Sunday, I visit Geminii Brett, former mechanical engineer, current astrologist.
I am following up on the reading Carina gave me for my birthday. Geminii Brett plotted my chart and recorded his thoughts. He ended the recording by saying that some really big things were going to happen for me in the next 6 months.
Do tell, Geminii Brett.
His bungalow in West Seattle is low to the ground with a yard pleasantly verging on the wild. I knock and stand on the single step up to the house. It is a sunny day and the block is an advertisement for spring: puffy pink cherry blossoms adorn the trees in front. Bluebells flank a fence. A neighbor is gardening.
Geminii Brett opens the door and gives me a hug.
“Cute house!” I say and he says “Cute sweater!” He has a warm energy and a kind face.
He’s just finishing up with another client. She is small and icy blond, in a long black skirt and layers of grey and black sweaters, in denial of spring. Brett introduces us and I say hello but she barely glances at me. She is wrapped up in something more than sweaters.
As she leaves Brett tells her to hang in there. He closes the door and turns to me, commenting, “Sometimes it’s heavy, sometimes it’s lighter. Good to start the day with the heavy reading.”
Brett offers to make tea.
“I wondered what you were drinking on the last recording,” I tell him. “I wasn’t sure if it was tea or whiskey. But every once in a while I’d hear you take a sip.”
While he’s in the kitchen I glance around his house. His bookshelf is an eclectic mix of Aztecs, physics, astronomy and religious history. He has sheet music, Bach, set out on the piano. In one corner there is a lamp that is made out of a saxophone.
Brett comes out with two mugs and asks me to join him on the floor, facing him on a mat set in front of the fire.
The floor and coffee table are strewn with tools of the trade: crystals, Tarot cards, a pipe. “Wow, this place is a mess,” says Brett with a gentle laugh, like it fundamentally offends his orderly nature but today he’s letting it slide.
“I’m just going to…” starts Brett.
“Center us?” I finish. Centering is something Suzi does on all our calls, verbally drawing a circle around our conversation. It is a cozy energetic confinement, pillowed by sayings like “I know all the answers are here, already in Jen.” The centering makes the sessions less of a searching, more of a finding.
Geminii Brett isn’t as much about drawing circle as puffing a smoke ring. He takes the pipe from the coffee table and lights it. He puffs a few times, then takes his hands and wafts smoke over his head and down his shirt. Then he picks up a flat drum and beats it several times.
For a second I wonder if I’ve strayed into a living room too alternative even for me. But when Brett opens his eyes it’s still him there, not a doorway to the ancestors. He is channeling himself.
He asks what I thought of the last reading. I tell him that truthfully, I didn’t understand much of it and am hoping for more clarity. He nods but doesn’t seem phased. He gives me a copy of my chart where he’s scrawled certain dates on the back, each of which correspond with planetary dynamics. On the front is a circle representing the zodiac with colored lines drawn at various angles. A planetary embroidery hoop.
He starts to talk.
It is amazing.
He talks about how my divorce was predicted in my chart. “Pluto is the planet of evolution,” says Brett. “You are evolving what your vision of a relationship is, it will be totally different from the last one.”
I tell him how I’ve been working on this very thing for myself over the past few years, shifting my own energy to attract a different kind of man, to be a different kind of partner.
“When you were younger you were interested in this kind of bad boy energy, the rule breaker. But you also felt you needed to do everything in the relationship, which left you depleted. Now you will be looking for a different kind of man, a nurturing man. He may look boring at first glance, but it is that support that you’re looking for. You’re allowing that in.”
Love interest aside, my life is now filled with these nurturing men. Men like my brother who see fatherhood as an important part of their identities. Seath, beaming as he sets the final plate down on a fully extended dinner table. Ben, the velvet hammer, telling Rocco in a soft but firm voice that it is not okay to raise his voice that loud or run through the house. Bull, owner of my gym, father to five boys of his own and surrogate father to countless other wayward young men employed to vacuum the floors or wipe down the equipment mornings before school.
Brett tells me my purpose in life is to be a wise elder. “It’s the grandmother spirit I talked about in the last reading. You’re moving out of that Capricorn energy where you feel like you have to do everything, that masculine interpretation of Capricorn that is about productivity. Capricorn is really the she-goat. It’s feminine energy, it’s the earth. You will feel less and less the need to do something, you’ll be more of that grandmother – she sits back and watches, she lets people make their own mistakes.”
I think about a post-it I left on my desk at work when I was thinking about how I wanted to evolve my role. In all caps, it says GUIDE.
Weeks later, Lenora shows me a picture of myself on her phone. On the left, the kids run wild down the yard. On the right, I am seated in the foreground, my hands in the pocket of my poncho. I have a lavender glow as if I’m superimposed. My forehead is highlighted white, the light calling attention to some wisdom.
“You can see your aura!” Lenora says.
“Isn’t it just the light hitting me in a funny way?” I say.
“Don’t ruin it,” she chides.
Now I think she is right. I look like the Navajo women in a poster my grandmother used to have on her wall.
