Tales from the Shark Tank

If all goes as planned (and who knows, as my mother and her sense of time are involved), I will be picking up my new wheels sometime in the next three hours. The timing is perfect, as my car is ticking steadily and showing all kinds of alarming red lights on the dash board. Now the only further journey it needs to make is to be surrendered to the insurance company.

Meanwhile, the mechanic (who henceforth shall have my undivided loyalty) has overhauled the silver dragon from stem to stern. He replaced anything that looked even potentially iffy. As part of the process, he was replacing seals and such on the transmission, just because the thing had been sitting undriven for a bit over a month. Well, something got hooked up wrong, and when they went to test the transmission, it blew up. Literally. In the bay. I saw the rough-edged hole in the metal. Eeek! But now I have an entire new transmission. Also brakes. Wheels and wheel bearings. Struts. Rotors. Tires. AC is recharged and ready. The only flaw is that the station indicator on the radio is burned out. The radio works, but you can’t see what number you’re at. Ok. I’ll spend a little time getting to the stations I want by guess, set the buttons, and I’ll be good to go! I mostly listen to CDs or NPR anyway.

Look out world, we’re coming through!

I’ve been thinking about the different ways the people I know use their blogs. The first anniversary of this one passed without my noticing, back at the beginning of this month. And while I haven’t written daily by any stretch of the imagination, I have kept going pretty steadily. It is one of my pleasures, writing this random assortment of thoughts I know friends – and possibly strangers – will read.

What I have noticed about myself is that I tend very much to stick to what is happening in the present and my responses to it. There are exceptions, of course. Some things demand comparison to the past, or explanation of it. I didn’t talk about my friend’s visit last weekend because we have so much shared past. I couldn’t find a way to discuss it that wouldn’t have been a book, or that wasn’t too intensely personal for a public forum. She did come, with her husband and son, and it was wonderful and frustrating all at once. Our sons were instant best buddies; mine, at least, has been asking where his friend is since they went back to Illinois. I think, if I told Joseph we were going to see those people, he’d be in the car before I had the suitcase out. This kid doesn’t like to travel, but for Uncle M. and Aunt K. and their little boy, he’d make an exception.

It’s not that the past – both personal and historical – is ever very far in my thinking. I am by nature and training a synthesist; I see echoes and patterns in everything. There are clear markers in the flow, events or people in the past that shaped my present and myself in some clearly defined fashion. My grandmother’s death, my marriage, my son’s birth, and other things that happened on a larger scale, affecting the society through which I move and therefore the path I’ve taken. It’s more that for me, the past is immanent in the present.

So I use the blog to look at where I am; to affirm to myself that yes, I am moving along in this time-stream rather than just treading water. It reminds me that the the magnitude of anything is relative to what precedes and follows it. And it lets the folks who occasionally wonder if I’ve dropped off the face of the planet know I’m still here stirring up mischief.

Looks like I won’t be going to the State Bar Association Conference the end of this week after all. I really was looking forward to it. Their theme is “equal protection under law”, and they’re highlighting it with speakers who will talk about what has happened in the past when the law itself enshrined inequality. The keynote speaker is a Holocaust survivor. That is sort of the ultimate example of such a use of law.

The reason is home from school for a second day with (in his words) “an ear affection.” Yesterday there was no question; he was curled up crying on my bed. We got some ibuprofen into him for pain, but at the cost of a now thankfully rare tantrum. He’s still a bit short tempered today, so we’re giving him one more day. Of course, I’m not in great shape either. I have a sinus infection and laryngitis. There’s very little more useless than an attorney who has lost her voice. Today is the first day since last Friday that I have been able to make myself understood on the phone, and I still can’t keep it up for too long. Grrr. I had plans this week. I wanted to get out in the pretty spring weather. Our housemate needs more driving lessons, my garden isn’t ready for the new plants yet and I have lawyer-type phone calls that need to be made.

I should know better than to make plans. There seems to be a special clause against it in the Mommy contract.

I have a cold. I thought it was a bad attack of spring allergies until I fell asleep without my own volition. I have the energy of an unhatched chick, and the focus of a fog bank. All of this has left me ridiculously grouchy. I am tired of being sick, and sick of being tired. My friend from Illinois, whom I have not seen in years, is en route to visit us even as I type this. I want to enjoy her visit, and all my body wants to do is sleep. Who, me, frustrated? Oh, a bit.

