This Life

May I vent?

Just a bit.

I was up for a project filling in for someone going on maternity leave but I just learned they offered it to someone else. A four-month paycheck would have been nice but no dice. I didn't even bother to tell my family.

My friend just called to tell me about some other jobs I might apply for and I heard myself telling her, "Maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I'm going to have to hurt a little bit more to get really motivated." But my severance runs out next week. Hurt is waiting in the wings.

Could be, too, that I'm hiding out from the disappointment. I was really kind of crushed when I got the email today that they'd offered the position to someone else. If I'm being honest, I imagined that someone else to be younger, slimmer, white. I imagined he or she was deemed to "fit in" better than the editor who interviewed me thought I might. They say people hire who the ones they want to go out and have cocktails with. I'm sure this is true.

I have a payday coming for the job I just completed, but after that, who knows? I'm trying to trust that I will be okay. The story I have long told myself is that this particular life—in this particular body, in this particular place, adjacent to these particular people—is not about the pain of having no money. I've been able to indulge myself with this story because even during those periods when there was very little coming in, there was enough. Enough to meet my most basic needs, if not my simple wants. Enough to help provide for our family. Enough.

It seemed to me therefore that this life of mine was about other lessons. The clues always have to do with pain. What aspects of my life have caused me the greatest measure of distress? Those were the signposts—things like body comfort, the physical body, learning to treat myself with compassion, learning to risk mind-bending, heart-exploding love for others knowing you have no control over what might come and how that might undo you.

These are lessons I am learning still. But now, money is starting to cause its own measure of concern. And that worries me because I have been known to declare to my husband, "If I don't worry about money, I won't have to," a superstition that always makes him shake his head dubiously as if to say, "Do you."

I feel like the girl at the dance who didn't get chosen, who stands in the corner making up the reasons why.

Okay, I guess that's enough of feeling sorry for myself.

Thanks for letting me share.

*

Here's what else happened today.

My husband called from work this morning. My son and I were home, as my son doesn't go to his coaching job till 2 pm. My husband asked if our son could come and get him at work; he was feeling dizzy and unwell. My son and I jumped in the car and went to collect him. His coworker walked him out to the car, because he was feeling very lightheaded.

On the way back home, my son asked him lots of questions about what he had eaten and what activities he had done and then told his dad that even though he had sworn off sugar for Lent, he should drink a glass of mango juice when we got home.

When we got home, our son took out his stethoscope and blood pressure cuff to check his dad's numbers. He said, "Okay, Pops, sit here. You didn't educate me for nothing." He wondered if maybe his dad's recent healthier eating and newly regular gym schedule might be having a positive effect on his usually high blood pressure, so that his blood pressure medication might now be too much. He instructed him to go and see his doctor so see if his meds need adjusting.

My husband drank the glass of juice our son handed him and did begin to feel steadier. He ate a protein lunch and now he is dozing in the chair right next to where I am sitting. Before he drifted off, he said, "You know, I called my son and when I put down the phone I wanted to say to my coworker, 'EMT is on his way,' but I didn't." There was pride in his voice. You could tell he felt taken care of by his son.

When I think about it this way, on balance, this is a good day.