Dear 14 Year Old Me…

(Thanks Daily Prompt for the, er, prompt)

This is not a trick. Nor, as you’ve sometimes hoped, are you stuck in a Holodeck program aboard the starship Enterprise. A door is not about to appear out of thin air. Wesley Crusher is not about to walk through that door and rescue you. I know that’s disappointing, but I have much better news for you: you will get out of Wilmington.

It’s not going to happen in two years, like you’ll hope when you apply to go to college early at Simon’s Rock, but it will happen. You will graduate, and you will have many more adventures than you can even imagine right now.

I don’t want to give too much away, but you will not end up where you expect and your route will be circuitous. In fact, I think you’ll be rather surprised by it all. If I were to tell you that you will be living in Portland, Oregon, engaged to an amazing man, and still trying to figure out exactly what you want to do with your life 16 years from now, I know you won’t believe me. It gets even more strange when I tell you that you lived in Canada for five years, Portland, Maine, for two-and-a-half, and never wanted to go back to live in Boston or move to New York City or San Francisco like you always thought you might. Oh, sure, you’ll think about it, but there was something about the soggy Northwest that kept calling to you.

You’d be shocked that you’ve given up on the idea that a suit and tie is the only appropriate business attire, and that you feel much more comfortable in jeans, Keens, and a t-shirt. (Don’t worry, you still dress up to go to the theatre or the symphony, when you can afford it–things aren’t all that barbaric.) You’d also be surprised by the regular acupuncture and regimens of Chinese herbs you take trying to stop your liver from beating up on your heart, and getting your qi to flow more powerfully and efficiently through your body. Oh, and you’re also not so much of a city boy anymore. You look forward to camping trips and to getting off the grid. You think you probably don’t do it nearly enough.

I could go on and on and on about all of the things you’d be completely shocked by, but there’s also so much that is entirely recognizable. You’re still wearing glasses (and you still have the All About Me book that proves that you’ve wanted to wear glasses since you were five). You’re still a bit of a smart ass and a know-it-all. You still have a somewhat fastidious attention to detail and a craving to having things in a certain order and to do things a certain away. But you’ve also learned to appreciate a little bit of chaos and randomness in your life. If your fiancé has taught you anything, it’s that it’s important to let go sometimes and just enjoy the ride.

And, speaking of your fiancé, he looks like nothing you would expect and he’s not anything like you thought he would be. Well, that’s not entirely true: he’s caring and kind and sexy, but he also drives you crazy sometimes because he’s almost entirely your polar opposite. If not for you, he’d be eating Ramen and never have clean clothes. And that’s not just your future self being haughty–he’s said it himself. You take care of him and he takes care of you.

I guess all of this is to say that while it’s important to plan for the future, don’t be too surprised when those plans don’t exactly work out. Keep planning, stick to those goals, but don’t become so rigid as to not be able to bend with the wind.

I think the most important thing that we have in common–and that I sometimes wish I had held on to more of–is a bright-eyed sense of wonder about the world and about new experiences. Four years from now, someone will describe you as a kitten, playful and explorative, who gets confused when your claws get snagged on something and things don’t go as you had expected. This will not feel like a compliment at the time, and I’m still not sure if it was meant to be one or not. But please don’t give up that feline sense of curiosity. Don’t stop exploring. Don’t stop pushing yourself. And don’t retreat into that shell. Yep, you’re a Cancer through and through, but don’t use this as an excuse not to feel your feelings when you feel them. (You ought to recognize where that line comes from by now.)

Which leads me to family. Yes, you still go home and look around and wonder, “Who are these people? Where did I even come from?” You will still look at them all, sitting there, and, they will look familiar, and you’ll still sometimes wonder who they hell they are.

But (and it’s a big but), you will also look at them and recognize yourself in them. You’ll realize that the reason that they all look familiar is because you will start to see bits and pieces of yourself in their faces, and in their laughs, and in their movements. Sorry to break it to you, but you are not, as you sometimes thought and hoped, adopted. You were not switched at birth. You’ll realize five years from now, after you shave off your goatee for the first time, that you have your mother’s nose. As you get a little older, you’ll start to recognize your father’s eyes in your own. And you’ll notice that, once you get us going, all of us do that same weird wheezy sort of laugh. You know the one I mean. You will start to treasure these similarities and, believe it or not, you’ll actually start to mostly like your family. They really do mean well and they really do want the best for you–even Mom. It’s hard to see that now, I know. You’ll just have to take my word on it.

