Month: February 2021

After the holidays were over, I knew I was going to need to buckle up for the long and lonesome months of January and February. For the past two years I have gone to Florida for a few days for a reprieve from snow and cold, but because of Covid that wasn’t a possibility this year. I made a list of things to do around the house, things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and so far I haven’t done a single one because I have neither the desire or energy for any of it.

I have struggled with too much time on my hands which leads to too much thinking, which leads me to feel as if I’ve been catapulted backwards into the early days of grief. Those days when crying and second guessing every word that came out of my mouth the weekend before Mark died was the only thing I did. In a recent week when I cried every day, my therapist suggested I needed to up my meds. I already knew I was sinking and what had been working was no longer effective, and so the next day I called my doctor. By that afternoon I had a new prescription, and my first thought when I looked at the bottle was shame. Shame that I couldn’t pull myself out of another hole, shame that I wasn’t trying hard enough, shame that I couldn’t exercise, meditate, pray, or organically eat my way to a better state of mind. Shame that I was broken.

Every year on the night before Valentine’s Day, Mark would jump up and say he needed to go to the store. I always knew he was going to get me a card. He’d be gone forever, come home, and say, “Since when did the drugstore up at the village close?” I’d tell him it was three years ago and didn’t he remember that from last year when he tried to buy a card there. He never could remember that or that the Hallmark store didn’t have the same hours as 7-11. He’d come home after driving all over to find a store that was still open, a card for me in a little brown, paper bag. The next morning, propped against the coffee pot was his signed card for me to open.

This year on Valentine’s Day, my sinking held off until I went to bed, when I terribly miss Mark’s warm body next to mine, and those quiet conversations in the dark when he would reach for my hand before he fell asleep. As it usually goes, I replay every minute of the weekend before he died. Every missed opportunity to stop what would happen a few days later, every time I believed I screwed up. This time, and for the first time, the replay was different. This time everything that bubbled up were the memories of what was right. The long walks, the time he lagged behind me and I stopped and asked him what was wrong. “It’s my hip,” he said, “my hip is bugging me.” Mark never complained about aches or pains and I said, “Then how about you take some ibuprofen when we get home and we walk a little slower. Will that help?” Or the time he talked about the inner demons he kept battling and I said, “Mark, aren’t you so tired of feeling ashamed? Don’t you think maybe it’s time to set that down and not keep carrying it?” “I’m trying,” he said, “I’m trying.” I looked at him and said, “Maybe you could use some help with the trying,” and he said that sounded like a good idea. The black koi he brought home from a friend’s pond to put in his own because the raccoons couldn’t see them as easily and maybe they wouldn’t be having them for dinner like the orange ones. When he called me over to the car and lifted the tailgate to show me the bucket of fish and how excited he was as he slowly put them in his pond. When he walked the creek on Saturday afternoon and sat at the dining room table pulling off everything stuck to his pants and I said, “You seem happy. You should do that more often, don’t you think? Just walk the creek and clear your head.”

Since Mark’s death, heartache and grief have been my constant companions along with depression and anxiety. In the after, I have come to know that there are tools available to manage these unwelcome boarders. Some tools that take so much work and staying in places where I’d rather run screaming out of, and easier tools like taking a pill every day. Quieting the voice that tells me I’m not trying hard enough, or that taking something to manage my mental health is a sign of weakness is a daily struggle, but I know better than most that a foundation built on shame can collapse in the blink of an eye.

As a scientist, Mark could be a brutal critic. He was outraged by laziness and shortcuts, and didn’t think anybody who half-assed their way through a lab should be in the business of science. He saved his harshest criticism, though, for anyone who he believed was not evolving in their research to keep up with a rapidly changing scientific world. He was highly competitive and pushed himself every day. He knew what everybody in his field was doing and was constantly trying to keep one step ahead of them. For those who he thought were skating by on their past accomplishments, or not getting out of the way for someone hungrier, he’d complain to me about them and then finish it off by singing Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen.

Glory days, well, they pass you by….

Mark had his own Glory Days in the years that he was a roofer, and it wasn’t due to it being some major feat, but because he survived and lived to tell the tale. During those physically hard blue-collar years, Mark worked for two different companies. I didn’t know him when he worked for the first one, but according to Mark the guy who owned it was a cheat. Cheated customers and cheated his employees, and when Mark had enough he went to a competitor and got hired on the spot. The owner of that company was named, Jimmy, a full-blooded Italian at 5′ tall, and what he didn’t have in height he made up for in rage. He could explode at the drop of a hat, the kind of rage that would have made someone like me cry and then quit, but Mark could perfectly imitate him with his frantic pacing, swearing, and arms flailing, so every meltdown gave him more material.

