Wanting Recognition After All These Years
The worst part of this year was packing up my sister's posessions. Some things I couldn't bear to part with like the toaster oven that we gave her when she got married in 1969. Under my sister Sharon's care, the 30 year old toaster still looks the same as it did when it came out of the box. I kept her rubber mallet and the metal tape measure.
The packing up a lifetime of someone else's possessions is never easy, but this move was especially difficult. My sister's unrelenting disease has rendered her unable to care for either the possessions or herself anymore. I've cried every day since but the absolute worst was finding the photographs in an old bakery tin.
In it there's a photograph of the three of us sitting poolside at the northern Virginia apartment complex in which I used to live when I first moved to D.C. Frankly, I have only vague memories of the day. We look so happy and carefree. I suppose we were. Our wretched childhood as unwanted orphans was finally over. We made it through intact.
The photograph shows us as we looked in in our 20s, all three of us sitting on the same lounge chair. That wouldn't be possible today, not the least of all because a single lounge chair couldn't bear the weight of one of us, let alone three of us. The Vietnam war was raging, the country was in turmoil but we weren't affected. We were all potential then. I trusted in my future. I knew I was going to succeed. We are smiling in the photograph; we look so happy. My hair was long then, still shiny with health, my skin was clear and bright. I don't recognize that girl anymore. I think she died when I hardly noticed. I do know that she's gone forever.
I was so ambitious then. I wanted a career but I was the only one who thought I should have one. In college I was told I was working class and wasting my time; working on the Hill I was told I'd never get past clerical because I had neither family connections, the right alma mater, or the appropriate gender; my friends at the time counseled that I should get married as quickly as possible. I was determined to be recognized for my ability. I'd make my own chance. I tried. I did try. I wrote a bill that became a law. In it I wrote a job for me. Only I didn't get that job. I was told I wasn't qualified; I wasn't worthy; I was too young, too "New York," the euphemism for "too Jewish."
I spent the next decade during my 30s, either unemployed or underemployed. When I wasn't humiliated by having to collect unemployment insurance or work in a series of awful temporary jobs, I was humiliated by jobs in which I was not doing what I wanted that paid lousy money and had strange working hours.
By age 40, marked by so much failure, and too much fear and anger, I finally moved on. I gave up the apartment that I loved to be with the only people on earth who loved me. At first, it seemed I had made the right bargain. Everything came together quite quickly. In a matter of weeks, I found a job that promised to be everything I wanted. What's that old saying, be careful what you wish for, you may surely get it?
I worked harder than I had in many years. I made a difference. I was at the top of my game and eagerly pumping it out, probably to make up for all those productive years I had lost, but instead of recognition, I garnered jealousy. I was extra nice to people. I took on as much work as I could. Seize the day, I thought. I went back to school to get my master's. Instead of admiration, I garnered even more resentment. Illness and a lousy economy prevented my departure during the next decade dominated by office politics. I needed the health insurance and prescription coverage.
Now that I am in my 50s, my work life is so marginalized that it is not unusual for me to hear, "I didn't know you still worked here." I Tried to ignore everything but I couldn't.
The packing up a lifetime of someone else's possessions is never easy, but this move was especially difficult. My sister's unrelenting disease has rendered her unable to care for either the possessions or herself anymore. I've cried every day since but the absolute worst was finding the photographs in an old bakery tin.
In it there's a photograph of the three of us sitting poolside at the northern Virginia apartment complex in which I used to live when I first moved to D.C. Frankly, I have only vague memories of the day. We look so happy and carefree. I suppose we were. Our wretched childhood as unwanted orphans was finally over. We made it through intact.
The photograph shows us as we looked in in our 20s, all three of us sitting on the same lounge chair. That wouldn't be possible today, not the least of all because a single lounge chair couldn't bear the weight of one of us, let alone three of us. The Vietnam war was raging, the country was in turmoil but we weren't affected. We were all potential then. I trusted in my future. I knew I was going to succeed. We are smiling in the photograph; we look so happy. My hair was long then, still shiny with health, my skin was clear and bright. I don't recognize that girl anymore. I think she died when I hardly noticed. I do know that she's gone forever.
I was so ambitious then. I wanted a career but I was the only one who thought I should have one. In college I was told I was working class and wasting my time; working on the Hill I was told I'd never get past clerical because I had neither family connections, the right alma mater, or the appropriate gender; my friends at the time counseled that I should get married as quickly as possible. I was determined to be recognized for my ability. I'd make my own chance. I tried. I did try. I wrote a bill that became a law. In it I wrote a job for me. Only I didn't get that job. I was told I wasn't qualified; I wasn't worthy; I was too young, too "New York," the euphemism for "too Jewish."
I spent the next decade during my 30s, either unemployed or underemployed. When I wasn't humiliated by having to collect unemployment insurance or work in a series of awful temporary jobs, I was humiliated by jobs in which I was not doing what I wanted that paid lousy money and had strange working hours.
By age 40, marked by so much failure, and too much fear and anger, I finally moved on. I gave up the apartment that I loved to be with the only people on earth who loved me. At first, it seemed I had made the right bargain. Everything came together quite quickly. In a matter of weeks, I found a job that promised to be everything I wanted. What's that old saying, be careful what you wish for, you may surely get it?
I worked harder than I had in many years. I made a difference. I was at the top of my game and eagerly pumping it out, probably to make up for all those productive years I had lost, but instead of recognition, I garnered jealousy. I was extra nice to people. I took on as much work as I could. Seize the day, I thought. I went back to school to get my master's. Instead of admiration, I garnered even more resentment. Illness and a lousy economy prevented my departure during the next decade dominated by office politics. I needed the health insurance and prescription coverage.
Now that I am in my 50s, my work life is so marginalized that it is not unusual for me to hear, "I didn't know you still worked here." I Tried to ignore everything but I couldn't.
posted by Ambimom at 3:10 PM
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