You’ve only just started high school and it’s impossible for me to make you see just how young and innocent you still are. You’ll feel like you’re ready to take on the world and that you don’t need to deal with the bullshit of living in a suburban purgatory. Except that you do. Because that’s what living in a purgatory is all about: this purgatory is going to make you into me, at least in part. It’s going to set you on a path that you least expect right now. And it’s going to suck a lot. You’ll quickly come to realize that anyone who says that high school was the best years of their lives peaked too early in life. There’s so much more to do and to look forward to once you get out. And you will get out, it does get better, and you’re not alone on this journey. You just haven’t met your fellow travelers yet.

Hang in there, young explorer, and know that it all adds up to something.

Rainy Day in Astoria

We drove out to the coast today, just needing to get out of town for a day. I spent most of the drive out reading Bleak House in the back seat. It’s the second time I’ve read it and though I’m only about 50 pages in, I’m already somewhat annoyed with one of the main characters–and I can’t remember if she gets more interesting!

It’s a cool, rainy day. This isn’t much of a surprise, since it’s February in the Pacific Northwest. The Man has lots of reading to get done for his class this weekend, so we’ve actually spent most of the day at a coffee shop here. Funny, we’d probably have done pretty much the same thing if we’d stayed in Portland. Yet the change of scenery makes it seem more interesting and less stressful in a way. It’s almost like we’re on vacation and there’s no itch to get home and do chores, or go grocery shopping, or make plans for later with friends.

As soon as we got out of the car, we could smell the ocean. It’s a smell I miss from my time living in the Other Portland. And Astoria definitely has a similar feel to that other small coastal city several thousand miles away on a different ocean. We’ve talked about moving to a small town for a few years after he graduates so that he can get a portion of his loans forgiven by working in a underserved community. Part of me thinks I could live in a place like Astoria for a few years, but I’m not sure if that’s realistic. Astoria is even smaller than Portland, Maine. It’s one thing to spend a day or two here feeling like I’m on vacation. It would be quite another to be here year round. Maybe if I were ever to become a full-time writer or had a job that I could telecommute for, but I think that I would find living in a small town like this quite challenging. I very much value the chance to be anonymous in a city, the ability to go somewhere and not run into everyone you know in the space of 10 minutes.

So, maybe living in Astoria–or any other small town–isn’t really in the cards. Maybe we’ll need to find an underserved community that’s close to a big city. Or maybe we’ll need to spend a few years not living together. Or maybe I’ll need to be flexible and look at it as an adventure.

The rain is relentless and comes in waves. Barely a drizzle one moment and pouring down hard the next. We probably won’t walk over to the house from The Goonie’s or the school from Kindergarten Cop on this visit. We’ve been there and done that before besides. I’m fortified with caffeine and starting to itch a bit to get back on the road soon. The Man recently found out that he needs glasses, especially when he drives at night, so I get to drive home. I’d rather drive while there’s still some day light left. But this coffee shop is warm and cozy and provides coloring books and colored pencils and mellow music.

But we’re not really on vacation. And we’re not really living here. Just visiting. And we need to go home and do the dishes at some point.

Architecture is important

I just read an article in the New York Times suggesting how to resurrect the grandness of the old Penn Station (A Proposal for Penn Station and Madison Square Garden). If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be in the current Penn Station, you know that any change could only be an improvement.

The first time I took a train into New York, I was probably 12 or 13. It was the week after Christmas, and the last Christmas that I can remember that my dad’s entire side of the family was all together–all the aunts and uncles and cousins. The aunts and uncles and cousins decided to take a day trip into New York, so we drove down to Connecticut, where some other relatives lived (a great-aunt and uncle, I think), and we took the Metro-North train into the city. I was disappointed that the approach to the terminal was made through tunnels and that there were no grand vistas of the New York skyline to be seen. My disappointment was paid back many times over, however, when we disembarked at Grand Central Terminal. The platform was nothing special, but walking up to the main concourse of the station was incredible. It was probably the first time that I’d ever been in such a large interior open space. And there were stars painted on the ceiling! Thinking back, it occurs to me that many of those stars were probably no longer visible at night in New York even when the station was constructed in the early 20th century. Now, I wonder how many people stop to enjoy the view that they never get anywhere else in the city.

My memories of the rest of that day in the city are a haze of department store holiday windows, snow, enormous buildings, laughing with family, and the want to spend more than just a day in New York. But coming and going via Grand Central is firmly fixed in my mind. It lived up to the mystique I had already associated with it and with the rest of the city from books and movies and television. What an amazing gift to be able to come and go daily through such a wonderful space as that!