Brett goes through several other dates, one of which is coming up in the next month. “April 21 will hold a love interest,” he says, pointing to another glyph on my chart. I play it cool, but I have a little skip in my heart when he says this. I imagine myself meeting a man on a flight, talking and laughing, sipping tea with lemon.
As I’m standing up to go, he tosses out one last thing: “There’s this New Moon Progress that I put on here. A lot of people don’t pay any attention to it, but I wrote it out anyway, I don’t know if the date means anything to you?” It’s December 28, 2009.
“Wow,” I say. “I just wrote about that date in my last blog.” It was my day on the beach with Lolo, the first day I felt happy again after the breakup.
The start of my own new moon.
In my coaching, I’ve been working on being vulnerable. Suzi suggests think about vulnerability at the office. “Allow yourself to be taken care of.” At first I can’t see what she means. “I guess someone might offer to cover something for me?” I muse, but that doesn’t seem like a challenge. I’m not a workaholic, it is easy for me to step out of the office at the end of the day. Suzi says nothing, leaving the thought to marinate.
Maevey takes up the charge of letting the office take care of me. She leaves me fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market on my desk. Another friend leaves me a soda one day. But then, what Suzi is really talking about shows itself.
It starts with a bomb drop from Jeffrey: “I need more time from you in the office,” he says.
Hearing this, I want to cry, even though Jeffrey says it lightly.
I listen to him talk. He tells me I come in late on Mondays because of my flight, I leave early on Thursdays. He thought I was going to be in the office Fridays. In my head I go through all the reasons I have consciously set up my schedule the way it is. But I don’t contradict. It’s not a time to defend.
Instead I say, “You know, I don’t have more time to give.”
I tell him how my system in Seattle is starting to crumble – an aging dog, who’s been sick and needs someone home. I tell him how the weeks I go to Minneapolis and LA are the true killers. I tell him how I never have energy for my own life by the end of these weeks.
“I’m hanging on by a thread right now. I’m starting to wonder if I need a Seattle-based job. Like maybe this job just isn’t for me.”
“Well let me know if you go, I’ve got a guy in mind,” says Jeffrey. I note the comment as a tit for tat, like me saying I needing another job is an insult rather than what I meant it as, a question about how tenable my current lifestyle is.
“But travel, it’s just kinda what we do as planners,” Jeffrey tries to raise the ante. I’m not sure if he’s trying to convince me of something, but I am implacable.
“Yes, but you have someone buying milk for you. Keeping your life going. I have two houses that never have milk.”
Jeffrey shifts gears and leans back in his chair. “My wife always complains I work too much,” he says.
“Do you?”
“I work a lot less than I used to.”
He wont say for himself whether he works too much or not. Regardless, he’s come closer to me in conversation.
But I feel rattled. Like I’ve exposed my weaknesses unexpectedly.
Afterwards, I send Suzi a text: “Talk about being vulnerable at the office. Just told Jeffrey this job may not be for me. Was in response to him saying he needed more time from me in the office. I told him how hard it had been and that I didn’t really have more time to give. Felt terrifying, especially when he said he had a guy he wanted to replace me with if I took a SEA-based job.”
True to form, Suzi replies: “Good for you! The universe may have served you up the perfect job making more money by Fri!” I have to laugh at Suzi’s utter conviction that better is just around the corner. I can’t believe it yet, but I know I will get there. Better is a place I’ve believed in before.
Still, I feel unsettled the rest of the day, wading around in the wreckage of an explosion I’ve set off myself.
Maeve and Vicente come over that evening with Thai takeout and a drill to at long last hang a curtain rod over my gaping bedroom closet.
“I just think the timing is so interesting,” says Maeve. “That you wanted to hang the curtain today of all days.” We all sit cross-legged on the rug in my living room and eat curry. I still haven’t invested in a table.
“Well, even if I’m only here another two weeks, it still makes a difference,” I reason.
The curtains are linen, with a blue pattern that is both geometric and earthy. With the curtains up the room is softer, less utilitarian. My multicolored wardrobe and shoe boxes are no longer glaring out from their mismatched hangers and cluttered shelvess.
“Dude, you’ll feel better tomorrow,” says Maevey. “I feel like you just needed to say it. It will be a relief.” Looking at my cute curtains, I feel better already. I’ve covered up unnecessary noise with something beautiful. It is a metaphor for my day.
The next morning I wake up and it has rained. The dust has cleared out of the Los Angeles air. I shake water off the red bougainvillea that overhangs the deck. There is tiny puddle of water where the boards have an indentation. The flotsam and jetsam of the prior day is gone.
Though Jeffrey has asked for more time, I head home early to do Loli duty. In the cab from the airport I call Barbie and Brian to recount the news.
Barbie breaks it down: “You know, you never loved it there. There have been times when it’s been better than others, but you’ve never loved it.”
It is so true, and yet something I never would have said in such a clear way. I have a lump in my throat of appreciation for my parents and their unwavering support.
The next day, Brian calls me in the afternoon. “Oh hi,” he says, surprised that I’ve picked up. “I just called to see how you’re doing.”
He says he and Joe were talking that morning at Donuts and Dems, their Tuesday bear-claw and Republican-bashing ritual.
I laugh and say, “I’m glad I made the agenda!”
