Dichroic Reflections

a bed of feathers

Gofigure's entry today
left me a little bit leaky around the eyes. I'm not sure of all the reasons for
that, but I think it boils down to one: gratitude. I do know how lucky I am and I
like to stop and appreciate it now and again.

I haven't quite been
where she is, but near enough to get the taste of it. My parents were never to the
mac'n'cheese-every-other-night level, but they never hit the level of prosperity
at which you quit worrying, either. There was always a lot of coupon-cutting. We
had plenty of food, but the beef was generally something like flank steak or
shoulder steak, the cuts that can be rendered reasonably tasty without a lot of
expense. Dad worked long, long hours; he was always gone before I got up, and when
I was little, he'd come home after I was in bed. They send me to a good college,
but even with all the loans and grants and scholarships, I know paying their share
made paying bills a little tough sometimes. (They seem to be doing well now,
though.)

When I was in college, I was on my own as far as spending
money went. Again, it wasn't that my parents didn't want to give me money, just
that they didn't have much to spare. I paid for most of my own clothes and for
meals on weekends when the dining halls were closed. I never went hungry then,
either, but a new blouse or a paperback was an indulgence, and not a frequent one.
(Beer, on the other hand, counts as food.) I know none of this is unusual and
that lots of people had it much tougher; my husband, whose parents didn't want him
to take out a loan, paid a lot more of his own way and worked three jobs during
high school to do it. Others have been on their own entirely, or gone to school
while working full time. (I did that for my MS, but there are a lot fewer classes
required.) So I know I didn't have it unduly hard, but I've been close enough to
that wear-out-your-shoes level to have some feel for it.

And I'm not
there now. This is what I'm celebrating. And even my unexpected layoff, I have
severance pay, vacation pay, and savings enough to carry me for quite a while.
After that, I have a husband who's reasonably well paid as a safety net. I
feel....as if I've fallen, but only into a pit of feathers. And I see rungs on the
side to climb out. Recruiters have been calling, there are at least a few openings
listed in my field, there's a local high-tech job fair next week. It may be harder
to get a job than it was, and they may offer a few dollars less, but it doesn't
look as bad as I feared.

The other thing that makes this all much
easier is that my ego isn't closely tied to my job. I work to live, I don't live
to work. When my Dad was out of work years ago, it hurt him terribly. It was a
terrible shock - he essentially got laid off for being good at his job -- as a
manager, he'd gotten the place to do so well that someone bought it, and then
wanted to put it their own people. More crucially, I think he grew up in a time
when a good man was a person who supported his family. Maybe the fact that his own
father didn't helped reinforce that point even further. Given Dad's background,
the fact that he and my mother have been married 38 years is remarkable. Even
though Mom has earned a salary for years, I think Dad still thinks of himself as
the breadwinner. When he couldn't do that, his pride and his self-worth were
tarnished. I had a coworker once who had been out of work for a year before we
hired her, and had landed in the hospital with serious heart problems from the
shock and strain. She'd always defined herself by the work she did.

I
do have a certain pride invested in supporting myself, but when I lost my job,
that was all I lost: one job, that in many ways I'm glad to leave behind. The rest
of me is still here, and happy to enjoy, for a little while, the glorious gift of
time I've been given.

But I do hope everything works out well for href="http://gofigure.diaryland.com/010810_51.html">Gofigure and her family.