The roofers would report to the office by 7:00 a.m. Mark was a foreman so he’d lead a crew to the job, whether it be shingle roofing or hot tar, and over time Jimmy relied on Mark because of his experience and how he could help younger guys learn the ropes. It was with Jimmy’s company that Mark would learn how to spit nails. Long before automatic nail guns, he’d throw a handful of nails in his mouth, turn them around, spit one out and pound, spit one out and pound. One of his front teeth had a groove permanently worn into it from spitting nails. On our first date he showed it to me and said that he once swallowed a nail. On other dates, we’d drive around Chicago and he’d show me jobs he’d done. He’d pull over and talk about the pitch and how they had to nail narrow sticks to the side of it to stand on as they roofed, the bullet holes they’d sometimes find in tear-offs, how many bundles of shingles he’d pounded that day.

Much as Jimmy liked Mark, he cut him no slack. He constantly was on him about getting jobs finished on time, getting repairs and leaks figured out in one visit, making customers happy. One time we were invited to a family party at Jimmy’s house, and when Mark introduced me to him he asked, “What are you doing with this dumb sonofabitch? You can do way better than him.” Mark laughed and Jimmy slapped him on the shoulder, looked at me, and said, “I’m kidding you. I love this guy,” and it was mutual.

But the forklift story that Mark told would surpass the regular and frequent verbal abuse. Mark and the other roofers reported to the office to get their jobs for the day and Jimmy was in rare form. He was raging mad first thing in the morning and when he got that mad he’d tear off the job sheet, hand it to each crew, and then start pointing at trucks and yelling at everybody to get out of his face. In Mark’s case, he needed him to use the forklift to move shingles before he left and Mark knew to move fast and efficient before Jimmy exploded again. After moving a few loads of bundles, the chain on the forklift broke. I think that probably happened often to most of the equipment in the yard but it was the first time it happened to Mark and all five feet of Jimmy came running over. “What did you do, Fisher? Did you just break my forklift? Did you just do that to me?” Mark didn’t know what he did so he started trying to fix it and Jimmy said, “I swear to God, Fisher, if you don’t get out of here in two minutes I’m going to crush your nuts in that forklift. Do you want that? Do you want me to crush your nuts??!!!”

That night when Mark told me what happened my mouth hung open. “He said that? That he was going to crush your nuts? That’s bad, Mark, if he does that we’ll never have kids.” Mark laughed and said he didn’t mean that literally, but based on the stories I heard every day about Jimmy I didn’t believe that for a minute. Mark said he ran to the truck, jumped in, told the guy driving to hit it, and they peeled out of the yard with Jimmy screaming at him in the rearview mirror. By the end of the day when they got back all was fine. The forklift was fixed and Mark was back in Jimmy’s good graces.

Years after we moved away from Chicago and were home for the holidays, Mark said he was going to go to the yard and pay Jimmy a visit. He walked into the office and Jimmy jumped out of his chair and said, “Well, will you look who the cat dragged in.” Mark updated him on his life, told him he was a professor now, and that we had three kids. There was nothing more important to Jimmy than family and so the news that there were little Fishers made him happy for us. A crew came in during their conversation and Jimmy said to them, “Look at this guy, will you? He used to do the same thing as you and now he’s a professor. If you dumb sonofabitches applied yourself once in awhile maybe you could do that.”

Before Mark left, Jimmy said, “I’m glad you came by. I’m really proud of you.” It would take years of Mark keeping his own lab afloat, when money started to dry up and he’d panic, to see that he and Jimmy always had something in common. They stayed hungry less it all collapse while they were in charge, but even on his worst days at the med center, on days when it felt like everything was in freefall, Mark would come home, tell me about it, and then say, “But nobody threatened to crush my nuts today so I got that going for me.”

Last week I went on a job interview. While I love my little, bohemian retail gig with its assortment of the coolest women ever, there have never been enough hours and since the Christmas season ended even less so. I get a sweet discount and want to keep working there, but I need something else to add to it as being inside this house and my head all day and night is making me a little loco. I have been job hunting since last summer and sending off resumes, but since I got the Covid bounce last June, there are a whole lot of other people doing the same thing. The competition is fierce and I rarely hear back from anything I’ve applied for. Last week, though, the employment storks flew overhead and dropped a listing in my lap for an office position at a medical spa. I checked out their website (Skin resurfacing!! Botox!! Fillers!! What does all this stuff even do?? I don’t know but I think I need it!!!) and I was like, yep, that will work for my current needs.

