gratitude - the next day

Today I am mostly thinking about how grateful I am to not have to leave the house, for anything.  Sure, I could go and pay a bill or shop for fresh food.  Not going to, though; just staying here and packing and tossing and eating from the pantry, and playing mah jong on Facebook.

So, between games I was closing my FB thing and say a quote from one of the spiritual, quasi-spiritual, feel good, empowerment places I like.  Mostly platitudes (which I like very much anyway), but sometimes there is something so powerful and relevant to whatever is going on in my life that it makes me pause.

Truth be told, if you are paying attention to your life, practically anything you come across can fit into the stuff that fills our lives, especially if is something with which we are struggling.

So, anyway, this one struck me in relation to my community meal experience yesterday.

Do not let the behavior of others, destroy your inner peace.
Dalai Lama

I am hoping that is what I rose to then.  Yesterday.  I really tried to put myself into the shoes of those I encountered, especially the woman who spoke rudely to me, maybe only dismissively because she believed me to be a poor person, and whatever she assumed that to mean.  I was at least partially successful because it did not upset me, only sent me along to think about my life and my work.  Then, when I saw it happening to other poor people at our table and around us. 

Really pretty cool, coming across that quote.  I have a friend who has always believed that my life would be much better if I read the Dalai's writings; same thing for Thich Nhat Hanh.  I never got around to any of their books because I was not all that interested.  Truth is that I have come to think that I have been too absorbed in navigating my own life to read much of what other people have written about the higher elements of life. 

Regular self-help books, man, I have read so many of them, constantly searching for something that would help me to have a less stressful and dangerous life.  Perspective makes this so easy to see, although not so clear to make up for all those decades of looking in the wrong places.  Given the breadth of subject matter in those books, I never, not even once, even close came to choosing a book about domestic violence.  Interesting.

But, back to the Dalai Lama.  I know who he is, fairly familiar with the political aspects of his life and work, not so much anything else.  So, it was nice to find this quote today.  It helps me.

gratitude

Well, of course, one would be thinking on the theme of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day, even if it is only that you did not have to get together with some of your relatives.  You know the ones.

Our house, pre-leaving that other life, was where everyone gathered for all holidays.  All.

For the past oh-so-many-seasons, my daughter's home has been that gathering place.  I like it for tons of reasons, not least because I can arrive and leave as I wish.  Last year my intention was to volunteer for our city's free Thanksgiving meal.  That fell through when they did not need me and I stayed home and it was wonderful.  No driving.  No guests.  Nothing except staying home and lounging around.  I was especially busy that time last year and it was nice.

This year I decided on the community meal again, but only as an eater.  No volunteering all day.  When I got there I saw for myself that they have more than enough volunteer help.

It was interesting because I am usually on the side of the field of the helpers and to be, for all intents, a recipient was very interesting.  The meal was excellent, much better than most folk had for their own family and friends.

Volunteers at any place can be, perhaps often, the most interesting aspect.  Some are nice, but way too many of them can be at the best, condescending, and at the worst petty and mean.  I have seen this happen many times during the decades I have been volunteering.

I was kind of shocked to have it happen to me as soon as I entered the building.  I watched and saw how the admission lines were set up and how they worked.  I came to the end of one of the two lines and waited.  When I was the second next in line, the woman working at that table, looked up at me.  I smiled at her and she said something rude to me.  I continued to smile and when it was my turn to sign in, I asked her what she had said to me.  She got a little nervous and said that she had not said anything.  As I was writing my name, I replied that I was just checking, because I had heard what she said and apologized for having done something wrong whilst waiting in line.  She was flustered, and maybe thought she was dealing with one of the more crazy and possibly dangerous homeless people.

I am feeling very judgmental about this, and I would very much like to get over myself at this slight.  I am comfortable working with all kinds of people and it would be in my own best interest to pull up my big girl panties and get over myself.  Sigh.

Being treated unkindly is not the end of the world.  For anyone.  And, I am as certain as I am of anything that she came there to do something nice, to do good.  I have not the slightest doubt of that.  The problem is that she also came with ideas, notions and beliefs about the people who would be coming to the meal, and she felt inclined to chide me and keep me in my place.  I could be wrong, but I very well might not be.  I would like to be wrong.  This could be just an aspect of her regular behaviors and talks like that to everyone.