Eight or ten years later, I took the train again into New York. I was in college now and was going to spend some time with a friend in Brooklyn before we took the train back together to Montréal. I knew that my Amtrak train would leave me at Penn Station and not Grand Central, but can you imagine my crushing disbelief at being confronted with the reality of Penn Station? I distinctly remember coming up from the platform into the claustrophobic crush of those bland, low ceilings and thinking, “Huh. There must be another level up before the main concourse.” Sadly, no. That was the main concourse. I was so very confused. Why would anyone ever want to be in this building? It was so bland and enclosed and so decidedly NOT Grand Central Terminal. I couldn’t understand how such a city as New York could ever have such a rail station as Penn. It seemed a cruel joke. As one architectural historian lamented, “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”

And so it’s nice to read that there are still people who realize the horror of the current Penn Station when compared to what came before, and who hope that we might end that reign of horror in the near future.

If anyone ever tells you that architecture doesn’t matter, please bring them to the concourse of Penn Station, which today looks like this:

And show them a picture of what this replaced:

And ask them which one they’d rather be standing in today.

Food Politics and Gender Politics

I just read a post on Marion Nestle’s blog, Food Politics, about Walmart’s new front-of-package “buy me” logo. Though the FDA hasn’t moved forward on putting together a system of front-of-package labeling to mark healthy and unhealthy food products, Walmart is going for it. The article suggests that the criteria for deciding which products receive a “Great for You” label are actually fairly stringent, which is a good thing.

But that’s not what caught my attention in this post. What caught my attention was the pull quote from the Walmart press release announcing this new labeling on their store-brand products:

Walmart moms are telling us they want to make healthier choices for their families, but need help deciphering all the claims and information already displayed on products…Our ‘Great For You’ icon provides customers with an easy way to quickly identify healthier food choices…this simple tool encourages families to have a healthier diet.

“Walmart moms.” Not, “our customers” or “Walmart families”, but specifically Walmart moms. It may be true that moms are the doing the majority of food shopping at Walmart, but phrasing like this precludes the possibility that anyone else in the family might have opinions or input into food choices. Do “Walmart dads” not care what their families eat? If this were a press release about a new power tool rating system, would we be hearing about what “Walmart moms” think? Probably not.

I get it. I understand traditional gender roles and how embedded they are in our culture. I just wish that they weren’t. I wish that dads were also seen as caring about their families’ health. And I wish that moms were seen as caring about power tool safety. And I wish that gender didn’t play into this at all. I wish that I were reading about “Walmart parents” caring about the health of their families.

On icons as body art

There’s a really great blog called I Live Here: PDX that has people email in their answers to a set of questions and then photographs them and publishes their answers. It’s a fun blog that really shows the diversity of Portland and always reminds me of the idiosyncrasies of this place I call home.

I was catching up on it just now and I was struck by one of the answers given. The question was “Name your favorite tattoo”, to which the answer was “Mao’s face, which will one day adorn my person.”

Portlanders love their tattoos. When I was working as a barista, my coworkers used to tease me about being the only barista in town that didn’t have any tattoos. I’ve thought about it, but I just can’t commit to adding something permanently to my body. Maybe some day–I’m certainly not opposed to tattoos, I’m just uncommitted for myself.

When I read this answer, I thought, Whoa. Really?! This man completely changed the face of his country in part through the imprisonment, brainwashing, torturing, and murdering of millions of his people and you want his face on your body? It seems rather insensitive. In a world where people think nothing of naming their cats “Chairman Meow” (I’ve known one myself) and where people get tattoos in languages they don’t understand on a regular basis (I once owned a shirt that said, in Japanese, “Dirty American devil”–but at least I knew what it said), I guess it’s just another way for people to show their ignorance.

Yes, Mao was a revolutionary. Yes, he believed that what he was doing was in the best interest of his country. Yes, he set in motion reforms and changes that brought millions a better standard of living. But he also did a lot of really bad things.

I’m not saying don’t get a tattoo of Mao if that’s what you really want to do, but please consider the weight of doing so before you do it. Don’t get the tattoo because you think he’s a pop culture revolutionary icon. Get the tattoo because you believe in what he accomplished and can honestly argue that his methods were just and reasonable. There are enough people out there doing things to damage our collective culture and intelligence (e.g. Kim Kardashian and her strong defense of opposite-sex-only marriage); please don’t contribute by getting a tattoo of a dictator who tortured and murdered millions just because you think it’ll look cool.

Import

You may have noticed that my archives have grown exponentially. I just imported my old Blogger blog.

That is all.

Sick, Tired, Laid Off

Ooops. So I guess I’m not doing very well with this whole post-a-week thing. Um. I’ve been busy? And sick? And getting laid off?

