who?
tenth july (payday!) | ten:thirty ante meridiem
Violently Happy
A few days ago a woman who works in another section asked me if I'd help her transport some boxes. They were going to a storage facility only a half mile away, so rather than go through the hassle of checking out a department vehicle, she decided to use her own van. The boxes were large and unwieldy, but not heavy. I tried to avoid setting them on her Pat Robertson taped sermons series, and had to move a big pile of plastic American flags so they'd fit.
On the way we chatted about work, how during the summer the pressure on us at HQ (I like calling it HQ) lifts just as it's intensifying for the porks. "It's so nice to have some breathing room," she said, "Now I can finally have that ice cream party." What for, I asked. "For all the people who've supported me over the last year. This place is truly like a family. I know it's not much but it's my way of saying thank you."
When I started this job 10 months ago, she had just come back after an intense round of chemotherapy. She seems better now; she has a full head of hair and is no longer stick thin, though her left arm is in a cast. "I was going to walk in the breast cancer march this weekend, but then I had these complications" � she indicated her cast � "and the heat exhausts me just walking from my car to the building, even though when it was cooler I'd trained really hard, or as hard as I could, to be able to do at least four miles. I'm so disappointed." I said I thought she always looked healthy and cheerful, despite her recent setbacks. "Oh, thank you. It's been such a tough year though. First the double mastectomy, then the chemo, and now all this fluid draining into my arm. The trial of the man who murdered my uncle just started, so we're dealing with that as well. Then six months ago my dad started to go downhill, and the doctors only just diagnosed him with Alzheimer's. Yeah, it's been quite a year."
We arrived at the storage facility. As I removed one of the boxes, the one behind it started to fall. I didn't have an extra hand to catch it with, so I quickly slammed shut the van's sliding door. The box, which I swear to holy fucking Christ (sorry Pat) was not heavy at all, fell into the window, shattering the corner and breaking the latch. I stared at it dumbly for a full minute. "It's ok. Really, it's no big deal," she insisted, inbetween the profuse apologies I was making at His Girl Friday speed. "After everything that's happened over the last year, after the cancer and the chemo and my hair falling out, and not being able to attend my daughter's soccer games because the heat makes my arm swell, and my uncle, and my dad, the little things just don't bother me anymore." Which didn't make me feel any better at all. I insisted on paying, but she said that since we were using the van for work purposes the agency would cover it.
That night I went to a Mariner's game with an old friend I don't think I've given a pseudonym to � let's call her !!!. !!! manages a non-profit that works with domestic violence victims (which I'm sure isn't the correct word to use; these are people who have just been in a DV situation, with bruises and black eyes and everything, so calling them "survivors", in the self-identifying sense of the word, doesn't seem accurate). I told her what had happened that day, and shook my head over how so many terrible things could happen to one person all within such a short amount of time. She told me about a conference she'd been to on surviving (yay!) violent acts where the keynote speaker had had three people in her family murdered, in unrelated incidents, all within about six months. First her ex-boyfriend shot her husband and then himself. Then her mother was killed by burglars who'd broken into her nursing home. Finally, her sister had been carjacked, stabbed, and left for dead just a few blocks from her (the sister's) apartment.
The Mariners won the game.