Perhaps she has only that one, single story about the kind of people who might find themselves in need of a meal on a holiday, or any other day where food insecurity might rear its ugly and ferocious head.  You know what a single story or belief is.  Everyone has them, even me.  I used to believe that all people who used, and mostly abused substances, illegal or otherwise, were similar.  As the oldest of eleven siblings, ten of us began with alcohol and marijuana and quickly moved on to other addictions.  And, each of them was stunningly similar in their addictive lives as they could be.  I thought that all people with addictive behaviors were like or close to my siblings, a narrow and not helpful belief.  I am smarter about that now.

Me?  I fall into my sad family in my own way.  My drug of choice is food.  Another story, but it illustrates how easily we find and cling to just the one story.  And, it happens in all kinds of ways.

And, despite knowing that there are always differences between individuals, 

we really do stick with that one story.  

Until we know better.  

Or, maybe not.  

Probably not.

We think we know about the Ebola victims in African countries.  Ebola victims and survivors came to contract that illness in ways unique to each of them, and their life and living conditions and lifestyles are just as unique.  Same thing goes for people and populations that live in countries and situations and circumstances different from our own.  Heck, look at what happened here when infected people landed on our own shores.

Whilst you might believe...or hope...that most people now understand how HIV/Aids transmits and that no one still believes that there is a good/not personally responsible way to get these viruses (i.e. via blood transfusion or by being an innocent crime victim) and a bad/personally responsible way to contract them (i.e. lifestyle), the truth is that many people continue to hold those notions.  Blaming people for their illnesses, just like we do with those who develop cancer. 

We think we know about poor people and how they got that way. Same process. 

Poor choices.
Addictive behaviors.
Bad money management.
Buying expensive things.
Not living within their means.
Too lazy to get a decent job.
Too lazy to get any job.
Entitled; want needs filled without doing their part.

Any of this sound familiar?  Anyone you know?  Anyone you are?  This kind of cultural, ethnic and economic prejudice is safely tucked away in every single one of us.

I know it exists because I have always been able to see it in myself.  I am a good person.  My best guess is that the majority of people who grasp their single story are good people, too.  And, when this stuff rears that energetic head, we need to pay attention and make the changes in the way that we view anyone who is different from ourselves, which, to be honest, is pretty much anyone else.

We cling to those who have similar lives and life practices to ours.  Most people hang with their economic and cultural peers.  We often choose to ignore or distrust people outside our group.  Sometimes we go to the extreme of demonizing them, denying advantages that we take for granted.  Sometimes we persecute them, a thing that has happened concerning the Affordable Care Act.

And, not to leave anyone out of the whole messy process, this not only trickles down to those less advantaged than ourselves, it trickles and steams upwards to those who benefit from more resources than we have.

An equal opportunity prejudice.

When that volunteer dismissed me as a lesser person, a less-deserving person than herself, she shared her one, single story with me.  I recognized it immediately and found a source of kindness and sympathy for her.  Had it been possible for me to have a gentle conversation about this, without embarrassing or shaming her, I might have looked for an opportunity to talk to someone about what happened, without identifying her, which is important because it happened several more times once I was inside and eating.

It happened to me one more time, but I noticed that kind of kindly condescension happening to other people at my table and two tables next to us.  It was clear that the other people I witnessed on being on the receiving end of that kind of exchange were more accustomed to being in that position than I was, am.  Seeing that stoicism took me by surprise. 

What that says about me is that I am more obtuse than I could have believed.  I have the training and certifications to prove that I am a caring, insightful and intuitive and supportive person, somewhat dedicated to be available to other people, and whilst I might have earned access to a few more hard won chapters than I had years ago, it is equally clear that I really do have a couple of those one, single stories.

I need to let them go.  I will never be everything I want to be , nor will I be able to do the deep work that my heart longs to perform, but after this morning, I am closer to learning more than single stories about a great many things.

