The Girl at the Front

At the age of 63, I have been promoted to girlhood again. Or demoted--I'm not sure which. But I am now that girl at the front--the one who answers the phone, forwards calls, take messages, greets visitors and clients, offers the coffee....

I'm not putting down the job.  It's necessary and when we lost our receptionist I took over.  It's an architectural firm; I do marketing.  The work of the architects, project managers, and drafters can't be done at the front desk--at least not easily.  And clients pay for their services, not mine.

And it's been an education.  Just learning to answer the phone--okay that was a no brainer--but answering the phone with multiple calls coming in, needing to check with the callee to see if they could/would take the call, transferring calls; I've always been afraid of tasks like that.  There's a lot of jobs that I don't consider beneath me--I think they're beyond me. The thought of a headset, taking orders at a fast food window, AND filling the orders, or waiting tables, remembering orders, serving food, or check-out clerk, the list is very long. I raised four kids, so you would think that multitasking especially while serving food would be second nature, but not so much.

I'm excited that I can now fax, overnight plans and packages, run letters through the postage meter, scan things on the big confusing copier.  For me these are huge achievements, since I've usually been the type standing there staring helplessly at whatever I'm supposed to be operating, making whining noises, wringing my hands (whatever 'wringing' is) and looking around with pleading eyes and pathetic desperation, hoping for a rescuer..  Inept would have a kind description.

But that's not the education I've gotten sitting up here.  The education is--like most things--about people and, in particular, about the difference between being a function and a person. 

The Girl at the Front is, for many people, a pure function.  You can be rude, impatient, and dismissive to her and (apparently) think nothing of it.  I don't get the abuse of people who work in more lightning rod places--we're not repo folks, bill collectors, customer service for really bad products--and thank whatever gods may be that I'm not a telemarketer, but there's enough.  It's apparently my fault if a someone hasn't returned a call or isn't available right now. Plans haven't been approves, permits not granted, and the new puppy pooped on the carpet.

When people come into the lobby it becomes even more interesting.  Many people are quite nice, especially when they don't know where they're going, or need me to call the person they plan to meet.  Some are even shy. I like making people welcome, offering the coffee and water, chatting if they seem to need to talk. However, dismissive is the polite way of describing the behavior of some.  No eye contact.  No thank you.  No hello, no goodbye.I've interacted more personally ordering a hamburger over the intercom.

I'm guessing that for many reading this it's a big oh, well and so what.  Goes with the territory, if I don't like it quit, and deal with it--it's human nature.  And actually I do.  It isn't personal and it sometimes gives me an excellent gauge of clients.  I've always thought you could learn a lot about people by how they treat their "inferiors." And how often they don't realize the power of these supposed inferiors--how fast and untouched do you want your food, how quickly will you get that warm blanket at the hospital--and what might I say to the managers here?

And therein lies the real lesson here.  The firm is Lauterbach & Associates, Architects,  My last name is Lauterbach--ex-wife of the founder--who still works here--mother of the CFO.  I do what I do because it's needed and you pretty much need to put on the big girl panties and do what's needed these days.

But I find it very interesting if I introduce myself.  The Look crosses the person's face as I suddenly transform from function to person.  Possibly even a Person of Some Importance. Big smile then. Effusive pleased to meet you.

It's been, as I said, an education.

Oh, and by the way, when you come into that irritatingly empty  lobby--remind yourself that even The Girl at the Front has to pee occasionally.

I THINK I Believe in Being Positive. Maybe

Oh, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief" used to be one of my favorite prayers--along with "Send my roots rain," and "please, please, please let there be enough money in my account to cover that last check."  (I don't know if it's true there are no atheists in foxholes, but I'm pretty damn sure there aren't too many the day before payday when you really needed that check two days earlier.)
A good friend pointed out that in my previous blahblah blog (I Am Like SO Sure) there's more than a smidgen of negativity.  I think my point was the strength of my conviction--or yours, or anyone's for that matter--has nothing to do with being right, whether it's about a baseball game or the meaning of life.


Still hold with that and she didn't disagree.

However, her point is that believing does make a difference. And, on reflection, I think she's right.  Within the limits of rationality. (And I'm a lover of Lord of the Rings and a universe of infinite possibility and all the weird things light and subatomic particles do--but I don't think I'm going to play for the NBA no matter what I believe.) 

On the other hand--which is where I frequently go without ever having gone to the one hand--belief shapes behavior. That's an easy postulate. We don't have the time or resources to check everything in the world and sometimes we have to act on faith--faith that the waitress at Carrow's isn't out to poison us, that space aliens aren't sending messages through our fillings, all that. Paranoid schizophrenia is an incredibly debilitating illness.  And whatever the opposite might be--trusting everyone and everything?-- is, in my opinion, equally lethal. Believing that everyone has a soul and is a child of god should not lead to going home with the guy with chainsaw unless he's your tree surgeon. There are people who do not wish us well and situations that do not end happily.

