Ted: "So, my strategy is to take everything out of the cupboard and put it on the table."
The kids got along a little better this year:
Email received Sat, 11/27: Thanks for the lovely pics, and delightful memories of a wonderful day, Lydia...we especially loved your detante(sp?) pics of Lulu and Whirly basking peacefully together in the morning sun. Great lighiting and composition. This was one of my favorite Thanksgiving feasts ever, thanks to you, Barbara and ted. Just a lovely day with good friends, food and grog. J
Barb: This was the most beautiful Thanksgiving ever, a picture just wouldn't do it for me.
I wore the Diana memorial necklace.
The first attorney I met was one I hired because a car had hit me and knocked me off my bicycle. I lay unconscious in the middle of a busy intersection. And if not for two off-duty cops that witnessed that accident and saw me lying in the middle of the street and got out to direct traffic I could have been killed. I was so dazed, the only thing I remember about the woman who hit me was that she didn’t speak English and she really looked and sounded sorry when she spoke in her language. I don’t remember how I ended up with this attorney, but he got all my medical bills paid for 2 years (something I thought was a miracle), plus $500. I don’t remember what I paid him, but even if his fee was 100% (which would represent maybe 10-15 hours of work at ’70s rates) I would have gladly paid it. And it also occurs to me as I write this to find the names of those cops and send them a thank-you note.
The next attorneys in my life were the ones in big law firms that had document centers. Attorneys in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles were the first (and perhaps only) segment of the population to value what word processors could do for them, and paid big bucks for a savvy one. I’ve worked in engineering, scientific and insurance firms, but attorneys paid three times what they would. Of course, they rode us hard and wet and there were some real spy thriller, roller coaster rides I’ll tell you about sometime. Truly, I owe you those stories, and while we’re on the subject, as much as I love writing with pen and paper, word processing has been a blessing for me not only because it gave me a livelihood, but I was suddenly able to get my thoughts on paper as fast as I think them! True progress for man, one giant step for ME! But I don’t want to digress.
To continue, when everybody and their grandparents had their own personal computers and document centers were being disbanded all over the country, I knew I was doomed. How did I know I was a fossil? Well, this happened shortly after the Kaypro went extinct. What’s a Kaypro? Exactly. I needed a new line of work. I became a real estate investor. That’s another story I’ll have to tell you about sometime. But for now I really am trying to make a point here.
Just around this time I ended up in the Lost Decade (another story that I may never tell you, other than I, uh, lost a decade. Let’s just say I had a decade-long autistic episode), and by the time I woke up well, what do you know? The world changed back and attorneys had figured out that they just couldn’t live without their word processors after all. Thank god, because there was nothing else I knew how to do, and after waking up to a new world in a new decade, I had time-warp anxiety and wasn't in any state to learn any more technology than I happened to have under my belt. Guess what? There are still judges in courts in this land that refuse to receive anything but WordPerfect documents. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone came up with an old Kaypro disk. Turns out that laws and courts are resistant to technological change, and they really want those old dinosaurs like me. And here at Firm Fairyland, I felt impossibly appreciated. Really underpaid, but so appreciated I just didn’t care that I got paid less and had less benefits than I would have had anywhere else. I had just crawled out of a cave, I was happy to get paid a salary from a decade ago. And now a decade has passed, and I’m thinking about when I first got hired a decade ago, in the days when I complained about things like low pay and wages. Now, of course, I know that wages and benefits have no significance on the life I create whatsoever. But, I digress.
