About time

A blog gone dormant..four months now  since I last wrote,  gave up  my commitment to daily entries.  Now I'm not sure how to dive back in and say this- but YES-it happened.  There finally was a job offer. It came after he decided that he had to look younger.  So he  dyed his hair.   Don't laugh.  This time they actually gave him a chance and let him through the door. The offer came after he decided to stop looking his age. After he booked a vacation.   

I'm  afraid to  mention any of this.   Because at any time, at the will of this corporation, this "work" could cease again.  They'll see the gray hair.  He'll miss a beat.  He won't know what hit him.   There are  so many highly  qualified job seekers out there in this  increasingly frenzied   job shredding  economy. No one even responding to their incredibly impressive resumes.   

Always those questions: why me? why not me?   Being in the right  place, or the wrong place? 

 It's not what we had expected all.  When he went for the interview, he didn't realize that he was applying for a job in a city that was at the other end of the state. 

Now he's back in the work force like the other lucky survivors of the latest round of cuts, working longer, harder, later. For what?

I'm here and he's there.  They expected "relocation" and he had to commit to that- although they won't promise him that for this they won't abandon him. 

Still how can we not feel grateful. He's working again, even if its such a high price to pay, it's just time and space.  

Motherlessness

Motherlessness, like joblessness, this state

I have entered, with my children

far away from home,

and my mother gone from this world:

a day of reminders in the farmer’s market,

abundant with babies and mothers,

toddlers and grandmothers, among the strawberries,

a day that proclaims itself dedicated

to the appreciation of mothers

makes me feel use-less.

 

My self-esteem is on the line,

now I am laid off too, dispensable,

the job eliminated  after all these years,

there was never a paycheck but 

the loss of  my worth measured by

a day of  no cards and flowers.

 

Like all the others, who by no fault of their own

when they loose their jobs

are still shamed by the myths of success

they were told we achieve for ourselves

I too am   framed by the stories I was raised on

alive in this  country even as  childbirth

is now an  uninsurable condition.

But still how lucky  I am to have two daughters

born in another time,

 and a mother, who did not live to see this

world in such shambles.

 

And perhaps it will all be worth something much more

than this day of feeling forgotten,  someday

this future that my daughters are preparing for us

as they work so hard to learn the language of repair.

Post Cards

#1

You may have noticed that I have not written for some time now.

So much for my promise for daily blog entries until J got a job.

As the months go on with no job offers I grow increasingly weary.

I don't even  have the energy to search out the support group I need to manage my anxiety, aimed at  spouses of the unemployed.  Yet, there are still beautiful days and the virtual gift cards we decided he would give me, in lieu of a birthday present. 

#2

There is the communication support group we have joined. It helps to be listened to for five minutes, no advise, criticism, question. This is supplemented with post it notes giving appreciations like:  I am so grateful that you are shopping, doing the laundry and cooking dinner a few nights a week.

#3

There is also music.  How fortunate we are that he can still sing and sing and sing.

#4

And then there is the interview with Obama in last week's New York Times Magazine.  This is my response:   You talk  about the value of a college education, as a preventive measure against possible unemployment. As a means towards a solid middle class life. WEll, then, there is clearly something not being said  if my highly experienced, educated, intelligent engineer trained husband cannot get work . And he is in a support group of at least 20 others just like him. It's been 6 months now for all of them.  What is the next step?

#5

Maybe it's in the next article in the Magazine.  It's about the social support system in the Netherlands. I need to live in a place like this, where unemployment insurance never runs out, where $5000 is returned to your bank account, out of the taxes that you paid, to assure that you can take a vacation. For 1 whole month a year.  And even if you are unemployed, as you may need this more than ever.  

Yes, and….

 After all the bad news stories of a recession happening in the world of  teeth cracked from the grinding stress, defaulted condos where the occupants are left stranded, hard-working star employees who have to end their Circuit City jobs as their customers are consumed with the best deals. 

http://www.ThisAmericanLife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=377

There are still more stories on NPR of those bloated bankers, labor union busters, drunk with way too much wealth CEO’s.

All the time while we are wondering where their money came from. How they grew so big, as we are scrambling to keep or get a job.