Yeah. Those are good excuses. Except, I haven’t actually been all that busy. But, I have been sick, and I did get laid off–though not in that order.

I went back to work the last Wednesday of September and was offered the new position that had been created to replace mine. It was a full-time position, as opposed to an 80% full time position. It would have been somewhat of a raise, though not a large raise. And it would have included lots more responsibility added to a job that already felt fairly busy.

My boss made a point of making sure that I understood that I was technically not qualified for this new position based on my experience, but that since I was already in the old position that she still wanted to offer it to me. And that she knew that I could do the new job, but she also wanted to make very clear that it would require me to do a lot of work in areas that she had already identified me to be deficient in.

I said I’d think about it and get back to her, even though I already knew that my answer was no, even though I wanted to say to her, “Are you crazy? Do you honestly think that I would take this position after everything that’s happened in the past two months? Do you honestly think that I feel that I can trust you as a supervisor and feel that I can count on your support in this new position? Because, I’m not that stupid.”

It felt like such a set up! Here, take this new position, but you’re not technically qualified for it, and you’re going to need to do a lot of work in areas that I feel that you’re deficient in order for you to succeed in this new position. Oh, and I’ve already given you a disciplinary notice regarding those areas, so you’re basically already on probation, so if you don’t improve in those areas, I can fire you for not improving.

What was probably even more insulting, was that when I told my boss that I didn’t want the new position, she acted surprised. No, not even surprised–shocked. She was without words–a rarity.

The agency’s fiscal year ended on the last day of September, so I ended up having only two more days of work after I declined the offer of the new position. I offered to stay longer, to tie up loose ends and to write a manual for my job. That offer of helpfulness was declined and all I can say is good luck and godspeed to whomever takes the job. It won’t be impossible for them, but I was the first person to use a software package that the agency had purchased for the position. Unfortunately, the software’s online help and live tech support isn’t all that great and it has a fairly steep learning curve in order to understand all of its nuances and quirks. I was still learning after having been using it for a year and a half.

But, that’s not my problem anymore.

I’ve been enjoying unemployment as much as possible. Trying to get a lot of reading, writing, and knitting done. I’ve been succeeding at knitting at least–I’m about half way done with a cowl for a friend’s birthday gift. I’ve also been succeeding at watching a lot of Deep Space Nine streaming on Netflix (you’ll notice that this isn’t one of my stated goals).

I’ve been pretty actively looking for work, too. While I’d been on leave from work before getting laid off, I’d had one interview but wasn’t offered the position. I have a phone interview tomorrow for a position that I’m cautiously curious about–it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of money. I also have a couple of other leads on some potentially good positions. And, I’ve been thinking about grad school. I haven’t fully decided yet if I’m ready to go back to school, but I’m going to a grad school info fair tomorrow and an info session for the specific program that I’m interested in next week.

I’m looking into going back for a Masters in Public Health maybe, with a focus in Community with a concentration in Health Promotion. Basically, I think my ideal job would be to be a home ec teacher, but there seem to be woefully few of those types of jobs out there these days. I figure an MPH with a concentration in Health Promotion might be a good step. I’d still have to figure out exactly what I’d want to focus on–probably community nutrition, food security/food access, that kind of thing. I’m hoping that the info session next week will help to clarify what my options are.

So, that’s all from this end. Now that I’m over the nasty week plus long cold that I had, I think I’ll be able to get into a better groove about writing more often. Feel free to leave comments to prod me on that.

School Lunch

Sassymonkey posted today over at BlogHer about school lunches and Amy Kalafa’s new book, Lunch Wars. Besides the fact that it made me smile to read that Sassymonkey (whom I’ve known, well, for a bit) went to an elementary school that she described as “crunchy”, it was interesting to read someone else’s memories of school lunch.

 

Image by PinkMoose via Flickr

 

I remember generally enjoying school lunch. Indeed, I was usually slightly embarrassed if my mom would pack my lunch. She certainly meant well but she didn’t ever seem to differentiate between my older step brothers and me when it came to appetite. Whenever she would pack my lunch, I would unpack a plastic grocery bag full with two or three sandwiches, a bag of chips, pickles, a soda, four or five cookies, and a piece of fruit or two. I was 9. This particular bag is memorable because there was a bit of pickle juice in the ziploc bag (to keep the pickles fresh, I guess?) and the ziploc bag leaked. So there was a bit of pickle juice all over my entire lunch. I was in fifth grade and already not allowed to sit with the cool kids. The smell of pickles didn’t help my cause.

