Rant for an Afternoon in August

I would like to share something with all of you who think the middle class has not been under attack for the past two decades plus:

In 1981, my husband worked at Kmart, and I worked as a night manager at a pizza restaurant.  I think our combined income for that year was somewhere around $28k.  We had two vehicles in our driveway which we had bought brand new, and we were paying a mortgage on our first home.  While my job at the pizza place came without benefits, husbands came with free Blue Cross/Blue Shield for him, to which coverage for ME could be added for $25/month.  We were by no means rich—but there was a very simple rule in force at the time, one which we suburban baby-boomers took entirely for granted:  If you worked for a living, you could trade in the spoils of that labor for a share in the American Dream.

It’s now the Impossible Dream, isn’t it?  Not only for young couples starting out in 21^st century America, but for those of us who have watched our income vs expenses ratio erode to the point that the nearly $90k that we command today will not buy us the lifestyle we enjoyed thirty years ago for less than 1/3 of the price. 

First of all, take $9k right off the top of today’s annual income for the crappy HMO (Kaiser Permanente) health insurance provided by husband’s employer.  And then there’s retirement funds.  Did I mention that husband was “vested” at Kmart when he left that job—which meant that, at 28 years old, he already qualified for what would become a monthly pension when he retired (and they were NOT union…)?  Does anyone younger than 50 even GET the concept of a pension anymore?   In the 21^st-century American workplace, if we’re lucky enough to HAVE a full-time job that pays better than minimum wage, we get to piss $6k annually into a useless 401k account that never makes any money, and, in fact, is inclined do dump thirty to fifty percent of its worth at regular intervals, every time the stock market “corrects.”  Taking those expenses that didn’t even exist in 1981 into account, we no longer make three times what we did in 1981.  And so many of the things basic to the barest definition of “the American Dream”  have increased in cost by a factor of three or more in thirty years.

We paid less than $16k combined for BOTH new cars that sat in our driveway thirty-two years ago.  And a decent, habitable home could be had for $40k back then.   Our mortgage payments are three times what they were then, new cars easily cost three to four times more, gasoline costs almost five times what it did back in 1981.  I distinctly remember paying 59¢ a pound for ground beef, a large pizza cost around $5, a candy bar was a quarter…I could go on and on, but the picture is clear.  It has taken all the effort we could muster just to keep up with rising expenses…and we haven’t been entirely successful.  We have kept our noses to the grindstone, working and slaving like good little card-carrying members of the American middle class, only to lose ground, economically. 

I have ranted about this before…I don’t know why I can’t just shut up and accept the facts…ignore the beast and go forward as best we can.   But from time to time, things crop up that make the monster take on a stench and a glow that I cannot ignore, so I look at it and get riled up all over again.  This time, it’s the mounting pile of auto repair bills on my desk that have brought the monster back to life.          

Husband got his first raise in eight years in 2012.  A laughable 3% COLA, but it was a raise.  And this year, he got another COLA (this one only 2%), and the company he works for has revived enough to hand out bonuses on an irregular and unreliable basis—but, hey…it’s a bonus.  And we enjoyed our best sales ever at the Scandinavian Festival.  So, we should be turning the corner, right?  We should be back to climbing UP the ladder, rather than hanging by our fingernails to the bottom rung. 

But, here’s the thing:  In the span of about the last 18 months, we have had to sink over $5k into deferred maintenance on the three busted-ass 10-plus-year-old vehicles we have sitting in our 2013 driveway.  Because one of the things you DON’T do when you’re stretching every penny thinner and thinner to pay the bills is keep up on regular car maintenance.  Two cars needed tires, all three needed brakes, one needed $250 worth of new batteries, radiator work, engine work, new belts, et cetera ad infinitum.  Get ahead?  That’s a laugh.  We have to catch up, first.

And next year, we’re due for a new roof on the house.  If we can get it through this winter without a major failure. 

So when I see people who I’m pretty sure are in the same economic boat as I am preaching the neo-conservative party line, the one that basically absolves Big Business of the high jinks that have made the rich obscenely richer, and everyone else poorer over the past couple of decades, I don’t just shake my head and wonder.  I get mad.  Really mad.  I can’t for the life of me figure out what could possibly be up with these folks that they can’t look at their own personal financial situations and understand that they are being lied to, used, and most probably laughed at behind their backs.

How is it that we have allowed the corporate monsters to steal everything?  Including our pride?   

Emergence

I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop.

I wanted to.

Or I thought I did.

Trod on, fumigated, rolled into a dustpan and dumped out the door, I crawled into my cocoon--

slightly mashed, dented and crippled.