“You know, Joe was just saying it’s really hard to change a culture. Management doesn’t want to change, they want to keep things status quo.”
“Yes,” I agree. “And Deutsch totally has a formula that works. They’ve been very successful at what they do. Who am I to tell them that they should do things differently?”
But I see the future that’s coming. Yes, Deutsch has been successful. But Deutsch has always relied on age and experience, a homogeneous culture and hyper-productivity. The world is increasingly young, multicultural and female. There is writing on the walls.
Loli’s dog walker and I have decided that Lolo needs an additional walk in the evenings. She lives too far north to cover, so we both hunt for someone new in the mix.
The new dog walker meets me at the house at 10 on Friday. Lolo barks a big booming bark as he walks up the steps. He gives Loli a polite pat. I wonder if he even likes dogs at all. Despite his raingear, his boots, his burly beard, he has a formality about him. He takes off his shoes as he enters the house. We head into the living room.
As if on cue, Lolo starts to wretch in the entryway. When I round the corner there are five pools of pumpkin and rice on the ground. Lolo wags his tail low and does a little sniff at one of the pools, contemplating re-ingestion. “No, Loli,” I tell him gently and send him outside. He hops down the steps with less pluck than usual and trots out to the middle of the yard, turning back to stare at me, his tail curled under.
Awkwardly, I scoop up vomit with a dustpan. When I get the floor to a reasonable semblance of clean, I go back into the living room. He is a tall guy, maybe in his early thirties with small icy blue eyes. He has mellow, almost passive energy.
“I work in LA so I’m gone three weeks a month,” I say.
New Dog Walker says, “Like, always?”
For a second I catch myself reflected in his face. High-powered. Successful. Fast-talking. There’s a contradictory intimacy with his feet in socks, his tall frame slouched in a chair meant for relaxing rather than a business meeting. I am suddenly reminded of all the dates I went on, where I’d barreled in instead of letting the date ask questions. It is a silly thing, comparing who I am in a meeting with a dog walker and who I am on a date, but there is a parallel there: my need to set the pace.
I note this is not how to be with a nurturing man.
I give New Dog Walker a key and see him off down the rainy walk. Lolo pokes my leg with his nose then goes back to his bowl, wagging his tail hopefully, a dot-to-dot connection to tell me he’s hungry again.
On the plane on the way home, the woman sitting next to me asks me if I live in Seattle. She tells me she lives in LA and commutes to Seattle for work.
“How do you like it?” I ask her.
“I love it,” she says. “My husband is very self-sufficient, my kids are grown. I really like what I do.” She is late forties or early fifties, blond with a trim, compact figure. She’s wearing a bright pink sweater. She has an air of efficiency.
“My commute is wearing on me,” I tell her. “I just feel tired all the time, and like I never have a life anywhere. I’m recently divorced and I guess I just feel like how am I ever going to meet my next man when I’m never anywhere?”
I’m thinking about Suzi telling me I should start frequenting the places I’m into. My response was a grim laugh and an observation that I only frequent the airport.
My reveal is an inefficient response to Pink Sweater’s enthusiasm, messy with emotion. She gives a cursory hmmm and leans back to the window, disconnecting from the conversation. I lean away too, I don’t want to infect her with my doldrums.
After a few minutes she turns back to me.
“You know, I met my husband on a business trip. The reason I ended up in LA is because he lived there. We did long distance for 3 years.”
We start to descend into Seattle. It is twilight and I can see the eddies of water, the tree-covered islands. I take a deep breath, glad to be home.
I think, THIS is the place I need to start frequenting.
In Seattle on Saturday, Sarah texts me about going on a walk. It is a spectacular day, sunny with a hint of dark still in the sky that only emphasizes the bright. I suggest meeting at Alkai, thinking it will be fun to walk along the sound and watch the ferries.
We chatter along about Sarah’s dates she’s been on – a kayaker who she just wants to be friends with; a guy with whom she’d been on several dates but wasn’t ready to commit to anything further; her ex, who she has just seen in New York. For a second I judge my lack of activity in this arena. I admire her open, easy approach, unburdened by overthinking.
We admire the view, the glittering sound, the rocky beach. We stop at a tiny book exchange, like a bird house, in someone’s front yard. There are travel books to Berlin and Nepal.
We end up at Starbucks. Sarah runs into someone she knows, a woman who manages a dance troupe on Capital Hill. Sarah and I had gone to see the performance and had not liked it – Sarah worries she’ll be cornered into giving a review. But the woman has breezy energy like the day itself.
“What’s up with getting a cat?” I ask, knowing it’s something she’s been considering. We sit at a table outside with our drinks.
“I’m holding off. I want to be as flexible as I can for a guy.”
I hold my tongue for a minute and then say, “Why would you put your life on hold for a guy you haven’t even met yet? If you get a cat, you’ll probably end up with a guy who loves cats.”
As I sip my iced tea through its green straw, I note my resistance to the idea of putting my life on hold, waiting for a man. I think about something Suzi said once, about attracting someone into the fullness of your own life.
I remind myself the space to hold is internal, an openness of spirit, not an empty perch by the window where a cat should be.