Beyond that, I think MM is right in that if you think you can do something, you are far more likely to do it.  And if you believe you can't--well, that's pretty likely too.  If I believe I can go to college, I'm far more likely to look for possibilities for colleges, financial aid, majors I would like.

That's elementary duhness.

Attitude is important too.  If I expect good things to happen I'm going to act in ways that have a chance of attracting good things.  By and large people like to be around positive types unless they're good looking dark and brooding types with an ironic twist of bitter phrase that makes you laugh.

Of course, for a lot of us that might still fall into the category of expecting good things.

Be that as it may....


But where is the point that belief and denial converge and should divide, or--?  I read a story once about the actor Richard Dreyfuss who said that he almost literally never heard negative comments on his acting and his chances.  He was so focused and so sure that he would be a successful actor that no alternative ever entered his thoughts.


Wow.  Straight ahead tunnel vision maybe can move mountains, one more kick will churn the butter (an Irish saying about the frog in a jug of cream), refusing to listen to the people who tell you "why try?" can pay off.


However, and there's always one of those, at least when I'm writing, when I worked as a chaplain's assistant at a hospital I worked on the oncology floor--I worked with cancer patients.  This was at the height of the attitude determines prognosis movement. There were patients who wore smiles always, except--perhaps--in their sleep. Nothing was painful, nothing was difficult, and there was no possibility of anything but victory over the disease.


So, what was wrong with that? Well, for one I don't think denying that having cancer is an absolute bitch is realistic or healthy.


I could be wrong.


What I do recall is the self-flagellation I would see if a negative thought was permitted to cross patients' lips or minds. And if the cure didn't happen, if they were dying, the fault was theirs because they didn't try hard enough, weren't positive enough.  If the family shared this belief, the person died because she didn't want to live.

As Americans (in general) we love fighters. We're right there raging against the dying of the light. Passive acceptance is not our way/


But life happens and death happens (a nurse once reminded me that death is the one appointment no one is ever late for). It's happening now, as my fingers hit the keyboard and the microwave beeps and I remind myself I need to do my timesheet. A pretzel stick is soothing my soul and the slightly old and somewhat bitter coffee is hot. Now.


My bare feet are planted on holy ground.  Wherever I stand, holy ground. I'm not sure what this means and where believing in my dreams fits in to this.


Do I even know what those dreams are worth, what could be, what should be?  At one time I would have ripped my right arm off with my teeth to have our family be the living avatars of the Brady Bunch.Turns out that instead we are us.  Broken marriage but unbroken family--although a lot patched, glued and mended--events happened that couldn't be resolved in 30 minutes or 30 years, just endured and survived. Are their things I would change if I could?  Good Lord, yes! But I don't know if I would, if it meant losing what is. A situation that almost anyone would describe as disastrous resulted in a grandson who is the light of so many lives, who, his mother says, saved her life.


I'm not a person who believes that everything happens for good or is part of god's plan.  If there's a deity that planned Rwanda, I'm not lighting any candles. But I do believe in quilts and mosaics.  Take what is torn and broken and try to piece it together into something that, if not beautiful, might be useful.

It's holy ground.  There's no point in standing in shit and calling it roses--but I can, you can try to plant roses or at least  some onions in it and hope they grow,.


So, I guess I do believe. In believing.


Help thou my unbelief.

Love Is All You Need?

Love is all you need, love is all you need…. Stuck in my head from a commercial for something I can’t recall and will not bother to look up. Cool kids though and, well, fun to watch. I think they all find themselves by the last frame too and that’s always a good thing.

Love is all you need. When I was 18, back in the early 60’s, I think I might well have said yes and then, maybe, added books. Peace and freedom and full stomachs would have grown naturally, organically, from that one strong root, the original blessing of love. Even at 18 I didn’t think love was as simple as a song, but it was music and as natural as a sigh. And if I could have, I would have put my arms around the world and everyone in it and held them close,

Life changes. We change our circumstances and our circumstances change us. Shit happens. Children and bills come and the years when love is action and quite often as much fun as dragging an eight year old or yourself to the dentist. I love you still rolls off the tongue but sometimes as one more item on the endless To Do list. A question, a wish, a promissory note, sometimes spit like a curse, or pounded like a club up side the head: thud, thud, thud.: I-Love-You.

Oh, the drama of it. Of course those years weren’t endless drudgery and the bills to pay. They were a jungle, thick and rich and surprising, one swing of the machete and you turn to heartbreaking beauty, you pratfall into the mud, a wasp stings you, the piranhas needle your feet to the bone and your friend pulls you out of the slough and you laugh and drink coffee in a clearing.