Two years pass...

I emerge.

Brighter?

Wiser?

Winged?

None of the above?

Still alive.  Still moving. 

With a place of my own.

And the dream engine I had thought too old and tired to churn out anything shiny or even a little hopeful

Coughs out the tiniest vapor;

it sparkles like a diamond chip in the sunlight.

Pelican and the Project

Several weeks back, I briefly mentioned the latest argument I had with the husband…said something about it being “very instructional…I learned a lot,” and left it at that.  The truth is, there were things said during that discussion that cut me to the bone, hurt so bad that I had not the capacity to go anywhere near the wound, much less examine or attempt to treat it.

Since then, I’ve been doing my level best to skirt the issue, sidestep the crater…hoping that by pretending it didn’t exist I could make it go away.  I really did NOT want to look at it; did NOT want to discover that my marriage was ever-so-not as recovered and rejuvenated as I so fervently wanted to believe.

But the argument haunted me.  His very perception of what we’ve been doing for the past thirty-six years grabbed me by the throat and would not let go.  Seems he has spent all these years bending over backward to make me happy.  And yet, I am not happy.  What is wrong with ME?   “You get pretty much everything you ask for.  You ask for a deck, you get it.  You ask for planter boxes, you get them.  Looks to me like you have it pretty good.”

Really?  Really??

Without getting into how desperately I needed you—your help, your support, your love—when the restaurant was eating me alive, and you all but turned your back on me…

See if I EVER ask you for anything again. 

A few weeks later, he was all smiles and conciliation.   “What do you want for your birthday?”

 You’re kidding, right?  Hell will freeze over before I ask you for a birthday gift.

To remain functional, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into the building we acquired; and it’s probably a good thing that it is 100 miles from here.  It’s provided me with distance from the thing I could not confront.

But I couldn’t be away all the time, and when I was home, I was miserable. I would look out the back door at the half-finished deck around my greenhouse—a project he started earlier this year, got frustrated with and gave up on—and I would feel not just a burning resentment, but a heavy sadness settle on my heart.  Something as simple as, “Hey, when are you going to finish that deck?” had become anything but simple.  And how ridiculous, how sad is that, between two people married for more than three decades?  It wasn’t really the unfinished deck that bothered me.  It was what it represented. 

Somehow, that deck became a dragon that I had to slay.  Once that project was finished, there would no longer be a physical manifestation of how broken our relationship still was, staring me in the face every day.   In my bull-headed way, I made up my mind that if I wanted the work done, I would have to do it.  And I wanted the work done. 

So I planned and I designed and I thought and I schemed…and I fretted.  The thing is, I knew what would happen if I set out to do the project myself.  It was guaranteed to provoke another confrontation.  And I was pretty sure I did not want to go where that confrontation was going to send me.  But I knew in my heart that trying to sit down and tell him how I felt—trying to “talk it out”—was not going to work either.  That was what had got us into this mess to begin with.  

Eventually, obsessively weighing the alternatives bore no fruit other than to take me to where I was on the verge of tears every minute. In the end, I decided that if I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t, I might as well be damned in a chaise longue on my finished deck.  And I decided Sunday would be the day. 

Sunday morning, I got out of bed burdened with a determination and a sadness so overwhelming it was like a physical weight.   It felt surreal that, after thirty some years of marriage, I could not ask him to pick up a hammer or a drill and expect him to gracefully do…what he has always done.  I felt ridiculous and off-balance, and resentful as hell.  I really needed something, someOne, to help me. 

The Almighty has let me know in no uncertain terms that my Spirit Guides are available to walk me through the difficult passages of my life.  So I don’t know why I always think first that I have to gird my loins and do things on my own.  Sunday morning, I really was in no condition to Do It Alone.  I was a mess.  An emotional meltdown was hovering inches from my head.  The resentment and the unforgiveness were sitting so heavily on my shoulders that I could barely move.  So I thought of Pelican.     

Call on pelican when you’re feeling resentful or angry toward someone and you want to release it…

…when you’re feeling overwhelmed with heavy emotions and want to rise above them.

     

Pelican—who had stepped in as the guiding spirit of my marriage two years ago, and who continued his vigil as I struggled with flashbacks of resentment and feelings of abandonment inflicted by our struggle with that stupid restaurant. 