The firm I had worked at prior to Firm Fairyland (before my 15 minutes of real estate mogul fame, keep up now) I compared to a concentration camp. But even in this horrible place a really nice attorney helped me write David’s and my wills (I mean for no charge), which we have used as a template ever since. And friend Geo keeps copies of them (well, only mine, now), since she’s a - you guessed it – attorney. She gave us really good free advice, too! Something I had never heard from any other attorney. But not to digress, here’s an example of a typical “concentration camp firm” incident. One day a dearly loved co-worker of many years was having some physical problem. I called an ambulance and his girlfriend, as he made light of it and continued to “work,” and my other, also dearly loved, co-worker planted herself in the corner of the office and refused to take her eyes off him in case he collapsed. In other words, all work in the document center had stopped. Our supervisor ordered us back to work. I was terrified and cowed, but friend-in-corner was black and got ghetto on her ass and just glared at her. I don’t remember exactly what transpired after that, but I do remember that it wasn’t our supervisor backing down or management failing to address our refusal to work.
So, back to about a year after starting to work here, at Firm Fairyland, who waltzes in to interview for the document center manager position? You guessed it, that supervisor. Let’s just call her Bitch. The personnel manager at the time (let’s call her Lily) interviewed her. Lily has an excellent memory, and a quick glance at Bitch’s resume revealed that Bitch and I had worked together, so Lily inquired about that and received this reply: “Oh yes. We had issues.” This was all Lily needed to hear, because she couldn’t imagine anyone having “issues with” me. Lily also told me that the office manager had told her that “I had turned white” when he had asked me about her, and that he had also said “that was all he needed to know.” This may all sound reasonable or even common sense, but to me, at that time, thoughtfulness like this was life changing. Wow, I get treated like an actual human being here. But we now know that this was Diana’s firm, which brings up another magnificent attorney, legendary even. Her secretary plans to start a facebook page for her. I think that’s brilliant. She told me she has received hundreds of calls from people who didn’t know Diana passed. I confirmed, “hundreds?” She nodded yes, “hundreds.” I can’t even imagine. She has told hundreds of people that didn’t know, that Diana died. This just hit me as I am writing this. She couldn’t be doing any other work. She must simply be on the phone all day telling people Diana died. Boy, does her job suck. I can’t believe that. I will have to verify that tomorrow. Here’s what her secretary looked like today. She looks blissed out enough to have been spending the past 2 weeks doing that, right?
My point is, some attorneys are great, I don’t care what you’ve heard. Here’s another attorney I enjoyed knowing, at the horrible firm. He was a tender, poetry-writing soul, that one day found a growth on his vocal cord and stopped talking for 6 months. When he healed and was finally able to talk again he made a point of coming into the doc center to talk to us first. A few months later he decided to take a year off. I don’t think he ever came back. His priorities in life had changed. He was an inspiration.
Attorneys have given me a livelihood I can stand. I don’t know that there is anything else I could have stood to have done for the long days and weeks and double shifts I’ve pulled. I’ve met brilliant minds, wits, and souls. I lucked into a career path with no “up” but lots of adventure. You know adventures like this: Spending the last 2 days on an unstable document, Day 1 working on it, and Day 2 answering the National Tech Queen’s questions about it, digging up old copies of various reincarnations of it from various computer trash bins, and answering some more questions about exactly what I did to it, then having her apologize to me for offending me, requiring that I assure her that no offense was taken, I was just trying to answer her questions accurately. It wasn’t at all as if I was on a filing rush, while dealing with two (2) new secretaries that didn’t have half a brain between them incessantly calling me with such gems as: “Should I print my document?” God bless them, at least they have jobs, and are apparently worth what they are probably being paid, which I pray is less than what I am paid.
It just seems that no matter what has happened to you, it had to have been an adventure, at least for you. Maybe nobody else might think so, or they might cluck and shake their heads, but I don’t care if you were stillborn, you had an adventure. I could see myself just wanting to dip my toe in the water. You know, sort of sticking my finger through the looking glass and seeing it disappear into the other side and thinking, “ok, that’s enough.” And I might try again, and maybe even try life for a whole day next time!