I finally got someone to talk to at the company that sent the credit card contract I was so exercised about. The man didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time talking to me. The contract was the current and correct one, he said. It is set in stone and cannot be changed. I know better, but this client doesn’t have the leverage to force the issue. At one point the bank rep told me he had to get off the phone and go back to work, and I responded that I thought this was his work. I wasn’t being rude, but I was quite firmly determined to get answers. I finally did, and I really don’t like the ones I got. If the choice is take it or leave it, I’d leave it.

My client is looking into alternatives. This contract is sufficiently draconian that I can’t recommend he sign it. It’s so one-sided that I suspect it wouldn’t hold up in court, but that isn’t the point. By the time you’re asking a judge for help, you’ve already lost in every way that matters. These folks want to be given total access to every financial account the merchant has, and to be able to get their money ahead of every other obligation including payroll, taxes or rent. Not only that, they insist that the merchant give them power of attorney to lay claim to those things.

No. Just no.

Mom called last night to tell me that my great-uncle Jack had left us. I chose that way to put it because he decided it was time to leave this life, said his goodbyes over the course of about a week, then went to sleep and simply – stopped. It was as peaceful a passing as such a thing could be. By his choice, he will be cremated. There will be no marker and no memorial service. The family gathered to say Kaddish (there are enough of them to make a minyan all by themselves), and that’s it. By my calculations, he was 95 or 96.

We have not lost him, because he is part of our memories, part of what made us what we are. But his passage does mark an ending. He was both the last of his generation of my mother’s family, the generation that came from Europe and was marked by it, and the first child to actually be born in America. That’s how he came to be named “Jack”. It was a bilingual Yiddish/ English pun. In Yiddish, the diminutive for Jacob, or Jack, is “Yankel”. A lot of boys were named “Yankel” (formally Yaakov) in Yiddish and then Jack in English. They were the proof of the hope for the future. They were the Yankee Doodle Dandies.

He was my grandmother’s younger brother, the last of three children. The oldest, Morris (Moshe), was a real character. He never met a story he couldn’t improve upon. Next was my grandmother, another free spirit. There was another boy that my great-grandmother lost. She ran across fields to warn her husband the Cossacks were coming when she was 7 months pregnant, and miscarried a few hours later. I don’t know if that child was even named, although I know it was a boy. Customarily a child wasn’t named publicly until the bris. This one, if he lived at all, certainly did not live long enough to be circumcized. When she recovered from that, my great-grandmother sold her dowry to pay passage to America. Jack was born not long after. When I asked my grandmother for a story about when Jack was a baby, I was told all of that, all the family history woven into how he came to be born in America and named Jack. I was told that he was a celebration of the new chance and affirmation that they were here. I know, from stories told by lifelong friends, that my grandmother carried Jack around until he was so big his feet dragged the floor when she tried to pick him up, just because he was the baby.

Jack was the quiet one, when I knew him. He was the one who left Indiana and went to Colorado, establishing his own dynasty out there. There aren’t a lot of stories about him, not like there are about his brother and sister. But there are a few. There was the time one of his sons was in a very serious accident. There was some question as to whether the young man would walk again. Jack brought him home, carried him where he needed to go, took care of him, and brought therapists to the house. At this point, I couldn’t tell you which son it was. Neither of them shows any sign of such injury. Family lore attributes the recovery to Jack’s combination of devotion and sheer stubborness. I can’t argue it.

The other one that stands out in my mind concerns my mother and her brother. They had saved their money to buy their mother a silver service. They went to get it from Uncle Jack’s store. Unfortunately, they were considerably short of the cost of the set they wanted. Uncle Jack gave them the $20.00 (in about 1950) they needed. When they tried to protest that it was too much, he said “I can give my sister a present if I want to.” But when they tried to give him credit to their mom, he made light of it. It wasn’t until I was grown that she found out what he had done.

Wick and I visited Uncle Jack and Aunt Wilma when we happened to be in Arizona one winter. They took us out to dinner, and showed us what a wonderful condominium their kids had set up for them. I found it characteristic that Uncle Jack said nothing about the beautiful cross-stitched pictures all over. He had designed and executed all of them, but didn’t think them such-a-much. It was Aunt Wilma who made a point of showing them to us, and of showing us his working space. Now they are in a museum.