But, it was generally rare for my mother to pack my lunch. Most days, I ate the school lunch. And, generally, I enjoyed it. Indeed, I enjoyed it more than most other kids did. I recognize now that it was all mostly reheated, previously frozen, very processed food. But they were relatively balanced meals. There was always an identifiable vegetable and an identifiable fruit. The vegetable was more often than not some kind of niblet corn or diced vegetable medley and fruit was always swimming in syrup, but they were there. Thank you, USDA requirements.

Each morning in elementary school, the teacher would announce the day’s hot lunch and count how many students wanted it. If sloppy joe’s weren’t your thing, you had the option of taking the alternate lunch, which was your choice of a sandwich served with chips and carrot and celery sticks. You would have to fill out your own yellow slip selecting what kind of sandwich you wanted (PB&J, PB&Fluff, or tuna. I think ham and cheese might have been an option too). When you went through the line, there was a tray of sandwiches arranged alphabetically by name in individual waxed paper bags. In a way, choosing the alternate lunch felt more special because the lunch ladies had made that sandwich just for you.

I remember always being very interested by the shiny, stainless steel wonderland that was the school kitchen. When I was in middle school, I became a library aide (appropriately enough for the dorky bookworm), but I would have been the first to volunteer to help out making lunch if I’d had the option. I got picked on enough for volunteering in the library; I’m sure volunteering in the kitchen wouldn’t have been that much worse. Thinking back, I’m a little surprised that I never seriously pursued culinary school. (Ok. So my mother would never have let me pursue culinary school and put far too much pressure on me to get a “useful” degree. We compromised: I went to a top university but took a degree in history.)

By the time I got to high school, I was still enjoying the school lunches, though I was excited to have the option of a salad bar instead of sandwiches in case I didn’t like the hot lunch. I ate a lot of salads for lunch in high school. But they probably weren’t the healthiest salads. I was a teenage boy and had free reign over a salad bar that included bacon bits, cheddar cheese, and ranch dressing. Any modicum of healthfulness to my salads had to learn to swim in an ocean of ranch dressing.

There was also the Snack Shack. This was a separate counter in the cafeteria that only sold desserts. It was built during my time in high school. It’s the kind of thing that would make Jamie Oliver or Alice Waters shoot beet juice out of their ears. Giant, soft, sugary chocolate chip cookies. Honey buns that tasted like the plastic bags they were packaged in (not that this stopped me from consuming several a week). Nachos with neon yellow cheese. Sodas. Vitamin waters. I guess the assumption was that high schoolers had enough self-control to choose to eat healthfully.

Prior to the Snack Shack’s construction, you could only buy dessert after having gone through the lunch line once. You could go through again for a second dessert, but you had to face the guilting looks of the lunch ladies. Once the Snack Shack was built, there was no accountability. If you wanted your lunch to consist of nachos and a honey bun, there was nothing to stop you. I’m trying to remember if the Snack Shack sold fruit. I want to say yes, but it probably didn’t.

I’d grown up with enough food sense to know that I shouldn’t eat a lunch entirely from the Snack Shack. Besides, the hot lunch was always much more filling and satisfying. But I was the rare exception. Lots of kids chose to eat only from the Snack Shack and I suspect that they weren’t getting balanced meals at home either. I’d be curious to know where the funding for the Snack Shack came from and what kind of approval process it went through. Who thought it was a good idea to allow students to purchase a lunch consisting solely of desserts?

Today, more often than not, I bring leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day. It’s one of the benefits of cooking for four in a house of two. My partner is more picky than I am and doesn’t like to eat the same thing too often, so I often end up with two days of lunches from every dinner. That’s just fine by me. I do most of the cooking, so I know that I’m going to like whatever I’ve made.

It might be as much as a decade before I have school-aged kids. I wonder what school lunch will be like by then. A lot can happen in ten years. I hope that there’s still some semblance of nutrition in school lunches by then. If not, I hope my kids like leftovers.

Twin Peaks

I was vaguely aware of Twin Peaks when I was in university. A couple of my roommates were very into the series and very into David Lynch in general. I think they watched the series several times while we lived together, but they always seemed to do so in crazy marathon sessions that I always came upon in the middle or couldn’t stay up for. All I knew about it was that it was weird, just like my roommates, and that there was a woman named The Log Lady who carried around a log as if it were a baby.

The first David Lynch film I ever saw was actually Dune if you can believe that. I was maybe 14. I think even David Lynch would like to pretend that he never actually made that movie. To his credit, he did the best that he could do with a very complex storyline. Also to his credit, Kyle MacLachlan and Sting were both very sexy. Oh, and it was a lot of fun for me to realize Patrick Stewart had a life before Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But David Lynch as a director didn’t really click for me until later when I was in university and started learning more about film and about individual directors. David Lynch kept coming up in conversations about film. Eventually, after I had graduated and was living in Portland, Maine, I went on a bit of a David Lynch bender. I was going through a really bad break up, drinking a lot of red wine, and renting a lot of movies. I watched Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Lost Highway back-to-back over two or three days.