I sent my resume, and a mighty fine cover letter if I do say so myself, and they contacted me two days later for a phone interview which I aced because I’ve sort of made a career of interviewing for jobs. The following day I was asked via email to interview in person for the position, and even though it was the coldest, rainiest day ever, I was glowing from the inside out in anticipation of all those employee discounted anti-aging procedures. Not really. I slept crappy the night before and wanted to stay home drinking coffee and look outside the window and say, “Thank God I don’t have anywhere to go today,” instead of dressing like Sinbad the Sailor in a Nor’easter to go sell my skill set.

But I sucked it up and put the directions in my phone even though I sort of knew where it was because of my crack navigation skills, and then it turned out it wasn’t where I thought it was. It wasn’t even close to there and Google Maps had me in and out of a residential area and turned around and then I was headed west and I didn’t want a job WAY OUT THERE so I was kind of annoyed because there was no indication in the phone interview that I would have to drive that far for discounted Botox. Finally I made it, stressed and ten minutes late which is a stellar start to an interview. I waited all of thirty seconds because they run a way tighter ship than my lost, underemployed self, when in came the doctor and owner of the center and yadda, yadda, yadda.

During the yadda, he told me he loved women, LOVED THEM. I mean who else can bring life into the world, amiright? But women, once they get to a certain age, tend to dry up and need help to feel better about themselves and give them back the youth of their twenty year old self. I looked down at my chapped hands that scream in agony as they get slathered in hand sanitizer a dozen times a day and nodded in agreement, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the dry place he was talking about.

He asked about my experience and I gave him the Cliff notes version and he said, “That’s interesting,” with the same enthusiasm as me when someone tells me the details of their mother’s recipe for meatloaf. He told me that women come in for all kinds of treatments and quite often they don’t want anyone to know, not even their husbands, and what he’s learned from years of doing this is that women are deceitful. I sat up straighter. Did he just tell me that women are deceitful? Did he really just say that to me? Does he know that I’m a women or is he one of those people who don’t see gender? And then he said it again.

Moving right along, he also said it was important that the newest employee fit in because they were like family. He had, in fact, just treated the staff and their significant others to a little getaway in Mexico and that’s when my face gave up the goods. You go on vacation together? No no no. In the history of my working life I have never, and I MEAN NEVER, wanted to vacation with coworkers. Not even if it’s free. A vacation is for the sole purpose of getting away from everyone in the Department of Misfit Toys, not hanging out at a pool and having to suck everything in for five days. Besides that, a few months ago when I was in a hot tub I discovered that my bathing suit top gets big air pockets inside that sound like a gas explosion as they search for an exit point. Over wine and starlight and serious conversations about life, random bubbles would climb up my top and launch themselves out and I kept saying, You guys, it’s my suit!!!” and they said “Did you know it farted when you bought it?”

Dr. Doctor talked about his patients and how they range from their 30s all the way up to, heck, 60ish, and I said, “Oh 60s, hmmmm, interesting,” in my meatloaf voice. What about somebody, say, 65? Does that dried up fossil actually come in and think she can look better? I mean, what are you supposed to do with her? Sheesh, at that point she needs a miracle worker, amiright? Things were winding down and I was asked if I had any questions or anything to add. I had A LOT to add but I gave him a smile and said, “Well, this sounds like a very, very special place and I really appreciate the time you have taken to talk to me,” then went back out into the Nor’easter wiser than when I walked in.

The next day I woke up and thought, “Oh my gawd, what am I going to do if they actually offer me this job? What the heck….” which now seems comical to think they’d want somebody my age front and center in their business. Here’s the before before and then she got some treatments from us and now she looks like a regular before which was the best we could do considering what we had to work with, because pssssst, she’s in her 60s.. I sent a thank-you-so-much email and said it didn’t seem like the right fit for me and I sure hoped they found the perfect match. Two hours later I got an email from them saying that though they loved meeting me and learning more about me they were going to go in another direction.

Excuse me???

I read it three times. I checked to make sure my earlier email had been sent. I had chalked the whole thing up to a learning experience in the land of injectables, and now they were trying to reject my rejection with their own rejection?

I wrote all kinds of responses to them in my head, every one being adamant about who rejected who first, including a screenshot of my email with the time clearly indicated. I had therapy later that day and told my therapist the whole story which she found very entertaining until the end and said, “Wait, they sent you a not interested email after you sent them a not interested email?” “Exactly.” I said. “They can’t do that,” she said, “you were the breaker-upper.”

If Mark were here he would say that kind of job isn’t like me at all and he would be right, but I don’t have him as a guardrail in my life to careen against. I did imagine him saying, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” with his faux outrage and I’d giggle, he’d say it was their loss, and life would go on.

Life does go on, a lot harder and far less bright, but there are many things that have remained the same. Just like when Mark was here, I am still managing to get in my own way and failing to pay attention to what I know and what he told me a hundred times, “Just write, Kath, that’s what you’re supposed to do with your life. Write and somehow it will work out.”