I last saw him about a year and a half ago. His kids had moved him back to Denver after Aunt Wilma died. A stroke had robbed him of speech, but not of enthusiasm or ability to communicate. When his daughter took me to the nursing home to see him, she warned me that he might not know me. He did. He lit up with the most glowing smile I’ve seen on anyone, and managed somehow to convey that he knew I was Eleanor’s daughter, and wanted to know how she was. I showed him pictures of Joseph, and he grabbed his walker and headed for the door – determined that his daughter should take him (and me, of course) to see his great-granddaughters. When we got back, even though he was utterly exhausted, nothing would do but that he show me his room, decorated with his cross-stitch paintings. I asked him if he wanted me to hug my mother for him. Yes, he nodded. And then he gestured around the room. “Tell her I’m doing just fine” the wave of the hand said. “Tell her I have everyone I love, and that I’m happy.” When I checked the interpretation, he nodded vigorously. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to nap, but first he opened his arms for a hug as firm as any he’d given me when he was younger.

Think of him kindly, his daughter said yesterday. That’s all the memorial he wanted. And so I shall. I will remember the artist who didn’t realize he was one, and the kind man who taught a disabled grandchild to play golf so they could share it. I will remember the generous, loving man who made it possible for his niece and nephew to give their mother the gift they’d set their hearts on. I will remember the honorable, stubborn man who refused to pay off some racket, had his restaurant trashed as a result, and rebuilt it in the same place. I will remember the man who devoted himself to his family, not as a sacrifice but as a continuing act of love, and whose family was there for him to the end. And I will remember the man who focused on what he had rather than what he had lost, to tell me he was happy.

I had my interview. The best I can say for it is that it was there. My interviewer and I didn’t seem to warm to each other at all, really. I did learn that she is the new person in the other position I applied for at the same agency, so now I know what’s up with that job. I was also told bluntly that my association with my former agency was a strong negative, but that the names of my references outweighed that. She interviewed three of the twenty or so attorneys who applied, and is reposting the job next week. I’m already in; I don’t need to reapply.

I have also decided that I like my new hair style much better when the stylist hasn’t played with it. It’s short, it’s as easy to take care of as hair can be (wash, brush, put a small dollop of product in, scrunch curls with fingers, let dry), and it looks really good even after being caught in a downpour. What more could I ask?

I knew today would be busy by last Thursday. Things kept adding themselves, until I looked at it and started dropping them off. I dropped a driving lesson for our housemate and a stop at a cheap Chinese buffet with her after. We’ll do that tomorrow, if we can.

Today? I have:

Settled a claim for a client.

Gone to the doctor with a terrified fledgling. (She calls me Mama, and the doctor thinks she’s my daughter. We did not disabuse her of the idea.)

Returned a call to schedule an interview with the Department of Insurance. I have it at 9:00 tomorrow morning.

Gotten my hair styled so it no longer has that “suburban mom” look…even if that’s what I am.

Met with the Small Business Grant Coordinator for two hours. I finally have a clue which way to jump on the grantwriting thing. That’s good, because the deadlines are getting uncomfortably close.

I am waiting for a call back on a credit card contract for a business client. There’s a small problem with the monstrosity they sent. My client needs it for internet sales…which the contract specifically prohibits. Say what? I asked today if they had sent the wrong contract.

Once that’s in I get to go talk to my in-laws. Then I get to go to a regular Monday evening meeting. Somewhere in there I might even have time for dinner and a story with my small son.

I believe I shall sleep well tonight.

Update: I got the call back on the contract. Yup, they sent the wrong one. They’re trying again.

At the request and prompting of my father-in-law, who has a prodigious memory for the stories I’ve told over the years, I sat down to list the various things I’ve done that are in some way unusual or noteworthy. He offered to help my polish my resume and make it eye-catching and to work on my cover letters with me.

It is help of a sort I have never had. There aren’t words for how much I appreciate it. But what stunned me was the breadth of the list. I know I’m good at what I do, but have never considered myself particularly extraordinary. But there aren’t that many attorneys who are asked to give seminars once a year, let alone three or four times every year. When I looked at the collection of experience my first thought was – is that really me? I don’t know if it’s what my father-in-law intended, but it was a real boost in the confidence department. So thanks, D. I really needed that.

Jospeh, quite grudgingly, kept Passover pretty much the whole week. No bread wrapped around his hot dog, no pizza, none of his favorite things. Somewhere about the middle of the week, he took a Passover card he’d gotten and tore it in half, saying “I hate Passover!” Then he quit fighting, as I came up with the promise of pizza as soon as it was over. We agreed that was after the sun went down on Tuesday night.

We ordered two pizzas; a small one for him and a large with veggies for the adults. The entirety was inhaled in under 15 minutes. I ate more pizza in that time than I usually consume in a month, and Joseph finished all six pieces of his. He was doing pizza dances. Yum!