As a general word of advice: don’t do that. Especially if you’re drinking a lot and are emotionally unstable. I think the only time I ever had stranger dreams was due to a very high fever.

I can’t remember why I didn’t start watching Twin Peaks during that time. Either Videoport didn’t have it or I was too freaked out by the first trio of films to embark on an entire tv series of David Lynch. I suspect I was just too freaked out.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, I started to feel as if I was beginning to live in Twin Peaks based on everything that I’d always heard about the series. The rain and mist. The lack of sunshine. The strange denizens. The cosmic vibrations. It was only a matter of time before I’d finally get around to watching it.

We’re about half-way through the second season and I’m very sad that the show seems to have jumped the shark. I know that the network, in the face of declining ratings, forced the writers to solve the mystery of Laura Palmer’s death. But it almost seems like they just gave up after that episode. I wonder if they knew at that point that they were going to get cancelled and so they just gave up trying.

Watching the series, though, I’m shocked that this was ever on network tv in 1990! It’s so very David Lynch and so very not what I think of when I think of network tv in 1990. Murphy Brown, sure. The Golden Girls, of course. Cheers, most definitely. But a spiritual serial killer, giants, the Log Lady, and David Duchovny in drag? No, not so much.

But, there it was. And here it is still. Preserved forever on dvd. Whatever trouble Agent Cooper mangers to get himself into in these last episodes, I will certainly have enjoyed the ride.

I just hope they eventually explain why the owls are not what they seem.

Harvest

“Life is what happens when you’re making other plans” doesn’t really begin to cover it. I didn’t really have any other plans for this summer. I didn’t really have any plans at all.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been working as an event coordinator for a non-profit. It has been stressful and immensely challenging, but in a very good way. It was the first job that I felt was really pushing me to grow as a professional, and it was doing something that I had never really set out to do. As it turns out, my slightly obsessive-compulsive organizational habits, my sometimes ridiculous attention to detail, and my ability to “keep calm and carry on” in the face of relentless chaos are all strengths in the world of planning and running events.

By the start of this summer, I had one cycle of events under my belt and the agency was shaking it up by remaking the summer fundraiser. In a lot of ways, it was going to be a lot easier to plan and execute. It wasn’t going to be on a private property where we needed to bring in everything from generators and porta-potties to kitchen equipment and circus-sized tents. It was going to be at a country club with kitchens and waiters and on-site trash disposal! It was still going to be a lot of work. There was a lot of pressure for the event to be really, really, really awesome to impress our guests and our board and to get the bitter taste of the old event out of their mouths. (That’s a different story, which isn’t really relevant. Had I been blogging all along, I would have already told it.)

Rewind to just before Thanksgiving last year. My grandmother was in the hospital with what turned out to be lymphoma. The surgery was successful, but given her age, they opted not to pursue chemo or radiation. Instead, they made her as comfortable as possible with pain meds and sent her on her way.

By the time I was getting ready to fly East for a visit in June, she and my grandfather were living with my aunt and uncle because she was at the point of needing a lot of constant care and watching. Oh, and did I mention that she was also developing Alzheimer’s? I had seen her last September before the onset of the major cancer issues, though she was already getting to be fairly forgetful.

When I saw her in June, she was little more than skin and bones. Even her mind, it seemed, had mostly withered away. However, she recognized me as soon as she put her glasses on, and that’s something that I will always treasure. She complained of being tired because she’d been up most of the previous night writing the constitution. Not copying it out, but actually writing it. That’s not easy work when you’re pushing 90. We chatted a bit, had some pizza and she went to bed pretty early.

I had a long conversation over wine with my aunt about how she was coping with everything. While we chatted, I finished knitting a scarf that my grandmother had started for the family dog. The needles were probably two feet long and metal. Easier for my grandmother with her limited dexterity, but a challenge for me, used to much shorter bamboo needles that offer finer control and less slip-sliding around of the yarn. I finished it up, taught my aunt how to cast off, and showed her how to sew together the seem. It seemed fitting that I helped to finish my grandmother’s knitting project. She didn’t teach me to knit, but she taught me lots of other domestic things, including how to cook.

We had breakfast the next morning and I hugged Gram goodbye.

A few weeks later, she passed away.

It was a little before 10 pm when my aunt called me the day before Bastille Day–almost 1 am on the East Coast. I knew why she was calling. We chatted briefly before she hung up and started to call the rest of the family.