To think that I had to be on the receiving end of that comment in order to learn all of this is, well, it is a bit shame inducing.  However, I will be using that shame and embarrassment to broaden my view and will improve my ability to see all of the stories.

Good and nice people, excellent intentions and great work, that is what I am taking away from today's meal.

It is important to admit that I have much greater resources than many of the people there today, both guests and volunteers and providers.  So, it slightly comforts me to share that I donated twenty dollars for my meal today. 

inertia

my happiest childhood memory

We lived in that little pink house.  Some kind of just starting neighborhood in a rural area.  I think the houses were built one at a time, or three or something, but instead of dividing the pasture with a road or two, all of the houses were built all around the perimeter, which left an enormous empty space in the middle.  And, because it was a pasture, it was not perfectly square or round; kind of like an amoeba shape.  I was much lower in the middle, much lower than any of the surrounding acres and I am guessing that because it flooded all the time, that that is the reason it defaulted to houses.  As more houses were built, regular roads were sketched in for the surrounding area and acres and in those areas there were actual blocks and intersections and like that.

In one area there was an empty space, where no house was built.  Maybe somebody owned it and the house plans just never were finished, or the owner died and the estate was not managed or maybe it was never sold to anyone, still belonging to the farmer who started selling off his land.

That empty space was to the immediate east of the little pink house.  We used to play in its untamed wildness.  It was so wild and natural that you could get lost, or at least become unobserved in that patch of weeds, grasses and wildflowers.

We played there, children's imagination fueled play.  I wonder sometimes what that playing must have been like and how much of an influence the madness in the little pink house had upon what we did out there. 

Did we play about all of the usual things or was our activity about how we would be in a different life, with different parents and with different madness?  Did we pretend that we had traveled miles and years away from there?  Was it ordinary play or a respite?

I have memories of laying deep in the greens and waving grasses, their plump seeds moving above me.  Watch clouds. 

That is my happiest childhood memory.  I am sure there must have been plenty more, but not quite so nice.

struggling with success

I am surely not alone in being disturbed by effortless success.  I think those of us who strive to be the best are unnerved when things fall into place too easily.  I am pretty sure of that.

So, anyway, in the span of six days I have a firm commitment for a gig with a very nice social service agency in the town of my future home. 

I have a possible volunteer opportunity working with children along the autism spectrum, and their families, although the agency's preference is a six-month employment commitment.  I never take on anything if I do not follow through and commit for at least a year.  I get their policies and process, but I do not think that I want a paid job right away.

Frankly, one of the vet clinics is looking for a part-time kennel staff member.  I would love to get back to working with animals in this way.  Feeding, walking, cleaning and surgery/treatment aftercare.  I miss that kind of hands-on, up to your elbows work. 

I looked at a few apartments and flats today.  I was running late and did the first one on my own, even though my daughter wanted to make a day of it for the two of us.  I called her afterwards and the four of us, me, she and the boys, viewed the other places where I had made appointments.

Oh, god, the first one was an eight-family building, four up, four down.  When we walked in, the smell of tobacco smoke was strong, and only got heartier the longer we were there.  At first we thought that the woman who showed us her apartment, as the sample, smoked and had sprayed some smelly cover up stuff, as we could smell that, too, but I think that the smoke smell was permeating her apartment from the smoking tenants on either side of her.  Maybe from the upstairs apartment, too, but we will never know because I would not get out of there quickly enough. 

You know, people can do whatever they like, smoke, drink, be stupid anyway they want.  But, I am pretty sure that my lungs are still tender from that brief experience.  I swear, it was like being in a restaurant before smoking was banned.  Ick.

The agent tried to make me take an application.  I did not.  I was polite and told her that the place was too far from the town center and she went on and on about how she finds her place convenient to everything, and although she is mostly correct, there is not any way that I could visit the place, much less live there.

The next couple of places were nice, but had deficits that I just do not have to accept anymore.  One was an upper flat, with a porch/balcony thing across the front.  That rental agent went on and on about the dangers of such a porch and told me that it was a jumping porch and was to be used only to escape a fire when it was not possible to flee via the door.  I had never heard of a full-scale porch being called that, just the wee and narrow ledges that you see outside a living room window or something.