Pelican—who reminded me to forgive, to release, to let go.  For really the first time, I “called upon” a Spirit Guide.  I gazed at the Pelican icons I’ve collected, reached out a hand to caress a small statue of a pelican that sits on my dresser.  I would like to say that I formed a beautiful poetic petition of some kind to call the power of Pelican to my side.  But all I could really muster through my tears was a weak “Help me out here, guys.”  Hoping someone would hear…

After breakfast, I grabbed some tools and went out to the project site.  Through my resentment and my tears, I managed to ungracefully get a decent start on the job.  Enough to make it obvious that I meant business.  Husband wandered into the picture about an hour into my struggles.  I was clearing off my temporary “deck” made of wooden pallets covered with scrap wood, preparatory to hauling them out of the way to make room for their replacement. 

“You want some help with that?”

A simple question, really.  To normal people.  But in this situation, armed with his, “You get everything you want” comment, an answer was almost impossible.  Yes, I wanted his help.  But I was going to be damned if I was going to ask him for it.  And the first thing that came to my mind was some kind of cutting retort, on the order of “Not if you’re just going to throw it in my face later!” 

But I stowed that.  I looked at him, for too long, I guess, as I tried to form some words that were not cutting or nasty. 

“I was just getting ready to haul these things out of the way…”

“I can help if you want.”

“Sure.  That would be nice.”

And so it went for the rest of the afternoon.  The two of us actually making an effort to be civil to one another.  Choosing neutral words over emotionally-charged ones.  Sharing ideas and brainstorming together, instead of copping that “my way or the highway” attitude which has lately become our go-to philosophy.    

It was nice.  It was peaceful.  And it went a long way toward rearranging the scattered bits of my marriage back into something I could understand and live with again.  I had begun to think that would never happen, and I couldn’t really figure out how I was going to go forward with things as hopelessly mangled as they seemed.  An air of forgiveness presided over us all day, and I believe with all my heart that the Almighty ministered to us through the power of Pelican.

Because I remembered to ask. 

So, yeah…I’m doing a lot of tripping and falling, searching and questioning along this spiritual path to which I’ve been called.  But I’m learning.  Slowly but surely.

And I’m grateful. 

Ten Things...

I would request, in this personal New Year...
were I asked...

A partner.

                        A friend.

                                         A place.

                                                            A motive.

                                                                         A victory.

A dream.

                  

                       A reason.

                                  

                                       A retreat.

                                                           A chance.

                                                                          A vision. 

A tall order, at my stage of the game.

And nobody's asking...

Ten Minutes: The Devil Wears...

I am an inveterate second-hand shopper.  I have been haunting garage sales, rummage sales, flea markets and second-hand stores for great buys on otherwise expensive stuff since I was a teen-ager.  That’s forty-plus years (yikes!)  Why buy new when you can get some really cool stuff for a small fraction of the cost of something fresh off the rack at Macy’s?  I’d be willing to bet that something like 75% of the clothes in my closet are from resale shops.  My idea of an engaging, relaxing afternoon is to spend two or three hours sifting through a Goodwill store and scoring great deals.

So the other day when I was down in Eugene, my sister and I hit a couple of St. Vinnie’s (St. Vincent de Paul—a Catholic relief organization that takes donations of clothing and household goods then sells them off in several big stores around town as a way of providing employment and filling their coffers to provide housing and other services to those in need.)  I have been in the market to expand my summer wardrobe, since I realized once the weather started to heat up that I am short on crop pants and summer shirts.

After about a half hour I had tried on a couple of pairs of capris that didn’t fit, chose and discarded one or two blouses, when I came upon this:

A black t-shirt with “bling” and interesting graphics.  Just the kind of thing I wear.  But I have several of these already…do I really need another one?

On closer examination, I realized the shirt was amazingly well-constructed. No wear-once-and-throw-it-away Walmart creation, this.  It also had no tags inside.  At all.  And I couldn’t see any traces of where tags had been cut out.  So…nice shirt.  I think I’ll try it on.

I get in the fitting room and find the t-shirt fits adequately.  Looks pretty good, in fact.  And for $3.27, I could use another nice t-shirt.  Maybe it could replace one of the shabbier ones in my drawer.  And then I look more closely at the graphics on the shirt.

Letters.  Those five little sets of double rows of rhinestones down the front of the shirt are parts of letters.  Let’s see:  “P…”  Paris?  No…  “P-R-…”  Premo?  Prince? 

“A…D….   P-R-A-D…A…?!  Prada?  Holy crap!”

Now, I have no idea whether this is, in fact, a t-shirt genuinely produced for that house which designs clothing for …denizens of the underworld.  Damned if I wasn’t gonna buy it, though…just in case.

Don’t know what Prada t-shirts go for these days, or even Prada knock-off t-shirts.  But I’m pretty sure it would be more than three dollars and twenty-seven cents.