After hanging up, I felt quite numb. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. My partner held me tight and I told him about how wonderful my grandmother was and how much I would miss her. But we also talked about what a wonderful and long life she had lived.

It was several days before the funeral arrangements were made. Because she had chosen to be cremated, there wasn’t a big rush to get her into the ground. One of my uncles had been quite sick and it was decided to hold off on the funeral until he was well enough to travel.

This is where the other thread of our story comes in. The funeral was scheduled for the same Saturday as the event that I’d been planning. Needless to say, there was no way that I could be at both. To me the choice was clear: I would stay as late as I could before the event and then fly out to be at the funeral. I had hoped to maybe stay an additional day or two, but my boss asked me to be back in the office Monday morning to help with the post-event clean up and processing. I agreed and we began to plan for the event coordinator not to be at the event.

I did my best to prepare my boss and the rest of my team to run the event without me. I created guides, checklists, and timelines. I went over them exhaustively with my boss, edited and added and subtracted. Early on in this process, my boss said to me, “I have to be honest. I have no idea what you do at events. I know you do a lot of hard work–I just don’t know what it is.” In response, I said, “Well, I basically walk in circles.” Her face was a combination of surprise and concern so I clarified: “I walk circuits through the event, making sure set up is going well, making sure registration is running smoothly, making sure none of our vendors or volunteers have any questions. And dealing with issues as they come up.” For the most part, once an event begins, so much of it is out of your hands and as long as the prep work has been good and thorough, nothing major will go wrong. I always think back to my high school drama teacher who would always remind us that even if you’re performing Shakespeare and you forget a line, most people in the audience won’t know the difference.

We had three weeks before the event to make sure that everything was taken care of. It all seemed completely doable. During this time, I did my best–whether intentional or not–to delay my mourning process. I was somewhere between the shift from denial to anger and the clutch was sticky. I was working a lot of extra hours, evenings and weekends, trying to dump everything from my brain about running an event and put it on paper and train someone who had never done my job to do my job in addition to, you know, planning the event and making sure that everything was in place before I left.

By the end of the third week, I was toast. Completely burnt out. On my last day in the office, I had told my boss that I could stay until about 9 pm if absolutely necessary before I had to go to the airport, though I didn’t really think that I’d have to be there that long. I broke down crying in my boss’s office at one point that day. I felt like things were falling apart in my hands. I kept handing off responsibilities to finish things up to other people because I couldn’t keep them together.

At 8 pm, I told my boss that I was leaving. She asked if the work was done and I told her that I’d done everything that I could do and that I couldn’t do any more. “Stick a fork in me. I’m done. Toast,” I told her. I gave her a final checklist of supplies that would need to be taken to the venue for Saturday and two documents that she needed to proof-read and print. I told her that I would be available via phone for any last minute questions on Friday and that the funeral was Saturday so I wouldn’t be available. I wished her and the rest of the team good luck, told her to have fun, and that I would see her on Monday.

As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot, the tears that had been building for three weeks began to flow. I howled with pain. I probably shouldn’t have been driving but somehow I made it home, took a shower, cried some more, ate some food, and drove to the airport.

My partner had been away that week visiting his family back East and was flying in the same night I was flying out. He was supposed to land minutes before I took off, but when I got to the airport, it turned out that his flight was coming in early. We got to see each other briefly and he walked me to my gate just as boarding was finishing.

The weekend of the funeral was a blur. I saw lots of family that I hadn’t seen in ages. My uncle who’d been sick looked like shit. I found out that he’d also been diagnosed with lymphoma and given 12 months to live. We all agreed that was probably very optimistic. At one point, I told my aunt that I was having a very difficult time not thinking about work that I was worried that my job was on the line this weekend without me at the event. She thought that was silly, that even if there were some hiccups, it was clear that I’d done my best given the circumstances. Besides, it was the first year that we were doing this event–there were bound to be some hiccups.

My flight home was delayed several hours and I spent most of that time in the airport setting up my event software for post-event data entry–something that I hadn’t gotten around to prior to leaving. It was close to 2 am when I got home, mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted.

I was in the office the next morning at 9. It was clear that my boss was unhappy. She had glowing praise for the rest of the team and all of the additional hard work they had put in because of my absence. They absolutely deserved this praise. I work with some really awesome people who never shy away from doing what needs to be done, and it sounded like they’d put in a LOT of extra effort. From the sound of it, their effort had paid off and the event had gone off very well and that our guests and our board were thrilled with the way things turned out. We’d even already had people ask about when they could purchase tickets for next year.