What I mean is, whether you were born in an open field after the earthquake in Haiti, or starving in Pakistan floods, ethnically cleansed, born into a tough neighborhood where you have to join a gang to survive, were sexually abused, seduced into a fundamentalist religion and blew yourself up in a crowded place, or were born deaf, blind, deformed, terminally ill, or stolen as a child and forced into the life of a soldier by killing your brother or you would be killed and forced to fight in a war for 20 years, held hostage, brainwashed by a cult, or a myriad other horrible scenarios that take place on this planet - all of those things steal our minds, stunt our growth and give us a challenge we need to overcome so we can learn and progress. A woman that healed from an eating disorder of many years called it an "abduction." And don't we just have the adventures of our lifetimes?? I never found where they say this, but David told me he heard Abraham say, “most of life is stagnation.” That just blew me away. We grow during stagnation. People are always having these epiphanies that they wasted their lives in some way. But none of it is a waste. The moment we finally escape to freedom is so glorious you wouldn't trade it for anything, and soon the past is over and we have moved past the bondage. We are so free that we are free to choose bondage, and bondage is one step or stage on The Path that we need to figure out, and then it’s on to the next life lesson, the next level of freedom, awareness, Nirvana, Truth. At least, that’s where I’m headed, and if you’re following me, then that’s where you’re headed, too.
Here is a very free place, Diana’s office.
I started this week wondering why I felt such a deep loss for someone I hardly knew. But all week long as I ran into co-workers who all seemed to feel that their Fairy Princess was gone, I finally ended the week with the conclusion that this world lost another Princess Di.
It's just that she was a secret one. She was the White Witch behind the curtain making it all happen and nobody knew. I think back to my humble beginnings (a nervous wreck from a temp agency after having a several year unexplained break in my resume) and I have been through a lot of office managers, and Diana's name was always mentioned whenever they were selecting a new one. Not mentioned like she wielded an iron fist, but whispered, more like Tinkerbell in designer gloves. She simply had to approve of what was going on. I have been figuring that out all week, like a giant mystery unfolding. I can't tell you how I know this, but she was obviously behind the partners' holiday gift (a $100 bill) every year since the economy crashed. Her secretary told me she knew everybody's name. "You might not think she knew you, but she did," she told me.
I have told everybody since I started working there that this isn't like any other firm in town. I've never worked anywhere else where there was actual compassion in the workplace, and no class barrier between the partners and support staff.
I was surprised and touched that the firm kindly allowed us paid time off to go to her service, and provided transportation that included lunch. The reason I was surprised was because the firm seemed to have undergone a sudden loss of humanity that I had attributed to the stresses of the poor economy and all staff being stretched so thin. But now I see it coincides with when Diana left on a medical leave of absence. And with her passing, the compassion returned, and the firm did what Diana would have done. And I'm only just now realizing how powerful she was, because she is still taking care of me from beyond. She just calmed me down so now my hands aren't shaking with sobs and I can type. I think she may just have become my guardian angel or something.
I had really lost my spirit somewhere along the way, I think even before David died. It got lost during the Lost Decade (until I can find a better term). And here was where I have been working for 70% of that Lost Decade. I was meant to be here. I think I just reached another plateau of my restoration.
This morning I was a mess over the passing of a partner in my firm. I had never felt the loss of one of my bosses so deeply before. I was crying so much I had to redo my makeup and was late leaving for work.
On the drive to work I puzzled over why my feelings for her were so strong. And I thought about all her professional courtesies, her silly treats (which she would always be so excited about she would tell me over the phone that she was bringing in treats, and would also tell me again a while later when she brought in her work - which was just an afterthought as it was really all about the treats), her helpfulness when I asked her legal or other questions, her many compliments, and I realized that she did consider me a friend, that there was no class boundary between us and I got such a distinct communication from her "You're not wrong!" that I burst into tears and was a mess again when I arrived to work.
