes true and then turns into a nightmare?

I'm looking for ways to crawl out from under this mountain of papers...any ideas?

One More Goodbye

At least no one has died this time. This goodbye is a somewhat happier occasion, as tomorrow marks the retirement of our senior pastor, a man who led our flock of Presbyterians for the last 20 years, taking the church at a time when it was near death's door and breathing new life into it, growing it to over three times its size in people and program.

We're happy for him, because, as he said at his gala retirement banquet on Thursday, he is definitely "going out on top."  He's healthy, relatively young, he's left a good, strong mark in the work he's done.  His congregation fervently hates to see him go.   It's really the perfect time to ride off into the sunset, in the style of the Western sagas he loves so much.

But still.

Another goodbye?  Really?

On my way into banquet hall Thursday night, we happened to meet up in the parking lot.  "Hey, sweetie!" he said, giving me a hug.  "It's good to see you! How're you holding up?"

"I'm hanging in there," I told him, hugging back.  "You know, I feel badly that I haven't been in church very much, that I've missed your last few sermons."

"Hey," he said, with his trademark crooked grin.  "I know you've had your fill of goodbyes lately."

And that's just one of the reasons we all love this man.  He gets people.  Understands the human condition, in all it's glory and gloom.  Knows that, though he'd prefer to retire quietly with no fuss and fanfare, the congregation needs to fete and honor him six ways from Sunday.  So he graciously sits through long pot luck dinners and fancy banquets, he smiles at the jokes and tears up appropriately (and genuinely) at the tributes.  He's a good sport when the choir plops a cowboy hat on his head and sings "Happy Trails to You."   Because he understands that it's part of the process we need to go through in order to let him go.

One of the speakers at the banquet referred to him as a man "perfectly suited to the ministry."  It's a wonder, isn't it, when people can do what they are "perfectly suited" to doing?  And it doesn't happen often in this life.  I thought about that a lot on Friday, as I sat at my computer at work, typing faxes and organizing files, trying to read the chicken scratch of a doctor's handwriting on this latest medical record review.   It's not work to which I'm perfectly suited by any means...although I do it well enough, when I look at it in light of the accomplishments of a man like our minister, it pales to nothingness in comparison.

Of course, nowadays one has to be grateful for having gainful employment at all, no matter how "suited" you are to the occupation.  And I'm lucky ~ I pretty much know what I'm perfectly suited to doing, and I still get to do on occasion.

But it would be a fine thing indeed to have spent one's entire career in pursuit of something that fed the soul as well as the stomach, that put fire in the spirit as well as in the furnace.  I can say with certainty that Reverend Rick Peters has done that during his 45 years in the ministry.  And I wish him Godspeed in the years ahead.

Although I really hate saying Goodbye.

Fallish

I'm disappointed in Michigan this fall.  We've had nothing but dismal, bone chilling days for the entire month of October,going directly from Capri pants and t-shirts to winter jackets and gloves, with nary a stop in-between for fuzzy sweaters.  There's a leaden, gunmetal grey pall over the entire state, and not even the vibrant colors on our maples, elms, and oaks can dissipate it. In some ways, it's fitting...I was almost dreading the splendor that adorns this state in the waning days of its season.  Autumn has a glorious bittersweetness to it, one I usually revel in, but one that can sometimes be almost too emotional to bear.  This fall, with all the losses still so fresh in my heart, I was almost afraid of all that fierce beauty, flaunting itself at death.

These trees are in my neighbor's yard, and greet me when I open the drapes first thing in the morning.  The photo is from last fall, for we've not seen any patches of sky that blue so far this month.

Ah well, there's still November.