Magic words and mondays

I love Mondays.

Mondays mean quiet. Mondays mean recuperation and rest from a crazy weekend of waiting tables. Mondays are my time, the time I sit down, coffee in hand, and remember who I am.

Signs of spring

A recent weekend was especially hectic. A few Saturday nights ago, the restaurant I work at closed for a private wedding reception, which left me conflicted. I knew the moment would come, and I braced myself for it: the moment the photographer walked in the door.

I would watch him or her scrupulously, critiquing every shot, envisioning how it would look in my mind, criticizing. But it's only because, for this night, I was on this side: serving Prime Rib and Chicken Marsala instead of being where I love to be - my second favorite place in the world to be besides behind my dog team: behind a camera.

As the night went on, while tending to my tables, I couldn't help but focus on the photographer. At one point, a gorgeous halo of light fell right on the bride and the groom sitting at the head table. I walked over to the photog, who was sitting at the bar, drinking a beer and eating Prime Rib to tell him about the moment begging for capture with his Canon Mark IV. He shrugged and took another bite, indifferent to the golden light of the setting sun.
 
My favorite magic words these days are these: "you're phased."

Those of you in the service industry are undoubtedly familiar with this phrase. For servers, these words mean you are slowly being phased out of actively taking tables. Things have died down enough that you stop taking tables in your section and can begin your side work. It means you will soon be leaving work. 

Before long, I was phased. Once I finished my side work, I felt especially downhearted. I left the photographer and the reverie of the reception and wandered outside. Where I work is a bustling area in a college town, a block full of bars and taverns, restaurants and studios. I walked across the street to another pub for a beer. Such a relief to sit down, the beer went down all too easily and I had another. I decided to leave before I was tempted to have another.

As I walked to my truck, eager, hopeful faces of college kids passed by in all directions. One young man with a vaguely familiar face stumbled up to me, clearly already quite drunk at only 11:30 p.m.

"Hey!" he said, slurring his speech. He touched my hand, his blue eyes sparkled with a youthful exuberance. He was tan, with sandy brown hair and an aqua green button-down shirt. "You were my server!"

I smiled. I didn't know whether to be flattered or startled by his simple recognition; I think I was a little of both.

"Yes," I replied, returning his touch by steadying him with a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, I was. And it seems like you made the most of that open bar!"

"Can I give you a dollar?" he asked. Now I was taken aback.

"No, you can keep your dollar," I laughed.

"What if I give you twenty?" he asked. He reached for my hand again, this time cupping the crisp bill between his and my own palm.

"What?" I said, flabbergasted. "Why would you want to give me twenty?"

"Because you did a great job ... and I know how hard it is." He said, at 22 years old, he had recently started his own landscaping company and "rakes in two-thousand dollars a day." I don't know that I believe him, but he insisted I keep the 20-spot. He was so drunk, I doubted he would remember giving it to me, but I was quite thankful for his generosity. He hugged me before stumbling further down the pub-lined sidewalk. He smelled like Old Spice Swaggar and Bud Light.

Who wakes up and thinks to themselves, "I want to be a starving artist when I grow up?" I sure didn't. But somehow, I feel fortunate and grateful for the random blessings of strangers, and the lessons of this time period.

I am the sum of all of these parts: mother, sister, daughter, lover, dog driver, writer, photographer, and yes, server of Chicken Marsala. I am not too proud to accept the gifts of random strangers. And I am pulling myself up by my bootstraps, one boot lace at a time.

Thank you, handsome young man in the dapper aqua green shirt who handed me a 20-spot that night on the sidewalk. I hope karma returns your generosity one-hundredfold. Namaste.

The time I was a nomad: how I discovered horses, maxi pads and pornography

The year I entered sixth grade, my parents moved four times. As if sixth grade isn't difficult enough, try being the "new kid" on perpetual repeat. My family’s semi-nomadic lifestyle was spawned by a dream.   

Mom and dad had honeymooned in Naples, Florida in 1970, and ever since, dad dreamed of living there. So, in 1984 dad sold the family business and headed for Naples. Life in Naples was fascinating for an 11-year-old girl from Ohio. The Gulf of Mexico was a veritable playground of wild creatures not at all like anything I encountered in Ohio. One evening, after returning from dinner, the peaceful trill of crickets was thwarted by the startled screams of my mother from the family room. 

I accompanied dad into the family room to discover mom in near hysterics over a bright green tree frog stuck to the wall.  There was much clamor about how to capture and transport the thing back into the wilds of our tropical backyard. We opted for a large bowl, about the size of a Cool Whip container and threw it over the frog. Slowly, heroically, dad slid the lid of the container between the wall and the opening of the bowl, trapping the frog safely inside. 