In LA, I meet up with Tieneke, an old W+K friend and fellow part-time Angleno. We walk down to the Strand and along the beach, then back up the walk streets. It is a hazy morning, the weather undecided about its true course.
I tell her about my conversation with Jeffrey, about my push back on spending more time in LA.
“The thing is, we’ve been working really hard for almost twenty years,” Tieneke says. “It’s a long time. I’m tired.” Something about her saying this puts it into perspective for me. I’ve forgotten that my fatigue may be due to more than my commute of the last nine months.
I tell her about how much energy I had recently after an unusually slow week of work – how I spent my weekend hauling bags of compost, weeded and bark dusted my flowerbeds.
“I was like a different person!” I exclaim.
“I know,” says Tieneke. “Normally I have to spend the weekend recuperating!”
Later that day, I get a call from a recruiter.
“I’ve been sitting on this job for a week, wondering if I should call you,” she says. “I’m not even rep’ing the job. I heard about it and I called them saying I have just one candidate I want you to meet.”
It is based in Seattle.
She gives me a rundown on the place, especially on the CEO who she’s been dealing with. It’s not someplace that I immediately think yes to, but I tell her, “Well, let’s see.” Following on my meeting with Jeffrey last week, the timing is uncanny.
The recruiter asks me my salary and when I tell her she says, “Wow, you’re really well-paid. It’s going to be hard to find an LA salary in Seattle, you’ve topped out there, really,” she says.
“Tell them for the money I’ll do it four days a week,” I say.
I feel free and excited: the walk with Tieneke, the serendipitous call, my quick lateral thinking about how to say yes to the situation, have put me in a good mood.
That week, I luxuriate in thinking what I will do with my fifth day, a day that I wont have to spend recuperating from a flight.
I think about painting.
I think about the blog.
And then, I catch myself thinking about adopting a baby.
Maeve is the first person I tell about my new thought. She says “Oh my god, this makes me so happy.” She puts her hand on her own pregnant belly, temporarily named Poppy. “It’s like it’s happening to me or something!”
“I’m still just thinking about it,” I say neutrally. “But it’s funny. It totally crept up on me.”
But it is a sticky thought.
For Easter there is a plan coalescing for a trip to Rainier. Lenora has found a cabin at the foot of the park. Carina and Lenora are excited for snow, but I am over the cold. I feel like I need some fresh inputs into my life. I want to see my grandmother, to meet my cousin’s new baby, to spend some time poking around Portland.
I want to see my friend Jess, who has just adopted a baby from Ethiopia.
Friday is beautiful, sunny with cottony clouds, the neighborhood is a riot of bluebells and tulips. I do a few calls in the morning, but I’ve booked off an hour and a half to see old friends who are in town, Hamad and Michie. Hamad has just flown in from seeing his parents in Saudi Arabia. Michie has driven up from Portland to pick him since he’s flown into Seattle.
When their black Mercedes pulls up I open the door and Lolo goes bounding out.
“Lolo!” they both exclaim. He is ecstatic to see them, turning to his side and leaning into Michie’s legs as they pet him.
“He’s looking good!” says Hamad enthusiastically.
They’ve known Lolo since he was a puppy. Hamad had never been a dog fan, a cultural thing, he explained. In Saudi Arabia, dogs were dirty and low, not something to be loved. But he grew to appreciate Lolo.
Hamad and Michie had been some of Juan and my closest friends. Hamad and Juan played soccer together. In those years we were part of a fluid international group including Spaniards, Chileans, Saudis, Turks, and a few English. We spent many a Saturday night in the party room in the basement of Hamad and Michie’s old beautiful house clinging to the west Portland hillside.
When Michie went back to her native Japan for a year, we planned a two week trip. We stayed at her mom’s house, a newer home in a neighborhood by the beach in Fujisawa, about an hour outside of Tokyo. Every morning, Michie’s mother would go to the fish market and make us a five-course brunch of grilled fish, rice, miso soup, lotus root salad. Every morning she got Juan a donut to go with his coffee.
It was a magical trip. We took the train into Tokyo. We wandered warrens filled with electronics in Shibuya, strolled the grounds of the imperial palace, ogled the glamorous food court in the basement of Takashimaya on the Ginza. We bought delicate washi-wrapped boxes of sugared grapes as gifts to take home. We ate skewers of chicken cartilage and tiny crabs at an izakaya. We basked in the delicious contradiction of pigtailed and platform-shoed Harajuku girls and a gold Buddha, on display only once every 200 years.
When we left Michie and her mother stood out front, watching us pile into the taxi. We bowed awkwardly to Michie’s mom, thanking her for her kindness, wiping away our tears. Suddenly Juan turned to Michie’s mother and wrapped her in his solid arms.
“This is how we say goodbye in Mexico,” he told her, and Michie dutifully translated. Michie’s mother was as awkward in the embrace as we were with our bows. But it was clear the impulse touched her deeply. In that moment, I remember having love for and envy of Juan, able to abandon convention to show himself so truly.
We returned home changed.
