Chapter Sixteen

I love my mornings with Ken. Moving around in the kitchen. Occasionally bumping into each other, sleepy kisses, warm embraces. I slip some candy into his lunchbox for a surprise for later. Chit chat about kids, Katelyn’s graduation, needing to order a cake, find a nice gift. Discuss Lillian’s brilliance. What’s this stain on the island? Apple, orange, or berries? Remember on Apple Street when we built the pulley platform? Remember making a sled for the kids that time it actually snowed enough to sled?  These are the moments that I cherish. The quiet sharing of space. The memories shared, the history created. We have not had a life of grand adventure. Not even one of comfort. Our lives together have always had some element of challenge. Little money, ex-spouses, custody issues. Blending our children into one home. After such disastrous marriages, we were just so darned grateful to each other for such small things. And after twenty odd years he still thanks me for cooking dinner. I thank him for mowing the yard. Nothing is taken for granted.

As he goes around the S turn he flashes the brake lights several times. I’m not fooling him by using a different window.

Once he’s gone I start looking through pictures. All those kids crammed in that little house with one bathroom. How in the world did we manage that with three girls? The picture of our vehicles loaded up for our very first camping trip with all six kids. We looked like the Clampetts. All the kids lined up in front of the Wagoneer. They had so much fun that weekend. We were amazed we could pull it off. The summers we got to spend a whole week at Garner State Park. The kids look like they are in heaven floating that river.

My timeline is laying in front of my like a serpent. I’m unsure of its toxicity and am eyeing it with great caution. The happy part of it is easy and flows. Having people walk into my classroom and be so happy to GET to come to my class. One of my students made a bracelet for me and sent it along with a sweet note thanking me for my patience and how much more confident she was sitting in front of her computer after my class. She described how afraid she was when she found out she would have to learn how to use a computer, but how my confidence in her ability to learn had empowered her. That was 12 years ago and I still have her note. My then boss thanking me for making him look good. The challenge of the JDE implementation and how much fun it was to work that hard and learn that much in such a short amount of time. How incredibly funny it is to interpret what an end user is saying to a developer, and vice versa. But really, who cares that your program utilizes the cpu/database/memory so efficiently if the end user interface is hard to navigate and doesn’t have a logical (to an end user) flow.

My job has provided for some nice luxuries that we otherwise would never have had. Building this house being the biggest. We bought Ken’s truck as a mutual Christmas present with my first Christmas bonus as the down payment. He had always wanted one like it, and we were so excited that day. Back when we still had the company holiday party I would spend all day getting ready. Updo, makeup, pedicure, manicure, the whole bit. Tell you one thing, my co-workers know how to party down.

There are a lot of reasons I love the place I work. I’m a whole heart kind of person. I can’t seem to help myself. If I am going to be involved with something, I commit and give all I have. I once had a boss tell me that I care too much. That I needed to learn how to just let it be a job, a means to an end. But I can’t seem to make myself not care. I actually buy into all that crap they say about family, and service, and co-op values. And I work with some of the most dedicated salt of the earth people I’ve ever been blessed to know. If they were all assholes this wouldn’t be so difficult. And it hurts to not be valued anymore.

Enough. I need to create something. Time to take a break.

I have written and deleted the negative parts of my timeline for this post more than a few times this week. I don’t think putting these things out on the web will be of any help to me, but it did help to write them out and take a good hard look at the history.

Grief is the only word I have to describe how I feel today. So, to counter all that, things I am thankful for:

Ken
Six beautiful children that have grown into fabulous adults and their assorted spouses/significant others
Five grandchildren, with another expected any day now
My mother and father
Siblings, yes even my crazy brother
Watermelon
Berries
Bacon
Ice Cream

There are more things, but that’s what I am concentrating on today. Life’s simple pleasures. Whether or not we get to keep the house. Whether or not we even get to live in this little town anymore doesn’t matter. All those other things matter more.

My job was a means to an end. It was fabulous for a while, but it’s not anymore. It’s a paycheck. They do not care about me as a person. They do not care about me as an employee. That has been made perfectly clear. That part of my work life is over. Now, I need to get me stronger so I can start making decisions again.

I am blessed. My fortress is now my home.