 There is no shortage of stories of crisis, in our instant gratification society,as Obama names it, where we are  “lurching from shock to trance.” 

 But listening, really listening, is something else.

It is not the shutting down brain washed drugged out re-making of us into emptiness, not the trance where we stop talking about politics and economics as if they have nothing to do with our enlightenment .

 Listening takes a big belly breath,  our opening like a flower in the midst of all this mess and actively hearing what you are saying without asking any questions or offering advice, or making any comments about your possibly never getting where you thought you might someday.

Listening takes just being with you right now and seeing what you see and where it is we are in the wide awake world.

 Yes, and finding there is still happiness,  grateful to be alive-ness.

There is still time to invent, dream, think, and find peace between us.

 

 

the questions we ask

Why do we tell this story?  Really, why do we tell any story? Why is it important to remember? Could there be some connection between what is happening here, right now and what is happening in other places in the world and other times in history?Why are we asking and why are we afraid to  ask?

 I am looking at the time line of my life, thinking of the journey I have taken,  the journey my parents took,  and my grandparents took. I am looking all the way back and all around me, at all the journeys that make up the America where I live.

If it is true that there is a Pharaoh not only  in every age, and in every state, but in every self,  if it is true that  there are slaves now and oppressors as there were then,  if it is true our  freedom is a goal  but without vision we do not even remember, then we need to hear the stories.

 In front of me, on the table, are  a question mark and a string.  I have my own string and a string that links everyone at the table together.  In this Seder  everything has meaning,

 Naomi Klein in  The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism writes:

If economic crisis hits and it is severe enough- a currency meltdown, a marked crash, a major  recession- it blows everything else out of the water and leaders are liberated to do whatever is necessary(or said to be necessary) in the name of responding to a national emergency.  Crises are, in a way, democracy-free zones-gaps in politics as usual when the need for consent and consensus do not seem to apply.

 In my life’s time line there are stories that include shock and  fear. There are times of silence and forgetting. Times of complacency.  Even now, as I write these  words and ask these questions,  I am afraid. Because the unthinkable happens. The meltdown Naomi Klein writes about may be happening right here in America.  And we don’t even know that we need to  get going.

 At this table we are talking about the journey we must take to freedom. It  is not a journey we can take alone, yet  it is a journey we must take alone as a journey of conscience. Where  our past meets our present so we can move into our  future. Where memory  and imagination are  the sources of our redemption.

 The journey to   freedom is not the journey that leaves behind a trail of trash. It is  not the freedom to do whatever we want to the earth and  to each other. Not the freedom of greed and an the unbridled market  We are talking about the   freedom to live without fear of  thinking, feeling,  caring, questioning. The freedom  to take responsibility, to build bridges, to work for  a better world, a green world, a healed world. To live in peace and prosperity where dreams  guide us.

At this table the parsley is dipped into salt water as our hope is dipped into our  tears. The pain we did not even know was there, the pain of those around us,  breaks open. As the world is broken, as the matzah is broken, our hearts are broken and hunger fills us.  Meaning fills us. And the changed world begins. A world where we do  not inflict this  pain of what happened to us onto others. Where we know that we  are all connected to the same thread.

 My lifeline is filled with stories about religion and the politics,  poverty and wealth, hatred and love, fear of being found out and the courage to use my voice.  It is filled with rituals that guide me to strength and hope.

Here is another story I want to share:

I have just come back from a visit to the Sonoran desert of Tucson,  a visit with my best friend from high school, daughter of industrials who never knew the Great Depression. We remember each other’s past, our years of communal living, the struggles, the trip we first took together across the country. The help we found along the way.

Together we stand in the center of a labyrinth she is making in the sand, where nature is everywhere a force to be treated with reverence. Where water, earth, air, sun  remind us of the  challenge of the journey and its blessings.

 On the other side of the mountains, in the shadows, there are many still trying to get here to this land that has meant their chance for a better life. They are hiding along with the drug smugglers and the weapon dealers. While  we stand here, for a moment in sacred time, in the center of the labyrinth, with  our memories, our imagination, and the path that brought us together in this 54^th spring of our lives, in the first pure light of the sun’s beginning, with the awakening song of the birds, with the  vision of the eagles, with  the renewal of the serpents.