When my boss and I met one-on-one to talk about the post-event processing and data entry, her approach was different. She told me that she couldn’t talk to me about the event because she was too upset about all of the things that had gone wrong and all of the details that I’d missed. I was very confused by the incongruity of this. I was still so exhausted that I just went along with it and didn’t ask too many questions. I went back to my desk, kept my head down, and started working through what needed to get done.

After a week of avoiding me, my boss set up a meeting so that we could debrief the event. I had gathered bits and pieces of what had gone wrong at the event but it still sounded as if everything had gone relatively smoothly. I’d missed some details to be sure, but it still sounded as if everything worked out okay. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be given a formal disciplinary notice and being told that my job was now on the line if I didn’t make immediately improvements. During this meeting, my boss told me that she’d wanted to fire me but that HR had talked her out of it.

I was completely taken aback. All of the issues that she cited in the disciplinary notice were completely valid issues. The majority of which, however, were issues that would have happened whether or not I had been there. And, had I been there, I would have taken care of them prior to my boss finding out about them. Because that’s my job. I do my best to plan out every detail. And then when things don’t quite comes together, I figure out how to make it work. If the venue hasn’t set out the right number of tables, I get more. If I realize that there’s not going to be enough lighting in a certain area after dark, I call and order more lighting. I make clear to the fireworks company that I’m their only contact on the day of the event and not to listen to anyone else so that they don’t threaten not to have the fireworks show because of misinformation.

But, of course, I wasn’t at the event to do my job. I was at my grandmother’s funeral. My grandmother who was always kind, gentle, and understanding. Who always gave wonderful hugs. Who taught me, and so many other kids, how to make a kite. Who made the best damn coffee cake in the world (when I make it, my friends call it crack cake). Who gave me my first cookbook as a high school graduation gift and told me, “If you can read, you can cook.” Who always let us have ice cream for dessert because even if you’re full, the ice cream melts and fills in all the cracks between the rest of the food. Who was always laughing, always curious, always still exploring. If I had it to do over again, I would still choose to fly to the East Coast to say goodbye to this wonderful woman.

During this meeting, my boss asked me if I still wanted this job and why. I told her I did but now I don’t remember why. Now, though I’m certain that I don’t want this job anymore. There’s the possibility that I’ll be able to take a layoff as they are restructuring my position to be full time (currently, it’s 80% full time), and in a lot of ways, it has felt like I’m being pressured into taking the layoff. That is if my boss doesn’t out right fire me.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen because it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve been to work. After being told that my job was on the line and feeling like everything I was doing was under a microscope and that my boss was looking for a reason to fire me, I started to experience severe anxiety and to have panic attacks. I’ve been seeing a therapist for about six months now and after meeting with him while all this was going on, he suggested that I request mental health leave for 30 days. It was a bit like getting blood from a stone, but I had the support of a medical professional and they couldn’t really deny it.

I went on a wonderful week-long trip with my partner, part of which was spent camping. After returning, I got acupuncture for the first time and was prescribed a Chinese herbal formula to help cleanse my system and re-ground my spirit. The trip and the acupuncture and the herbs are working. I’m feeling much better than I was before taking leave. I’ve made a point of focusing on me during this time (getting back to writing on a regular basis is part of that). Needless to say, I’ve also been looking for a new job. It’s a tough market out there, but I’ll find something.

Looking back with some perspective, it seems clear that my life is ready for some kind of major shift. I’m just at the end of my Saturn Return and it seems that Saturn has returned with a bang. Saturn’s orbit around the sun takes a little over 29 years. Astrologically, the moment when Saturn returns to the same point in its orbit as it was when you were born is said to mark a major life transition. In this case, it marks the full transition into adulthood and is often seen as a moment of decision and crisis. Crisis because it’s not uncommon for people to realize that the path that they have been traveling is not the one they are meant to follow.

The past few years have certainly been ones of transition for me. I’m still not really sure about my path forward, but I’m trying my best to listen to what the universe is trying to tell me. I’m looking ahead. I know that this, too, shall pass. It’s been a difficult summer for me, but fall is starting to creep in. It’s been cool and overcast the past couple of days after a couple of weeks of hot, sunny weather. This cool weather is one of the reasons that I love Portland and I can endure the heat knowing that cooler temperatures are always just around the corner.

Saturn also happens to be the god of the Harvest. As we enter this fall, I wonder what harvest is waiting for me from my first 29 years. Will there be fruit worth replanting or do I need to till the soil completely anew? I think it’s going to be a mixture of the two. I just need to work to separate the chaff from the wheat and the sweet fruit from the sour.