But if you had hummed Love is all you need I might have laughed, spewing my coffee; I might have turned my head away so you wouldn’t see and let the tears flow. But I wouldn’t have been able to say yes. I would have told you that love is complicated, easy to say, hard to live, a choice—something willed and worked at. Oh, I still wanted to put my arms around the world and hold everyone close, but I knew how little good it would do in a world of stick thin kids with swollen bellies, people armed with guns and money, a world where four kids (well fed and, thankfully, unarmed) couldn’t ride in a car for two hours without nearly killing each other and giving my peace loving tie-dyed mind serious thoughts of child/teenicide.

It’s a broken world and love comes in many flavors, as the Greeks told us with their four words for whatever it is, that crazy little thing called loved...

Of course at a certain point, it gets simpler again.

Love is what you lose.

My father died in ’83, my mother in ’96. Children leave even though (if you’re lucky and the stars are right) they don’t die. They discard soccer uniforms, prom dresses, baby shoes and boots—the Barbies stay behind with the Legos and leave them behind to gather dust along with all the things you were going to do and never did and all the things you did or said or thought and wish you hadn’t—they slip away from their childhood like a snake sheds its skin.

Friends become acquaintances, acquaintances become memories, husbands and wives leave, brothers turn gray….

That’s when you learn that loving is the bravest thing you ever do. That anyone ever does. Because the last word that love ever says is always good-bye.

Now I’m in my early sixties rather than living in the Western world’s 60’s. More drugs but less fun. (Unless of course you consider staying alive and nominally sane fun. Which I do.) And love is all you need is a Blackberry commercial. (OK, I bothered to look it up.)

So?

I know I don’t need a Blackberry and at the moment don’t even want one. The commercial’s catchy though and if I weren’t a klutz and regular destroyer of cell phones I’d have an iPhone. (Instead I carry one that’s popular with construction workers and park rangers.)

So, don’t need a Blackberry, but what about love?

I have fallen in love so many times, the physical and emotional symptoms poets and scientists describe—and certainly not always with a potential sexual partner. A new baby floods body, heart and soul with oxytocin and the ability to go without sleep and not abandon the creature whose needs keep you from sleeping. I’ve been drawn by a glance from across the room, giggled and cried with friends, held a child with so much emotion that I laughed and cried.

So back to the 60’s in my sixties and peace and love and crunchy granola? Well, I can’t paint you a rainbow or tie dye a meadow, but here, in my sixties I think I can say, love is all I need. I’m not trying to say that a starving child in the Sudan just needs a big hug or that loving Ted Bundy would have saved his victims’ lives. This is a complicated, messy, and cruel world. Smart bombs kill stupidly. Unspeakable horrors never even make a small paragraph on the back pages of a newspaper.

A great, wide, wonderful world in which everything works for good and the all endings are happy? Well, as Papa Hemingway would say, “wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”

But the world is. It exists and in itself that’s amazing. I am here, you are here. We try to understand what the hell or heaven is going on and what in the world or out of the world we are doing here? Or are supposed to be doing here?

And we love—write songs, change diapers, hug, kiss, make birthday cakes….

My mother was a shy woman, didn’t want to say boo to a goose. When my dad was dying, there wasn’t a doctor safe from her questions. She would hunt them down, notebook in hand, relentlessly asking questions and writing down every answer. Did he need something he didn’t get or get something he didn’t need? Someone would hear and hear and hear until the situation was resolved to her satisfaction.

This wasn’t being “in love.” (I love you but I’m not in love with you.) This was love as a fierce and active verb. No happy ending of course, just a miserable, painful death from cancer—regrets, sorrow, grief—grief and relief that the pain was gone and you didn’t have to watch him suffer and didn’t have to feel guilty or even a little bored when he was drugged and slept and you read magazines by his bed.

Love is an act of faith—at every wedding, every birth—maybe even at every divorce—there’s an act of faith that love is possible, that it can last—hang on through thick and thin, good and bad—make the long run or leave to try another track because love is possible.

Love is all you need. I think I finally learned about love when I learned to make tea the way my mother liked it. A tea bag steeped for exactly five minutes, two spoons of sugar to make it sweet, a squeeze of lemon or spoonful of bottle juice to make it sour. Five minutes made it too strong I thought and even slightly bitter.

So I would cheat and make the tea the way I thought she should like it. Until one morning something—might have been love—clubbed me over the head and said make the damn tea the way she likes it. Because that’s her tea and you let the words I love you roll so easy but you make her tea the way she doesn’t want it.

Love is all you need? From the vast distance of 63 years, I say yeah. Love is all you need.

Not love that hands you flowers or even sticky kisses.

The love you need is the ability, the grace, the gift of being able to love. Because when you do, when you love you make the tea the way she likes it.

Maybe you even figure out how to get some food to the child starving in the Sudan.