We sit in my living room and drink tea and take in the view of the lake. We talk about Juan, who they haven’t seen in years. I tell them how well he is doing, how it made me happy that he was on his way to what he wanted. I tell them about how differently I look at my life now, in how many ways I’ve reformed my own notions about work and relationships.
“I guess I thought I would move to Seattle, go on some dates and get married again,” I say. “Now I don’t even think that’s important to me, getting married.”
“You are at the cutting-edge of a new lifestyle,” Hamad says. “You don’t need to be married, you are fine, you’re doing great, without a man.” When he says “great” he rolls his r’s slightly.
I take this in for a minute, both a truth and a compliment. Now I am the one who has abandoned convention, to show myself more truly.
When they leave Loli and I escort them back out to the curb. Hamad gives me a tight squeeze.
“The best thing is, after all these years you are still Jen,” he says, his smile wide.
I think, maybe more Jen than ever.
In Portland, Baby Sloane and my grandmother are both cuddly. Sloane is the mini-me of her father, my cousin. She has elfin blue eyes and shock of blond hair. She reminds me of Edison as a baby, a cautious face, hesitant around strangers but a luminous smile for her mom when she picks her up.
My grandmother is still in bed when we arrive, but perks up immediately, propping herself up far enough to carefully unwrap the Easter candy Barbie has brought. I kiss her soft, lined cheek again and again. Her brown eyes are bluish with cataracts. Her dementia has put her on a constant loop of repeating the same questions and forgetting the same answers. She says the Pope has decided to adopt President Obama. “He is a nice man,” she says, unclear if it’s Francis or Barak that she means.
On Monday around 11, I head over to see Jess. We meet at a taco place in North Portland. I’m on the phone, still in my car when I catch her out of the passenger window.
Attached to her hand is a tiny girl in a bright green puffy coat.
“Oh. My. God. I can’t believe it,” I say, hugging Jess.
Lilibet, her little girl is uninterested in our reunion. She tugs at her mom’s hand with full toddler body weight engaged, her face displeased at the pause in the progress.
At the restaurant we sit outside, Lilibet in a high chair, her chest armored in a silicone bib with a pocket to catch wayward food or drink.
“How IS it?” I ask Jess. I can’t tell if she looks pale from motherhood fatigue or because it’s not quite tanning season in the Northwest.
“Well, there is a reason why children traditionally have two parents,” she says in her wry way.
I grill her on a series of questions – what was the pickup like (a week at the Hilton in Addis Abbaba, playing at the pool.) How old is Lilibet? (probably almost two.) Is it overwhelming? (Yes.)
Lilibet sits in her chair and contemplates chips and guacamole, occasionally holding a chip in the air with special delight. Jess has braided her hair in tiny braids, each one wrapped in a sea green hair tie.
“I’m trying to take advantage of all the orphanage behaviors,” says Jess. “Like when it’s bedtime, she gets a bath and then goes straight to bed.”
“She does seem remarkably easy-going,” I observe. She has a toddler’s exuberance but also the self-reliance of someone who doesn’t need constant attention.
I wriggle my finger into one of Lilibet’s fat brown hands. She takes it and then rocks back with a half smile, not sure yet what kind of game we’re playing.
“You are my hero,” I tell Jess, my throat closing up. I can’t help but think how brave she is to do all this on her own.
“You know, when my mom had a stroke I just thought, when she’s gone I’ll have no one. I guess I just felt like it was time to have more meaning in my life.”
When we part ways I feel like I haven’t had enough time, that I’ve wasted it interviewing Jess rather than being with her. Jess and Lilibet come by the car to see Lolo. I open the door and he hops out, immediately peeing on the parking strip, equally unimpressed by our reunion.
When I get in the car I am breathless. Geminii Brett had singled out April 21 for me as a day for evolution around love. My initial thought was I would meet a man, but now I see it is about this, about a little hand, fingers wrapped around mine.
I think of being at Starbucks with Sarah. Asking her why she would wait for a man to get a cat.
For the first time I think, what am I waiting for?
Seath calls me on Monday. I want to hear about the weekend at Rainier, he wants to hear about Portland. We catch up on Sloane, my grandmother, Pope Francis and Obama.
“So I’m kinda thinking about adopting a kid,” I tell him. I recount my visit with Jess and Lilibet.
“I think that would be so great,” he says with feeling. “I’ve always wondered, but I didn’t want to bring it up, but it would just be so great.”
It is like he’s grabbed my hand and squeezed it through the phone.
“You’ve got so much support, you’ve got us and the crew, and Barbie and Brian are moving up.”
“Don’t say anything yet,” I ask. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
I write a couple articles for work. One is called A Kinder, Gentler Corporate Culture. I start to pass it around to people. I send it to one of my favorite clients at Target. She sends me an email back full of positive energy and exclamation points. I take Maeve out to coffee to get feedback. “What I was missing was –“ she starts. I cut her off. “That was not my question. My question was, what did you like about it.” For the moment, I’m uninterested in negativity. Maeve laughs at my blunt redirect.
I send it to some of my planners. One of them writes me back, “In theory I love this.” The “in theory” is so scientific it all but neutralizes the “I love this.” Another co-worker at Deutsch tells me she’s read it and then says, “the one about being nice in the workplace, right?” which makes me wonder if she’s really read it at all.
