Lost and Found

“Those who wander are not always lost.” - J. R.R. Tolkien

There is a new love in my life. His name is Tim. He’s from the U.K. and in the brief time since we’ve known each other, he has changed my life. Don’t worry. Mr. Clark hasn’t been ousted. Tim is the voice in my new little TomTom GPS unit. And, he and I just can’t get enough of each other.

For years I have been lost – everywhere I go, all of the time. I have absolutely no memory for place, direction or land mark. I have no sense of direction, and I don’t pay very good attention. In our family the joke has always been, “Whatever way Mom says to go, go the other way and you’ll get there.” And, almost 100-percent of the time that is right.

You can imagine how hard it is to ferry soccer teams, and birthday parties, and groups of kids places when you have no idea where you are or how to get where you’re going. I did that for years and it was very stressful – for me and my passengers.

Later in life I find myself all too often, stumbling around Atlanta and NE Georgia, trying to find the coffee shop where I’m to meet a prospective photo client bride, or the park where I’m supposed to shoot a family’s portraits, or the gymnastics studio where I’m to take pictures of a kid’s birthday party.

There’s nothing quite as harrowing as getting lost on the way to take pictures of a wedding, and weighing out when to call the bride and tell her that her photographer will be “a little bit late due to traffic,” all the while screaming at Mr. Clark on the phone things like, “I don’t know where I am! If I knew where I was I wouldn’t be lost! Just tell me how to get there!”

And, driving around late at night, making U-Turn after U-turn on some dark Georgia farm road after shooting a “quaint country wedding,” is no way to end a day.

The last of these adventures happened a few weeks ago, when my assistant and I were nearly an hour late to a wedding at some hard to find church on the far side of Buckhead. I had worn Mr. Clark out, yelling at him on the phone to “find me and tell me where to go,” as he sat at home frantically Google mapping possible locations and routes. I had worn my assistant out insisting that she “check the Mapquest directions one more time and see if you can find us on the map…”

I had sweated off all my makeup due to the exertion of all that yelling and I was about to have to call the bride and tell her we’d be an hour late due to “a big traffic jam on I-85” when my phone rang. It was the bride. A funeral at the church had run over time, so “things were running about an hour late,” and, she hoped we could get a cup of coffee somewhere or something…” Whew!

That night when we got home, my assistant and I informed Mr. Clark we had decided the business should buy a GPS, but we needed him to shop around for the cheapest possible system with a voice - there had to be a voice. There would be no more Mapquesting or Google searches for us.

Great minds work in similar ways, so Mr. Clark informed us he had already been shopping and had found a nice little talking unit on-line. It was not new, but recently refurbished and with the $20 rebate, it would only cost $60. Sold! It sounded like such a nice little unit, my assistant ordered one for herself that same night.

And, that is how Tim came into my life.

Since he arrived, Tim and I have been on a couple of little day trips together, to several bride meetings, to a family photo shoot, and to two more Atlanta weddings. And, words cannot express how much I enjoy just going where Tim tells me to go and turning when Tim tells me to turn.

My poor sense of direction sometimes takes over, and I’ll think, “I’m sure when we did the site visit, that church was this way…” So, I veer from Tim’s path to try my own. Tim’s lovely. He never gets angry or yells. He just says he’s “Recalculating route,” then a few moments later he gently, but firmly gets me back on track.

I don’t know yet, how never being lost may change my life. After all, it’s been a 50 year run of never knowing where I am or how to get to where I’m going – both literally and figuratively. I can’t help but wonder if being found on the road won’t carry over into the rest of my life…After all, it’s a different way to travel – being able to sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing you’ll arrive at your destination on time and without a bunch of U-turns…

Wreck

It’s 5 a.m. and I just got home from a 3p.-3a. Emergency Room social worker shift, during which I dealt with two families whose lives have been forever altered by a bad wreck on the Athens 10 loop.

According to the police, “the vehicle flipped multiple times.” One person was instantly killed, the other was transported to the ER badly injured. There was a baby car seat with some blood on it in the vehicle, but no sign of a baby in the seat or on the scene. Later we found out the baby was with a relative – nowhere near the vehicle when his mother died, in that unfortunate, terrible wreck tonight…

Horrible, horrible stuff – telling the deceased woman’s family she had died, then telling the surviving patient’s family the neurologist “has yet to determine the possible extent of the damage done by the head injuries sustained in the accident,”…Lots of people, lots of tears, lots of inconceivably awful emotions and phone calls and physical reactions there in the ER amongst those folks on this night…

I cried for both of the families I dealt with tonight, as I drove home from work on those eerie deserted 4 a.m. roads, in that weird 4 a.m. fog and non-light…One family is now dealing with an unimaginable loss. The other is gathered in an ICU waiting room trying to cope with “neurological complications as yet undetermined” and other severe injuries…

As I pulled safely into my driveway, I wondered why it’s okay for us all to have our heads so far up our behinds. There is stuff that really matters in this life, and there is stuff that does not, but must be dealt with anyway…
Flash forward to another part of my life – Barrow Journal columnist/writer. This week’s paper came out today, and partly as a way to fall asleep, and partly as a way to keep current, when I got into bed, I opened up this week’s issue…

