If God Were A Hummingbird

I have been in my head so much lately that a song on the radio last night, as I drove home from the gym, warranted a volume up to blasting.  I have not been having nearly enough fun with very little emphasis on laughing at all.  Far too serious and far too self involved.  Not a good recipe for a job seeker or for a person who tends towards the dark end of life's spectrum.

Actually, tending towards the dark end of the pool allows me to feel compassion for others though like many humans, I am most demanding of myself.  Cultivating a gentle hand for myself was not part of my childhood lessons and so I filled in the gaps.  Or the part of me that tried to make sense of a family home as violent and abusive as ours led me to decide it must be "my fault" if bad things happen.  You know who you are so just know that I know.

I had two job interviews in the last seven days and I am still waiting to find out if I cleared the bar on both.  This silence that follows an interview often means something less than kind for those of my ilk.  And so, I have tried something different as I wait but don't wait or rather hope without knowing what hope really feels like.

I imagined that in a bay off the coast of somewhere there is a ship anchored with the employees of one store where I interviewed.  They are standing on the deck in their company sweatshirts and they are looking towards me.  At times, they cheer. At times they shout encouragement to keep rowing, keep rowing.

I am in a perfect Nantucket, white row boat with a royal blue stripe around the rim.  I pull on well worn wooden oars and my dog Rosie is stationed at the bow, her huge, white angel wings extended like a sail themselves. Rosie does that dog snot thing where she breathes in the sea air and blows snot out her long, Greyhound nose.  She looks back at me from time to time as I pull the oars against the incoming tide. 

At times this week while raking, weeding, spreading compost, sweeping and hoping, I reminded myself that I am still out there rowing.  Sometimes there is the voice of the people on board telling me to keep on and sometimes it is the benevolent voice in myself that tells me to hope because hoping is worth it.  I am worth it.

Today there was another boat in the water which held one of my co-workers who had a second interview at an awesome company called Traditional Medicinals. She is a woman who has suffered through a variety of betrayals at our place of work and who also expects the worst but deserves the very best.  And so I placed her in a boat with a man in a black chauffeur's cap rowing her white boat with red stripe to the shore where she would go for her interview. Maybe that is just the kind of prayer someone needs to get to the finish line.

I am home now writing and getting ready to shower and do my homework for a college class I am taking.  I am feeling emotional and kind of sad and I am still rowing there in the bay towards the ship with my new co-workers waiting for me. 

A thought came to me this afternoon as I freshened up the fruit tree rings in Commons B & C, as a hummingbird clicked away and drank from a nearby feeder.  What if God is a hummingbird?  Every flower would be red and full of pollen because the "God" in everyone, our benevolent better selves in other words, wants the best for us.  The "God" in everyone is there in the row boat whether we are aware of it or not.

The Verve Of Margaret Thatcher

Okay, I do drive a British car and she does wear the Union Jack on her side view mirrors.  She is a tiny little sprite of a car that can escalate the freeway entrance at a very high rate of speed.  I am in love with my car.  However, it is a fact that I was raised in the era when the Irish Republican Army was at war with England, killing people with bombs that rocked Britain for some time.  Scary times.  Fearless Celts.  My kin.

Having lived in a household with a Celtic, alcoholic mother whose favorite saying was something like, "I am sending bullets to the IRA," going to see The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep yesterday was as much about an unceasing admiration of everything Ms. Streep does and the times I lived through historically.  Having a Celtic ancestry means you feel the domination of the British empire in your flesh.  Your hackles get raised by the inference and arrogance of the Brits because "your people" survived as poor serfs under their cruel power.  Ancestry is funny like that.  I wonder if there is gene for it.

We celebrated our anniversary by trekking to Fairfax in Marin County to chase another stupendous vegetarian/vegan lunch.  We went to sit in a very sunny window table at Cafe Lotus which serves gluten free/vegan Indian food.  The aroma in the small restaurant hit me like a lunch time truck and I was ready to order everything on the menu.

After consuming vegan Samosas, Bengan Bharta and garlic vegan Nan with brown rice, we were pretty darn happy.  We walked the small town of Fairfax and came upon The Scoop-organic, homemade ice cream, and I ordered a "real double" which was a very large two scoop extravaganza.  In fact, it took me quite some time to finish it and I was finally full. 

We eventually made our way to The Fairfax Theatre in town to watch The Iron Lady.  From beginning to end, I was moved, maddened, sorrowful, delighted and swept up by Meryl Streep's performance.  Ms. Streep is Margaret Thatcher and it left me thinking about my own path in life right now.  I have often felt that I wanted to do something that mattered, on a smaller scale, much smaller and I try.  I do try very hard to do just that.

There are parallels for me.  Friday I nearly quit my job because Mr. Big I and II went to clean up the irrigation shed because it was raining.  I was left raking in the rain and now soaking wet, and slowly but surely became incensed.  I made a decision to go find an indoor project myself but by then I was furious with my bloody sword drawn so to speak. My Celtic background fuels my sense of outrage at these kinds of things with a kind of bloodthirsty ire that almost seems I can hear the pipes coming up behind me.

This is the kind of outright sexist crap that I deal with every day.  Mr. Big II never gets that he is doing something unfair.  It almost seems that both of my co-workers cannot fathom what it is like to endure discrimination even though they are both from another culture, another male dominated world.  In fact, singling out their hard working, female counterpart for outright derision and isolation seems normal.  They don't even get it.  I find it exhausting. 

I write all this because in The Iron Lady, Thatcher's story as a woman entering the very kind of world in which I work is depicted in a way that allows us to feel the unfairness as well as her unrelenting force of personal strength and fortitude.  I have that also.  Most women have this kind of courage because we usually have to fight our way to the surface.  It is called male priviledge but that is really cleaning it up quite a bit. It is business as usual and we don't let it break us.  On the contrary.

In fact I have an interview for another job tomorrow and the pipers will be playing behind me as I enter the building to show my face to be one of reliability, strength and unrelenting character.  I am a great employee and co-worker and I refuse to continue to be left raking in the rain. 

They shall "rue the day" as Maggie would say.