 For this  moment  in time we have a chance to integrate our past with our present and our future, to imagine  a world of  peace for all  the inhabitants of  this earth we share. To seek the   strength and healing we need to make this happen. To bless  force of the universe that created all of this, that we could  be witness to it. And to bless our journey of aging wisdom and our question as creators in this creation:

 What is our responsibility now?

 

 

Job Announcements and the Lies People Tell

Please forgive me.  

I stopped writing after the fourth job interview  that went nowhere. I can’t figure out the story I want to tell anymore.

The newspapers are dying.  The corner stores are dying.

And then the  weekend before last, as I was finishing my CORE III earthquake emergency preparedness training, putting out real fires,four police officers were shot dead, and  their killer too.

After this two adults came into a classroom at my high school brandishing guns, and robbed  the students. Somewhere else the same week  a fifteen-year-old girl, a high school drop out, was murdered, and a young child witnessed her mother with a bullet in her head, in the car seat beside her.

All week I am dealing with crisis.

That my husband has no job, hardly matters.

Can’t figure out how this happened, that the world I thought I was growing up into became something so different. 

People who are desperate, traumatized, who have no options, who failed to get an education, commit terrible crimes.

But there are others,  people who had the best education, and every option.  Some of them  are people who  lie and cheat and steal, lured the top college graduates away from medicine and engineering, into their number games and pyramid schemes,then let people tumble away as waste, after they gambled away their middle class future.

We were the ones who had believed in the stories they told us. The ones who believed in our  college education. Believed in owning a house. Saving in a 401K.  Making a commitment to  work hard. We believed it would lead to a better life. We would not end up the desperate ones who committed terrible crimes. Not the ones who ended up homeless, hungry, deprived.

 I am not sure anymore what story to tell.

People are disappearing, being forgotten.

There are not enough reporters to investigate what is going on.

It’s hard to keep up with the story because it’s  changing too quickly. 

Like how suddenly the  ski slopes that used to have  the long lift lines  are surprising empty.

 They tell us we must be vigilant about our safety. Watch all the doors. And then they cancel our health insurance. Even scarier than losing a job is this: being middle age and grey.

Did you know that you are uninsurable if you have pre-existing conditions, like high blood pressure, or diabetes?

Why aren’t the job offers following the interviews my husband gets?They love his resume, they love him on the phone, what happens next when they meet him in person?

 I always thought  that how you looked only mattered if you wanted to be a movie star but all of a sudden it’s the most important thing. I’m looking at people and trying to figure out: Are they the lucky ones still in the work force, or the ones cast off? I am exploring their wrinkles, appraising the pain in their face.

Quick: I think, cover it up. Die you hair. Dumb yourself down. Make yourself be someone who graduated with a BS or MS in Computer Science June 2008 - June 2009, an extraordinary coder with engineering talent.

 Yes. That’s true. That’s what the latest job announcement actually says.

I answer:

If they don’t want you and your experience, why be an engineer? Go teach the young people I work with to play guitar. They are dying to have you. They will think it’s cool you play so well, that you're still like them at heart.

There is work, even if it pays nothing, that’s more important. You can save a life. Really.

UNEMPLOYMENT in the SPRING

This year the return of Spring

 hurts: it’s too full of  light, too scented

 with jasmine and daphne,

too loud with  ecstatic birds in the morning

mothers and babies, starting over .

 

Spring this year is too warm

and close to the impossibly blue

melting icecaps.

 

It’s marking time, mocking

what we’ve lost, four months now since

November,  and we’re only  older

and closer to another birthday.

 

We should be off

on adventures,  laying on beaches,

taking advantage  of our empty nest’s  freedom.

We should be celebrating,

 close to retirement.

 

How strange and disconcerting

this stopping in our life

 before we’re ready

this stopping of work, when after all,  losing a job is  not as bad

as a life, a marriage,  or the planet.

 

Still,  it’s what I fear most.

 

Haunted by this image

 not just losing  a job,  but not being able to find another,

and never working again.

 

Or  another image: having to keep working

on and on, when I am too old and tired.

 

Either way, as the latest issue of  The Economist puts it

in America which has “one of the lowest social safety nets

in the rich world, " this spring of 2009

leads me back to that job crisis

and its black hole.