So, I Googled it and cannot find anything of the sort.  Because this was a remodeled single family home, there was not room in the kitchen for a sink, so they installed it in a closet adjoining the kitchen area.  That actually was kind of cute, and I guess I could hide undone dishes that way.  Other than that, it was tiny, the two bedrooms were tinier and the agent kind of creeped me out.

The last flat was nearly perfect.  It is in an very old house.  The stairs to the basement are squeezed in a small area that requires you to turn backward and duck your heat to get to the bottom.  It does have an outside door, that kind that slants on the house and I could use that.  The basement is also small and the storage area is already full of the lower flat's people's stuff, but each unit has its own washer and dryer.  Nice, and especially nice in the winter to not have to drag everything to the laundromat.

The kitchen was huge, the bathroom was crammed under the eaves and kind of adorable.  There is a pretty small living room, but it has two decent sized bedrooms and a third room, only slightly smaller, that the agent called a den.

The kitchen has a full-sized refrigerator.  Nice, much nicer than the toy fridge here.  It has a gas stove and a new range hood.  New sinks, double and stainless steel.  Most of the cabinets are original to the house, with a nice attempt to match the newer cabinets to them.  There are nice windows, all brand-new, the energy efficient argon ones.

The only drawbacks are that each tenant pays all of the utilities, including water and sewer and garbage pick-up, in addition to the gas and electric.  But, the rent is a bit lower than I am paying here, and since I am so frugal that it should not be a problem.

I like it.  It is close to family and between the downtown and grocery/pharmacy/other stuff areas.  The landlord lives next door.  I am thinking that I will call him on Monday to let him know that I would like the flat.

So, two gigs and a nice choice of places to live, in just a week, less than a full week.  It is making me nervous.  It is like if all of this is so easy that there must be something I am missing or doing wrong, or maybe the Universe is just standing back, waiting to kick my ass.

                               

what a difference a couple of weeks makes

I drove north to see my daughter (who was too ill to have any fun, so I left her in peace) and to take that visit to the social service agency I like so much.

We met for an hour.  The director gave me a tour and introduced me to a lot of people for whom I will have absolutely no memory of their names.  I will be starting there whenever I move.  My plan is to have my deepest connection with their food program and whatever else is attached to that.  It will give me the time I need to find my fit and get to know how much I can be helpful, without being a pest.

As time goes on, I will be doing the same work I have now here in this town.  There exists the possibility that a grant proposal in progress will be used to start employment services up there.  That means a desk in a corner somewhere, a cheap computer, printer and paper.  If that grant needs to be used for something else, they do have Wi-Fi, will need to scrounge up a printer and supplies somewhere, but I will need to provide my own laptop. Not a huge deal, just one more expense of moving.

When I was there, I drove around, looking for for-rent signs.  I found a senior community that is above my budget limits, by two hundred bucks, but it includes heat, which costs me in excess of two hundred dollars during the worst of the winter months.  It is not an equal trade-off, but they have really decent laundry facilities on each floor, heated parking and I can have a cat again, for an extra cost, of course. 

I found an upper flat in a small house on the river and will take a look at that on Saturday.  I invited my daughter along, if she is feeling up to leaving the house.

An interesting aspect of leaving this place is how the process is changing my tolerances for some of the stuff at one of my jobs.  I doubt that I would have left this job on my own, but now it will be easy to leave the lack of structure and administrative support, things that I have been feeling will adversely affect the safety that we all expect and need there.  I am not the only person who worries about this, but I am the only one who is willing to address it.  The others feel the same concerns, and are more than happy and willing to let me be the team member who is working to fix it.

There was a small change a month or so ago, a document that all of the women need to sign if they wish to stay at our shelter, concerning personal responsibility.  Unfortunately, it is merely a slip of paper without any safety value. 

I keep providing art and learning activities for our children and find that their mothers are even more interested in what I plan.  One of them told me on Sunday that what we were doing was the most relaxing and comforting thing she has done in years.  I just love that.