Then there were encounters with black snakes.  

For the sake of clarification, Florida's "Black Racer" is non-venomous. But try telling that to an Ohio transplant.

My dad was trimming hedges in our Naples backyard one sunny afternoon when mom and I saw him suddenly flinging the hedge trimmers wildly into the bushes. In a matter of seconds, he hacked the neatly-trimmed hedges with irrevocable damage. Mom and I ran out to see what had prompted such a spontaneous fit of flailing, only to discover a large black racer lounging deep within the shadows the the hedges.

Dad managed to kill it, but not long after, a dozen or so mini-black racers hatched in our backyard. Every time mom went out the sliding door to hang laundry, she stomped her feet with each step in an attempt to get the snakes to clear out of her way.

It seemed we had just settled in when we were whisked off again: this time to Orlando. I was sad to leave our stucco three-bedroom ranch in Naples. Mom dragged the boxes out, which were still labeled "bedroom" and "kitchen" and I knew there was nothing I could do. Protesting was futile.
Things weren’t going as planned for dad in the insurance sales business, and when the going got tough, my parents got packing.

I learned to pack boxes with precision, wrapping fragile items in newspaper. Each city seemed to offer hope for a fresh start, but whittled away quickly. After a brief stint in Orlando's "Chickasaw Woods," an upper middle class development, we landed at the home of my mom’s sister in Melbourne. It was here that I discovered, among other things, how to ride a horse, what it meant to have a period, and pornography.

My three older cousins were all boys. The youngest one was 17 when we moved in. They didn't talk to me much. All I knew of them were that they were all into older muscle cars, and the youngest had a giant poster of Farrah Fawcett in a bathing suit on his bedroom wall.

Chery Teigs was on the opposite wall.

I was 11 years old, staring in the buxom bosom of these voluptuous women. Their flowing 80's feathered hair and glowing skin seemed to embody what a woman should be and what boys liked. I struggled to find my place in this world.

I had always been a shy, tomboyish-type with too much belly flub, what my mom called "baby fat" even though I was 11. My favorite thing in the world was my hamster, Critter. The year before, when my pre- pubescent breasts started to blossom before any of the other girls in my class, I wore a light weight jacket to school every day, all day, in an effort to hide the cone-shaped breasts that had become my shame.

And yet, my body kept changing, stirring within me new feelings. My parents' money problems and career struggles became muted to the hum of my own thoughts and concerns: like, about boys in the new school in Melbourne, why I had to start wearing a bra, what the aching cramping feeling was in my stomach, and trying absorb life in a bi-lingual school where I was a minority among African American, Hispanic and Puerto Rican children.

One Saturday, my youngest cousin's girlfriend, Darlene, asked me if I wanted to learn how to ride a horse. She lived in an orphanage nearby, and the kids in the home had horses. I felt bad that she had no parents, but having horses seemed like kinda a trade off.

Darlene introduced me to Cassy, an 18 year old gentle dappled grey mare Quarter horse. We spent the day riding around the arena. Darlene taught me the basics of Western (heels back, straight back, relaxed shoulders) and showed me the difference between a Western and an English saddle. The difference was clear to me: English was just way tiny and more uncomfortable looking. She then asked me if I wanted to try riding bare back. I was nervous, but jumped in, reassured Cassy's gentle demeanor.

Darlene led us around the arena walking at first, until I became used to the gait of the horse and how to hold on with my thighs. Darlene showed me how the horse read my body language through the contact my body made with her back.

"Keep your legs in the same position you would if you had your feet in stirrups," Darlene instructed. She told me to keep my back straight and sit forward in order to maintain my balance. She then let go of Cassy and I walked her around the arena myself, proud of my accomplishment.

I squeezed her sides a little and called her up into an easy trot. At first, my butt collided with her back, bumping up and down. But then I caught onto her gait - which was nice and smooth - and learned to move with her movement.

That day started the beginning of many years of a love of horses for me. As Darlene drove back to my aunt's house in her little MG sports car, I felt somehow like I had crossed over into some new realm of adulthood.

I didn't realize how very literal that was when, to my surprise, I found blood in my underwear when I went to the bathroom back home. I fastened a maxi pad into the clean white crotch of a new pair of underwear. I came out into the den feeling like I had somehow arrived, like I was a woman, akin to Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Teigs after all.

Later that night, perhaps out of boredom, curiosity or a combination of the two, I started rummaging through bags of things in the back half of the room I stayed in. The room had been a later addition to the house, added right off of the den, and my middle older cousin had previously lived in the room. There were bags of his things left behind. I had no business searching through his things. But nothing could have prepared me for what I found. 