The article basically says that competition within a workplace works against ideas and individualism. In it, I define my job as an empathetic manager, to help people find the best of themselves and channel that back into work. I’ve written it with Deutsch in mind, the rampant alpha-male culture, the meetings that feel like a western quick draw versus a conversation, a work day that never seems to have an ending.
The more I think about work, the more I see the need for this conversation at Deutsch. I find out one of my favorite wunderkinds there has suffered a breakdown at the end of a 130 hour work week. When I tell Jeffrey the news, I say “How can we have let this happen?” and my hand goes automatically to my heart.
Jeffrey tells me it used to be more humane, more like a family. His youngest son was recently working at Deutsch and quit after 3 months. “He told me, ‘It’s crazy there,’” There is a little twinkle in his eye, like Jeffrey might actually enjoy this brand of crazy. “He said everybody was miserable and wanted to quit. He said it wasn’t where he wanted to spend his time.”
I think silently God love Jeffrey for raising this child. I remember Jeffrey putting together a resume for his son. When he asked his son what he wanted to do in life, his son said, “Hunt and eat my own food.” I told Jeffrey it was the best resume header ever. I realize I admire him for walking away, that I have an envy there.
“So you’ve seen it too, the inhumanity,” I say.
“Yeah, but it’s kind of like there’s a Teflon at the top. They don’t see it.”
A Teflon ceiling.
“I’ll be gone before it changes,” he says, part resignation, part relief.
The Teflon shows itself later when I tell Kim the story. When it is just the story of the wunderkind, she is sympathetic. When I add on that there have been several departures on Target of late, all who have left because of the workload, she says, “Not one of those people came to me and asked if they could do something different.”
I think I see a hardened look on her face that was not there before. She is a beauty evocative of Renaissance paintings: clear pink skin, blue eyes, elegant features. In times past, she had been a protector at the agency, her office full of some of the odder birds at work. The hardness is out of place, a fluorescent light shining on a Vermeer.
“Yes, but Deutsch doesn’t encourage that conversation,” I counter. “Every meeting we celebrate all the people who have left their lives on hold. That’s what gets praise here.”
I leave it at that, knowing it is a bigger hurdle than this one conversation. In the Darwinian management style of the agency, only the strong survive. I’m not sure if I’m going to be around to see it change either.
I have my first interview for the potential job in Seattle. The CEO has incredible energy. She is my age, blond, Canadian, high energy. We talk for 15 or 20 minutes about the importance of vacation (she has just come back from 2 weeks in Hawaii). She tells me about the role. We are easy as old friends. Near the hour mark, her assistant pops in to wave at her for her next meeting, then again 5 minutes later, and 5 minutes after that. She tells her to let her next meeting know she’s running 15 minutes late. She walks me to the front desk.
Twenty minutes after I leave the building I get a call from the HR manager there, asking to set up another time to come in. I ask her a few questions about particulars.
“I just want to check what the culture is like,” I say vaguely.
“Well, it’s mostly 9 to 5, but some people may stay late. By 530 most people are gone.”
I laugh at my own surprise at this, an agency that works til 530. It seems too good to be true. Despite my excitement, I tell my recruiter I want to take it slow. I am thinking about my dating strategy, how I don’t want to rush into something too soon.
Barbie and Brian are in town for Mother’s Day. Sunday morning Brian is up early, clomping around like Godzilla. I wake up and head down the hall into the living room. “What’s all the activity?” I ask. Even Lolo is not sure. He gets up from his rug in the entry way and looks at me, his tail wagging tentatively.
It is sunny already and the lake is flat and glassy so we head out for a walk. Loli stays at home, he’s no longer able to make the full loop. I want to tell my parents that I’m thinking about adoption but I have a flutter of nerves. I take a deep breath and look out to the lake, pink and blue with the morning. I realize that this is a vulnerable moment, the type of vulnerability Suzi has been telling me to practice. Rationally I know my parents will be happy for me, irrationally I worry I’ll be met with all the reasons why it isn’t a good idea. I’m not sure if I’m ready to hear those reasons, if my idea is baked enough yet.
Finally, I get up the nerve and say, “So, I’m looking into adoption. After seeing Jessica, I think I just thought I could do this.”
Then I stop in the middle of the road and burst into tears. “I just don’t want to miss my chance.”
Brian is upset by my tears and puts a hand on my shoulder. Barbie, unwavering gives me a mother’s hug and says, “That’s so great, you’ve always wanted to have a family.”
Brian makes a joke about how they’ll have to move into an in-law suite in the back, how there will be a baby chute between houses.
I feel a relief, anchored the comforting weight of it being real.
Later, I talk to Jess. I have sent her an email with the subject line “I am seriously considering adoption!”
She answers the phone, “Happy Mother’s Day, future mom.”
Barbie and Brian and I go to a new coffee shop called the Tin Umbrella. I’ve been there a couple times, but it’s been a while. It’s bright and airy inside, with art on the walls and a big rickety table holding the cream and sugar. I drink a hemp latte (when in Seattle…), Barbie gets a peach tea and Brian, who’s been deprived of donuts for the day, gets a scone. As we’re leaving I ask the two women behind the counter where the name comes from.