In the couple of months left here, I will make available weekly empowerment stuff and the space and place for them to vent and sort out what they think they want and/or need. 

Then, I will be gone off to find a new place of my own in the world I am crafting in this now-new life.  This time around, two and a half years away from that other life, there is not fear and terror and hiding, only excitement for myself and my daughter and all of her great guys.  It is a lovely and most appreciated blessing to be loved as much as we all love each other.

I will miss my friends, the people that I have in my life now.  I will leave here knowing that I actually am capable of making friends. And, creating my own work.  Doing what I love, all the things that bring pleasure and meaning and fun, fun and more fun. 

I have stepped into my future this week, and it is only Tuesday.  It is a nice place.

tentative

That is how I am feeling lately.  Stepping back here feels risky, and not in the sense of that old life danger, it is more about needing to make choices that are more than risk related, they are perilous.

I have been ill for a long time.  I recover a bit, and crash in slow motion.  Repeat.  And, again.  There is the possibility that it is connected to stalling and avoiding decisions, at least I hope so.  Deteriorating health at my age is often a continuous process.  I want to be healthy.  I want to be alive and feel well enough to enjoy it.    

So, anyway, I have been thinking about where I want to be, both in the whole personal, internal-process way, as well as geographically.  After several months of being open to where to my life is supposed to be going, two Tuesdays ago I made the decision to move north to be closer to my daughter and her guys.  Three Saturdays ago I was there, just for the day and was sharing some of the funnier and more tender experiences from my work and she said, as she has many times, that I can do my work anywhere, which is true.

The following two weeks were an opportunity to just settle back and see what was happening in my life, day to day stuff.  After a shelter weekend with a couple of particularly challenging residents, and a long conversation with another advocate and one of the program administrators about what they had been experiencing that same weekend, it was interesting to learn that I was not the only person who was struggling with those residents.  The place is so busy and our population is exceeding capacity, leaving scant time to share like that.  Interesting, and more than a little amazing, to be honest.

The admin woman said something about revisiting those and other issues in six months, that things could be vastly different, with more support from upstairs and I was thinking that we had, with the addition of two other advocates, nearly the same conversation seven months ago.  I said that and shared that I could not imagine that anything would have a chance of changing anytime soon, much less in six months.

So, given all of that, it certainly was not a decider, but it was that one more bit of information that supported what I had been thinking of doing.  I sat down and wrote resignation letters to our director and my direct supervisor.  The next day I gave a verbal resignation notice at the other job, and took care of that the following Monday at the third.

I was so sure that I would be broken-hearted and weepy in the following days as I continued to share the information with my clients, but that did not happen.

You know, that feeling you get of settlement, foundation and rightness that you have when you have made the right decision at the right time and for the right reasons?  That is what it has been like for the past thirteen days.  When I called my daughter to make arrangements for the weekend, a pajama party with the boys and a couple of days for the two grownups to have time together, I told her that I had another thing to tell her.

She gave me a funny and cautious yessssss? and I told her that I had decided to move.  She asked if I was moving to her town and I could hear my son-in-law whoop hooray.  By the time I arrived four days later, he had driven around town looking for places for me to rent or buy.  He is such an optimist, thinking that I could buy more than a couple of weeks of groceries, but it is the icing on all of this, that they want me there so much.  I am not telling the littles until I find a place to live, or they will talk of little else.

I have four months notice to every gig, mostly because it might take that long for replacements to be found for two of the jobs.  Last evening, when I was taking care of my Wednesday friend, we were at the grocery store and I was hugged from behind by one of my library gig clients.  And, I realized that these months are going to be important to me, more so than my jobs people, because I will need this time to say goodbye to more people than I ever thought possible.

This past two and a half years have been just what they needed to be.  To heal and find my way back, to craft the now new life.  To make friends, something that was nearly impossible in that other life.  To learn and develop skills.  To take and achieve that certification last year.  To do so many things in order to, well, do so many things.

I am strong and confident enough to move forward.  Amazing and more than a little exciting.  There is one catch, one thing that could hold me here, but I am not ready to write about that.

So, I am pretty sure that I will be all over the place during the next few months.  Yep.