A big drug bust by the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with other law enforcement agencies - 41 arrested, 59 warrants still pending – excellent work! Drugs are a terrible problem and a personal curse on all those who can’t escape their grip…

There was the verbage back and forth about the county CFO personnel board hearing…maybe the CFO did something wrong – maybe she didn’t…It’s not clear by anything the board of commissioners or personnel review board said…But, then, why do we care? She’s only the person in charge of the county’s finances during a time of major economic crisis for our county…

And, there’s the he said/she said amongst The Barrow Journal bloggers about what’s going on in local politics…I’m sorry, but an opinion worth reading amongst all those anonymous blogger comments is rare…so negative, mean spirited and ill spoken, so many of those comments are…

Barrow County’s CFO needs to simply tell the board what’s happening with the budget, stop generating controversy and earn her keep…Barrow County’s Personnel Review Board needs to do its’ job, which is to decide if employees are unfairly punished, and if so, rectify the situation with something more substantial than double-speak…

Barrow County’s chairman needs to stop, think and breathe a lot more often before he issues yet another poorly thought-out edict or another rashly uttered statement…

And, we all need to get back in touch with what really matters, which is that if we have a few folks who love us and we are still blessed with good health and a little bit of wealth, and are not dealing with a death in the family – then, we are okay.

As I have written about frequently during the past few months, my husband’s unemployment continues and my middle-class lifestyle is crumbling right before my eyes. But, no one is sick, no one has died, and, I am still surrounded by those whom I most love…for that, I remain profoundly thankful.

Challenges, whether they be personal or political, are simply challenges. They are not life altering events like that really bad wreck on the Athens 10 loop tonight…

The Cycle

Mr. Clark just stormed out of the house, after another one of our “still out of work” fights. It’s not the first one we’ve had, and I’m sure, as long as Mr. Clark’s unemployment continues, it won’t be the last.

Next week will be one year since Mr. Clark was laid off, and what a long, sad, tiring, lesson-filled year it has been. There have been some good things come of it – readjustment of our priorities, paring down our needs, and some nice time spent together, after years of Mr. Clark mostly being on the road.

And, there have been some really bad things come of it, too. Mr. Clark’s efforts to find work have netted only a few interviews, and some temporary contract work. His profession, construction software, is pretty much dead right now. Most of his clients are doing poorly. Their businesses have closed and many of them, like Mr. Clark, are just trying to piece together enough work to pay the bills until folks start building again.

No one seems to know when this recession will end, but a lot of the time it feels like it won’t be soon enough for Mr. Clark and me. And, we’re not alone. According to recent newspaper articles, foreclosures in Barrow County are up 49% from the first half of last year, meaning nearly 1,000 homes have been lost. Nationally, 1 in 8 mortgage holders are behind on their payments.

Unemployment claims are up, too – 126-percent locally, this April, compared to last. The number of people on unemployment who have used up their 52 weeks of benefits is rising quickly. And, while some experts predict an end to the recession as soon as late this summer, those same experts are predicting unemployment will stay high well into 2010.

So, what does this mean for Mr. Clark and me?

It means we continue to scrap around for money and hope for the best, while cycling through what appears to be the unemployed version of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ “Five Stages of Grief and Loss,” (from her book On Death and Dying.)

The stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Mr. Clark and I are on about our fifth trip around the cycle.

Denial – that’s where you can’t believe you’ve lost something you hold dear, such as your job with decent pay and benefits. The head can’t stop spinning, while all the time you tell yourself, “This is only temporary…Something else will turn up,” as the phone sits quiet, and the bills mount up…

Next comes anger – my personal favorite. This is where you are filled with rage about what has happened, and are consumed with thoughts about “how unfair it is.” This is when nasty things get said, and deep wounds are inflicted on the already fragile and hurting egos involved.

Bargaining is a nice break from all the negativity of anger and denial, as it is the time when the job search picks up again. “If I re-work the resume, and search a few more job boards, maybe I’ll get an interview…If I call X, Y or Z back, maybe something will have changed and then I can have my old life back….”

Then, when those efforts net little or no result, depression sets in. Experts say you have to move through depression in order for healing to begin. But, sometimes “moving through” takes what feels like a very long time. Some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel would help, but there is none. The tunnel is long and dark and those unemployment statistics continue, ever bleaker, as your own personal home foreclosure becomes a not too distant reality…

There’s only so long you can wallow in those depths, and then you have to crawl back out. That’s the acceptance stage. For me, that means putting my anger and depression aside, and stop bargaining with the universe for something more “fair.” It means we are where we are, for whatever reason, and all the fussing, fretting and fighting won’t do anything but make things worse.

Mr. Clark may never have as good a job as he used to have – ever again. And, we may never live as well as we used to live – ever again. But, that’s no reason to become horrible people. Maybe the light at the end of our particular tunnel is that a lot of things needed changing in our lives, and we weren’t making those changes ourselves…(All too often, God has to knock me to my knees in order to get my attention. Maybe this period of Mr. Clark’s unemployment is another one of those times…)

Mr. Clark just walked back in, as I knew he would. He understands the cycle, too. And, while that doesn’t do anything to get him back to work, knowing that hope and acceptance follow the dark depths of anger and depression keeps us moving forward - one resume, phone call, contract job, unemployment check and prayer at a time.