One woman, in her 30’s with medium brown hair and round blue eyes starts in on a story.
“I was a data strategy and marketing consultant, and I was working all over the world in development. But I also did photography, so I was looking for a name that would encompass everything, so I just kept saying ‘I want a big umbrella’. Of course ‘Big Umbrella’ wasn’t available as a URL, neither was ‘Blue Umbrella’.”
Through some misnomer on a friend’s part, the idea of Tin Umbrella came into the picture, and of course, the URL was free. “It just reminded me of all of these tin roof houses I’ve stayed in around the world, and how they sound in the rain, and of course the rain is so Seattle…”
“When I got back to the states I was in a head-on collision at 60 mph. I had a brain injury and couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything. Thank god for Amazon Fresh, grocery delivery saved my life! And as I was lying there I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with my life. I thought, I can walk two blocks to work. I can manage two blocks. And I’d worked already in all of these coffee-growing countries like Ethiopia and Indonesia.”
She goes on to say that she was then hit by a car two more times.
“Through no fault of my own,” she says. She is smiling but her eyes are watery. “Then I just had to ask myself, what’s the common thread between all of this? And it was me. So I had to make a change.”
She tells us about how the neighborhood is gentrifying – in addition to the nail salons and community churches plastering the storefront windows with bible verses, there is a vintage furniture store that has opened up. The block is going to have parking reduced on one side and the sidewalk extended for café seating.
“In some ways, it’s just like the work you were doing before, only here at home,” I observe. “Like you’re not really a coffee shop, you’re a force for change in the neighborhood. That’s kind of an amazing mission.”
I ask her name. It is Joya. She introduces the other woman, who is far less friendly. “She just was in a car wreck too!” Joya says, enthusiastically.
The enthusiasm of a believer in change.
I recognize it.
I tell Jen my news. She shrieks, “What?!! What? Oh my god, back up, back up,”
We meet at her new house. They’ve just moved two weeks ago and there are still empty rooms and remnant boxes lying about. The remodel is beautiful, fresh and fun, just like Jen herself. She points out the vintage lamp in the stairwell, three orange glass pendants, opaque and glossy like giant hard candies. “Don’t you love it?” she says and her face sparkles.
I tell her about my conversation with Jeffrey, the line drawn in the sand.
“I just saw that there were two lives, one on the side Jeffrey was standing on, another that was waiting to be built.”
She is beaming, her straight white teeth and tan face lit up like one of her new lights. “Jen, I am so happy, I have seen this future for you. I’m just so glad you’ve seen it for yourself!”
“Whatever you need, I’m here,” she says. “I’ll even go to Ethiopia with you.”
I think about how Jen and I have been tied together by big life moments. The early morning run before she left for Alaska to be with her mom when she died. The calls during the first weeks of my break up, trying to reason Juan’s abrupt departure. The Friday before her daughter was born when she and I sat on her son’s bed and cried, me for Juan, she for her father, men taken from our lives by divorce and death. Her week-long stay at my house after her mastectomy. I made her grilled cheese sandwiches and brought her glasses of water for her pain-killers. She lay on the couch in a haze, watching me vacuum up dog hair.
Now, Ethiopia.
Our eyes glisten with tears.
I manage to choke out the words, “There’s no one better.”
Tieneke texts me that Suzi has told her to call me. I finish up a meeting and dial her from my cell, earbuds in my ears. “I’m taking you with me to lunch!” I tell her as she picks up. I grab my bag and head to the front where I’ve parked.
“In the meantime, I’ll just center us,” says Tieneke and we both burst into laughter. It is like Suzi is here with us on the phone.
Tieneke is thinking about work. “I’m trying to figure out if I really love what I do.” She has her own business, a production house where she partners with a director. Listening to her talk, it feels stressful. She and her partner have different working styles, different priorities on what they should be doing.
“But don’t we all just have to do something, to make money I mean? Do you really have to love it?” she asks in a half-hearted way.
“Well, I fell like I fell into something I naturally do anyway – getting to the heart of something, trying to understand why people do what they do. I mean, I do that recreationally. There are definitely things I don’t like about my job, but I would say there are plenty of things I love about planning.”
Somehow the conversation makes me feel light and clear, like I am surrounded by an endless sea of options. I log this clarity for my future interviews in Seattle or beyond.
I tell her when I think she is well-suited to production – she has always been into music, fashion and culture.
“On your best day, on your best production, do you love it? That’s the thing to ask yourself,” I say. “Separate the emotions of the business and the complications of a bad production.”
I get to the café and order a salad. On the phone, Tieneke says, “OK, I want to switch gears now. Tell me what’s going on with you?”
I tell Tieneke about the interview in Seattle. And that I have decided to adopt a baby.
She is enthusiastic about both.
Then Tieneke says, “Maybe all that time you were looking for your international man it was really this baby.”
“Oh my god, that’s totally going in the blog,” I tell her.
I have a session with Suzi. I tell her about broadcasting the baby news.