Tucked under a sheet I found a plastic bag of the grocery variety. Nosy, I pulled the bag out from it's hiding place and started to unwrap its contents. Imagine my surprise when I saw, on the cover of a stack of magazines of the same variety, a nearly naked woman. Her head was thrown back in ecstasy, her breasts exposed with a man's tie wrapped around her neck. She wore a black lace garter belt, and nothing more. 

I felt a mix of shame and curiosity come over me. I couldn't resist but to pull the rest of the contents out of the bag. Names like "Dirty Girl" and "Private" and "Penthouse" spilled out. I had never seen a penis before, and suddenly, all variety of penis's stared at me: black ones, pink ones, huge ones, small ones; penis's stuffed in all variety of orifices. I had never looked at my own body in such detail, and now the most private, intimate parts of other people were exposed during intimate activities with other people's private parts. 

Was this why my older cousin's lusted after Farrah Fawcett?

I felt confused, ashamed, and somehow strangely aroused. Is this what people did when they loved each other? Is this what I would eventually have to do? 

Suddenly, I lamented the maxi pad between my legs. Suddenly, I no longer wanted to be a woman, but remain the child I once was. The child I was leaving behind.

Mimosas and martinis: the fine madness of waiting tables

Rejection letters always start off the same. Thank you for your interest. After careful consideration, we've chosen another candidate. blah blah blah blah.

My "stack" - rejection letters

I've started a small collection of rejection letters. Some may say this is masochistic. I thought so, too, when I'd heard of people saving rejection letters in the past. A friend once saved every rejection letter he'd received from the literary journals he'd submitted work to.

Each letter (and a lot of them are electronic, so I don't have hard copies) is a reminder of something I wanted, something I invested and believed in. And, I have to believe that with each rejection comes the possibility of honing my skills, building character, an opportunity to adapt and add grace to my life.

I started waiting tables two weeks ago, and so far, here's what I know: it's a hella more difficult to wait tables at 40 than it was at 25. But, I walked in on a Monday to fill out an application, and walked back into the same restaurant on Wednesday ready to serve. It's a fairly swanky, one-of-a-kind local place where people order mimosas with Sunday brunch and martinis with Porterhouse steaks.

Here's what else I know: you have to be willing. When you are willing, opportunities present themselves. 

Author Cheryl Strayed said in Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, “Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

My small quiet room is a bustling room of mimosas and martinis, of chicken marsalas and porterhouse steaks, of American Express and Visa. And every day I'm hustling.

For whatever reason, this is what presented itself to me at this time. I've chosen to embrace it with love and as much grace as I can muster. I have to believe there is a method to the madness.

I'm lying on my hammock half dozing, lulled by a warm breeze that sways the hammock gently from side to side. Above me, tiny buds emerge from the small stand of dogwood trees that support the hammock cradling me; beyond the branches, the sky is a delicious azure. Bald eagles screech and  red-winged black birds call from trees surrounding the Ranch's seven acres.

I am savoring this day off and have vowed to stay off my feet -- and outside -- as much as possible. I've curled up with a copy of Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk,  which seems perfect.

I open the book to a random page, and find this:

“Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.”

Amen. 

Thanks to my friend Jim for recommending The Cloister Walk. 

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

About two weeks ago, I received an email from a recruiter who found my profile/resume on monster.com. Her email explained that she was impressed with the versatility of my skill set, and that my kind of diversity and original, creative thinking  is exactly what her company - a large manufacturer of "over 510,000 different products used to maintain facilities, solve problems, and fuel the imagination" - strives to bring on board. She ended her email with a request for a phone interview and an attachment for a job description that I couldn't, for the life of me, decipher or decode, so thick was the jargon.

Now, mind you, I spent eight years critically reading, processing, thinking about and churning out words. I've waded through an entire year of Shakespeare and all 52 of his plays; slogged my way begrudgingly through all of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; devoured all 800 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses (as well as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners);  and spent an entire summer with the entire collection of Willa Cather's novels. I also managed within those eight years to produce God-only-knows how many 20-page essays as well as 100 pages of a master's thesis fulfilling the requirement for my creative writing program. 

If anyone knows drivel, I know drivel. And this job description was full of it. 

Still, what did I have to lose.

Wednesday

So, after a successful initial phone interview, I headed to the company headquarters for a three hour interview despite coming down with the first head cold I'd had since I could remember. I stopped at a drug store on the way to the interview for some pseudoephadrine-filled goodness, then headed to the interview. It was a beautiful Wednesday as my gps lead the way through the corporate landscape to the building that would be my destination. The atmosphere was modern, corporate and sterile inside; row upon row of cubicles filled a giant, open room.

