It's People Like These...

The guy above on the right is a coworker of mine.  The lady is his wife and the guy in the middle is their son...their "recently" adopted son, not that they make that differentiation.  I make it in order to tell you this story.

For a number of years now I have heard stories about this son - we'll call him R - from the proud dad - we'll call him J.  J & his wife have served as a foster home to several teenaged boys.  They have struggled through those boys' complicated and unfair baggage to try and provide the stability and healthy relationships the boys have missed out on up till then.  As another coworker of mine said just the other day, there is a gold star, huge & shining already, in Heaven for J & his wife.  They have been so selfless and dedicated in this endeavor that two years ago they were named the Foster Family of the Year by our local foster agency.  Not too shabby an honor and definately not an easy feat.

Back to the picture...J & his wife legally adopted R when he was a teenager.  At that time R chose to take on the family's last name by adding it to his own last name.  That says that he really thought the world of J and his family.  The picture above is the proud parents with their new Army Private.  You would never know that they've only been a family for several short years and not for a whole lifetime.  Funny, I would say I even see a family resemblance!

Anyway, people like these....pictures like this...make me keep the faith in humanity.  Today I will hear news clips of fussing politicians, missing children, men killed, businesses robbed...really it's an endless gloom report if you sit down for 30 minutes to watch the news.  It's the stories like the one above that need to be glorified and reported.  Someone was giving of themselves and made life better...is that not news?

I could harp forever on our news these days, but that is not the nugget of insight I want to take from the awesome pic.  As I am making this a quick post today I will get to my point.  I appreciate the work and the sacrifice J & his family has made, is making.  I appreciate the service and sacrifice R is taking on  and now repaying Karma by helping others himself.  Good begets good, folks.  Also, your family is not always born directly into your family - sometimes you have to go find & claim them!

School Days, School Dazed

So, school....yep, I did it....last night I went and rgistered for grad school.  Going back after 20 years is going to be fun interesting intense an experience.  Honestly though, now that I have made the decision, I really am excited to get started.

I am looking forward to meeting new people, learning new things and just going through the whole experience itself.  It's too bad that college is not sequenced naturally into our older lives because learning is so different when you are more mature and truly interested in what you are paying all that money for each semester. :)

Yeah, I know that right now I still have the romantic view of school and, when the assignments and exams start adding up on the calendar, I will quickly adopt the realist's view of "what did I sign up for - I'm too old for this mess?!?!"

I have just been looking for that next step in my life.  I have fought two things for many years.

  1. All the women in my family have been teachers.
  2. I'm not going back to school.

Now, after all these years I really would like to consider teaching English on some level...not just English, but Literature.  Looking at educational paths towards this I have made the decision to complete my master's and then push for a PhD. 

Up to now I have been reluctant, no scared, to think very far ahead.  I have Lupus and I have spent the last 5 years+  allowing Lupus to drape my future in gloom.  I have played into it, rather than fight it.  I have accepted it, rather than relegate it to the backburner of my life. 

I have taken each crisis and disappointment in the last 5 years and colored them in Lupus Grey.  "Oh, if I didn't have Lupus this wouldn't have happened," or some version of that statement/excuse/cop-out.  Thanks to progressing through my therapy, from the effects of it and forward into regjoining Life, I can see that darkness for what it was.  The real joy is seeing the dawning of sunlight on my future.

Who knows if I will follow through all the way with my PhD?  For me, right now, it is not the accomplishment I crave, but rather the reality of it as a possibility.  To have the clouds lift and feel the warmth of potentiality is my accomplishment for now.  So, off to school I go!

The Store Story

My son works at a major department store.  He has worked there almost a year now and loves it.  Recently his store location changed to a fulfillment store for smaller stores needing items shipped out.  To facilitate this task, employees make a round through the store with rolling racks, picking up the items requested for fulfillment shipping.

The employees used for this task are not new employees, my son was told.  They have worked there for years, yet he had never met them, or even seen them until recently.  He asked where they had been assigned and was told they worked in shipping.  He said he’d been out back and down to the basement to the shipping dock; he had never seen all these people.  He was then told they work in shipping and they work UNDER the shipping dock. 

Since you have to go to the basement to get to the shipping dock, he couldn’t conceive where “under the shipping dock” would exist.  Curious, he went down to the dock and then asked how to get to the other shipping area below.  When he finally reached “under,” he was amazed.  He said to start, the door was misshapen and an irregular size – off kilter, short and skinny.   Then when he went in, he felt as if he had entered a third-world sweatshop. 

There were several people squeezed into this tiny room that was grey and depressing with no air-conditioning.   Let me repeat this key bit of information, there was NO air-conditioning.  We live in southwestern Tennessee, which is the The South.  It is The South that is known for its unbearable humidity and summer temps in the upper 90s - low 100s.  This room had no window, no air, just table fans to move the unbearable humid, summer temp air around.  Like worker bees the employees sat clicking security tags onto clothing and other items one tag after another.

As my son backed out of the door and back up the hall to the basement, he couldn’t grasp that these people come to work each day like he does, for the same pay, in the same uniform of dress shirt and slacks, to face 8 hours of, as he called it, “slave labor conditions.”  I explained that the employees were getting meal and bathroom breaks, a legal wage, etc., so in that respect it was not slave-labor.  I told him there are many jobs that are not performed in air-conditioning.  That said I cannot believe the conditions that these people work in, either.  I have to admit that it shocks me that a high-end store, a company of this one’s size and history, would purposely set up any part of their operation in this manner.  Air-conditioning in our area is a life preserving necessity. 

I could not go to work each day knowing that I would sit in a grey room with no windows, no air and do the same repetitive task thousands of time for 8 hours.  I know people will argue that if you need a job, you need a job and yes, that is true.  If my life and the lives of my family depended upon me doing that each day, I would do it…UNTIL I found something else, something better, something with a window, or air, or not relegated to the “third-world” pit.  I would do everything in my power to not do it for years.

When I started my story, I did so just to pass on to you the weirdness of the story as I was told.  No lesson.  No enlightenment I had found.  However, I tricked myself.  You see, this morning I did not appreciate my job. I was actually complaining about an aspect of it that now seems very childish.  I’m telling you, this journaling stuff is priceless for learning and gratitude.

Peace & Air-Conditioning to All!