Well, her funeral was today. The firm has been in shock since they heard the news on Monday that she had passed over the weekend. Nobody knew she had been sick, not even her mother. She didn't want anyone to know that she had been battling cancer for some months. She wanted dignity. She just wanted everybody to go on having fun, and she wanted to go on having fun until she was gone. And apparently that was her way of taking care of everybody, because that was what she did.
She was a Diva, Total Bitch, Fashion Queen, Hot Chick and Mother Earth rolled up into one Class Act. I found out today she was very close to my age. How could she not be a role model? She was always full of fun, and impossibly put together from head to toe, smelling lovely. She was an inspiration.
I was chatting with a secretary at work today who told me she didn't know Diana well, but when she first started working here 8 years ago no one spoke to her, but Diana would always greet her warmly just passing by in the hall, and ask how she was, and tell her how beautiful she was, and was always so uplifting. And I told her yeah, she was a role model for me, I just want to be her.
My first experience with her 10 or so years ago was I messed up her document and I thought, "She's awesome, and I'm really in trouble now." Today at the funeral, one of the attorneys she worked with remembered first meeting Diana as his opposing counsel and thought "She's awesome, and I'm really in trouble now." After getting over that first hurdle, I could do no wrong. Everything I did for her was perfect from then on (and earned treats!).
One particular case she had went on for months and she regaled me with stories. First, the client was nuts. Then the opposing counsel turned out to be nuts, as did his client(s). Then they needed a psychological expert, and an interpreter, who both turned out to be - you guessed it - nuts!
At the service, Diana's best friend told us about her earlier life. She told us that she graduated from law school and immediately began working for I forget what famous high end department store in New York, where she remained Top Fashionista for 10? 20? years. That explains her general fabulosity, doesn’t it?!
When my husband dropped dead I went into an autistic episode and was on disability for 3 months. When I returned to work I was terrified I was unable to work any more. Diana found me freaking out in the kitchen. She asked me if there was anything she could do to help? I asked her could she get me fired? (She's a labor attorney, by the way.) She said, "Of course I can, you can have anything you want," and reassured me with a little hug. She continued to give me the most hilarious and creative legal advice imaginable, the result of which was that I immediately took some more time off before returning to work, in which I grieved, blissed myself out, and returned to work with a heart full of fun and adventure, ready to live life again.
I think this may have been the last time I saw Diana: I was walking down the hall when most of my necklace fell off into several pieces. I looked around to see if anyone noticed, as I collected the pieces up from where they had fallen. As I was contemplating how to fix it (I make jewelry) Diana flew around the corner and exclaimed, "what a beautiful necklace!" I opened my mouth to tell her it was broken, but never got a word out. She waltzed passed me, not even noticing the broken pieces in my hand, with continued profuse compliments about how it was such a lovely color and went so beautifully with my sweater. Time was obviously of the essence, but that was no reason for her not to brighten someone's day as she whirled by, gesturing with a hand full of papers. I never fixed the necklace, and I always wear it when I wear that sweater.
At the service today, her best friend described the facility where Diana was getting medical treatment JUST 3 WEEKS AGO - a long hallway filled with 20 doors that all looked the same, and then you turned the corner and there were 20 more doors that all looked the same, except for one: Diana's, had a welcome mat, pumpkins and flowers.
At the service today I was struck by two things I heard:
"Eternity is now."
"In death life is changed, not ended."
Diana's best friend also recalled a story she heard from Diana’s mother, who said she was always so full of life. After her first day of school her mother asked her how it was and Diana told her "I really liked it! I got to ride on a bus and kiss a boy!"
I think that just says it all.
On Saturday, Wanda wowed me with this:
"Okay this is huge. God is love and love is God right? Okay stay with me, love your family, family is love. God gave us family so that we will have the experiences to love people, ALL PEOPLE. That's huge, so home is really where the heart is. Love is from the heart. I love my family therefore I know how to love everybody, in spite of who they are, but more important because of who I am. Enjoy your Saturday."
Today she started her blog. I'm following it!
http://whereiswandanow.blogspot.com/