“In a weird way, I feel like this will even be good for my dating life. When I told this friend of mine at the gym, one of the trainers there, he said, ‘Yeah JP, and your man is just gonna be like ‘let me get with THIS.’”
“I’m glad you recognize that,” says Suzi. “This is EXACTLY related to your intimate relationship.”
Later, I think about how nervous I was to tell even my parents. Now I can feel my defenses melting away, maybe even the defenses that have kept me from meeting the right man. How living in vulnerability has brought me to a place that is so much more charged and alive than where I was even two months ago.
“I can just feel your consciousness has opened up,” Suzi says. “You’ve created this whole new huge space!”
We talk about my interview. I am excited, and I also want to be clear on my evaluation of Deutsch. I don’t want to walk out from short-sightedness.
“It’s so funny, I spent months chasing the CEO at Deutsch and I could never get on his calendar. My meetings would get rescheduled. Then I started this project on the Latino market and he ends up wandering into our meeting. I explain to him what it is. Ten minutes later, he tours a group of new clients by us. Like when I just did what I knew was right, he came to me. It’s like I know I’m on to something, I just have to keep at it, and not worry it isn’t sellable.”
“It IS sellable, it just may not be sellable at Deutsch,” Suzi corrects. “There is nothing the planet needs more than what you’re on to.”
I take a deep breath and bask in the affirmation.
“There is a golden thread, and it will continue whether you stay at Deutsch or leave. Do you see that?”
“Totally,” I say. I am thinking about this new job, how there’s the potential to do the same thing I was trying to do at Deutsch – create more diversity, creativity and empathy.
“You’re at a change in consciousness. We don’t know if what you’re selling hasn’t been effective at Deutsch because of Deutsch or because you haven’t been living at this higher level of consciousness, of seeing yourself as the authority.”
I have forgotten my notebook, so I scribble notes on the back of Post-its I had in my bag. They are the notes I took from my first reading with Geminii Brett, notes about what my chart predicted. The past and the future, two sides of the same Post-it note.
Friday I have my second round of interviews. I am energized, even though I’ve come in late the night before and gotten up early. I sit in a conference room and people filter in to meet me.
The themes emerge. There is frustration. There is fear. There is antsiness to get going. By the end of the day, the real problems have clarified themselves. I see what I could do with this job, what I could make of it.
I see how big it could be.
Saturday I have a massage. I start out rattling away to Krista about the interview, about adopting. But quickly I melt into a hum on the table. Krista works out a few spots on my back then moves into reiki. I’m lost somewhere, face down on the table, with only the faintest awareness of her hands hovering over my back and cradling my head. Suddenly I have an urge to pee. It is searing, a light interrupting the complete darkness. Krista holds the sheet for me to turn over and I mumble that I need to get up to use the bathroom.
“No one is here,” she says. I can tell she’s thinking that I can sneak out naked.
“I’ll just put on my poncho,” I say.
Krista leaves the room and I pull on my poncho. Even through my fog from the massage, the poncho is shorter than my modesty would like. It’s only Krista and she’s seen almost every inch of me. Still, I pull at the hem.
I step out into the glaring light of the hallway.
And slip.
I let out a cry as I fall. On the ground, I am a human line drawn between the doorway of the treatment room and the kitchen on the other side.
Krista says Oh my god and rushes to my side. “My feet were slick from the massage oil,” I whimper, as if Krista required explanation. I stay on the floor for a minute. “I think I’m OK,” I say. I’ve fallen on my left side. Everything is throbbing from my neck to my foot. Gingerly, I hobble to the bathroom.
In the end, I hardly pee at all. As I climb back on the table, I say to Krista, “What was THAT about?”
“I don’t know! As I was doing reiki, I was imaging you with roots,” she says.
“Maybe that was it, pulling me to the ground!” We both laugh.
“It’s so funny, like my entire left side is sore. Reminding me it’s there.” I can’t relax into the massage anymore, my brain is puzzling through the possible message behind the fall.
When I get dressed my knee is scraped and swollen and I can’t raise my left arm. Later, Carina diagnoses me with a dislocated shoulder. She waggles my arm and pops it back in. For a minute I am nauseous, the shock of the relocation sends me spinning. I lie on Edison’s bed. Carina brings me a silver bowl in case I need to vomit.
I remember my graduation day from Berkeley, another moment where I had a lot on my mind. I was walking through the student union on the way to turn in my honors thesis. In one slight twist I was suddenly on the ground, my knee dislocated. I took the stage at graduation on crutches.
I think of the woman at the Tin Umbrella.
I hope I am not struck by a car.
Sunday I am writing the blog. The sky is considering rain. Lolo is asleep on his side next to me, his fur still patchy from a spring shed, one paw curled in towards his chest. After a bit I follow Lolo’s lead and turn over onto my side pulling a blanket over me. In my half-sleep, KEXP tells me about a band that has just played. Their album is called Loom.
And I have an aha. This is exactly what I’m talking about right now.
The loom of an unknown future, waiting vast and untenable out there in the darkness.
The loom where all threads, all disparate colors –an adopted child, a new job with a free fifth day, a nurturing man – come together to form one single fabric.
The loom that is a woman’s tool of creation.
jendate 