A perky older lady with an updo glanced at me through her bifocals at the reception desk. 

"I have a meeting with Cathy at 1:30," I explained. 

She looked quickly at her day planner, then asked, "Oh, are you Shannon?"  

"Yes," I nodded. She smiled warmly and handed me a clipboard with a three-page application. "If you could fill this out, I will let Cathy know you're here." She smiled briefly, dismissing me to a corner of the reception area next to an art-deco looking sculpture of giant rectangles in primary colors stacked in an alternating pattern. 

I met with Cathy, a slightly rotund blond with a button nose in a mundane burgundy cardigan and matching t-shirt. Very "office casual." She spoke a language I did not speak, referring to a large catalog of over 500,000 products. 

"Clearly we care a lot about presentation," she said. "You can tell that by this catalog of our products. The paper is of the highest quality, and even though it is thin, it is superior in strength." She pinched her fingers along the edge of about five pages of the giant catalog and picked the whole thing up by these pages as a demonstration.

She went on, "Our signature catalog contains more than 500,000 of the highest-quality, highest-demand products, and our supply chain and logistics management allows us to deliver those products to our customers quickly and reliably."

I met with Allison, a bubbly 20-something with calf-length boots and blond highlights through her mouse-brown hair. She spoke the same language as Cathy. I asked for clarification about what the position entailed. 

"Your job as a Generalist would be to guide our diverse clientele quickly and effectively through our enormous inventory to the specific products they need to meet their business goals," said Allison without skipping a beat. 

I listened attentively. As it turned out, Allison formerly worked in my field, in health education, and knew a former colleague of mine from the medical school I worked at two years ago. We discussed the struggles with grant-funded positions and why health educators aren't valued more in the medical field over nurse educators. 

I met with Beth, who would be my manager. She explained her vision of the Generalist position. 

"This job as I see it is not only to quickly and efficiently supply customers with the products they need, it is to ferret out more information from them so they do not have to ask the same questions the next time. Our job is to figure out what the customer needs before they even need it."r 

So this is a customer service job answering phones and taking orders. The picture finally began to come into focus. 

"Escape"

I left feeling confident I would receive a job offer.  I thought of the relief I would feel receiving, finally, the first paycheck and how I could finally get caught up financially. 

Thursday

But then, a dread began to fill my heart. My career spans fifteen years in education and non-profit work. I am driven by jobs that do something good for others, give something back. What would this job provide? At the end of the day, I could go home knowing I helped Mr. Jones find the perfect air carbon-gouging electrodes? Sure, I could catch up on my credit card bill, but where is the intrinsic value? 

Friday finds me in near panic mode, convinced I would be locked into a corporate job that lured me in with its compelling salary and sexy predictability. 

So imagine my shock when I opened a rejection letter from none other than the "industry leader in distribution, operations and customer service." A generic form letter, Cathy stated that upon review of my credentials, they had chosen a candidate that more closely matched their needs. 

I sighed with relief, thanking God for narrowly escaping corporate hell. 

Then, I scratched my chin, furrowed my brow and thought, "who the hell do they think they are? Rejection letter! Pfft!"

It's hard to receive a rejection letter, even when it's from a position you don't necessarily want. But I seem to receive them weekly these days. I feel a solidarity with the thousands of unemployed masses seeking to find that golden opportunity, seeking to find that someone who will recognize our talents for what they are and scoop us up into their arms.

I keep trying to understand the lesson I am supposed to learn from all of this. I am trying to accept that I am exactly where I need to be right now, despite the fact that I want desperately to change where I am, both in latitude and longitude, as well as figuratively.

 Monday

Perhaps what I need is another job waiting tables and bar tending.  I put on some make up, curl my hair, and put on something other than a hoodie and sweatpants and head to town to an upper scale restaurant/bar. I meet with the manager who I spoke with on the phone just two days before. He is middle aged, clearly anxious for he is fidgety, constantly looking around, wringing his hands.

By Monday afternoon, I am employed as the newest member of their wait staff and bar tending crew.

Forty years old, a masters degree, and 15 years of experience in non-profit outreach, education and communications/PR and I am a bartender. It might not make a dent in the $85k I accrued in graduate school, I might not find the satisfaction or intrinsic value of "doing good" divvying out martinis and plates of Chicken Parmesan. But maybe, just maybe I can get caught up on my credit card.

Shannon Miller is a freelance writer and photographer from northeast Ohio.  Her worthless resume can be viewed here