I Just Don’t Care About You Old White Men Any More

I don’t want to hear about how whatever injustice that is being done to you, no matter how small or inconsequential or even whether that injustice is real or just some warped perception in your privileged mind, is DESTROYING THE COUNTRY.

No. It’s not. Despite the grand importance that every one of your thoughts holds inside your imagination, it means next to nothing to most of us.

Because we have things to do. Get up in the morning and go to work. Figure out what we’re going to make for dinner, if we even have food in the house. Take care of our kids. Try to figure out if there’s enough money in the bank to get the car fixed. Or pay the mortgage. Or the rent. If we even have a place to live.

So keep your shouting, and your righteous anger, and your platitudes, to your own damn selves.

And don’t worry about the country. We would get along just fine without you.

 

Separation

It’s winter here in Wisconsin. Months of frozen grey landscape, the world appearing black and white. When I was working, we would pass by people curling on the lagoon in the parkway. I presume it’s been cold enough long enough now for that to be happening, although it might be too cold for even them to be out. I don’t drive the parkway often any more. There’s not really any reason.

A week or so ago, I noticed an Asian beetle on the wall next to the bed. It wasn’t moving, but I assumed it was hibernating, having found its way in to a warm abode for the winter. I leaned close, watching for movement, blew gently and watched it move its delicate legs, then settle again into motionlessness.

Every night, while reading in bed, I’d look over at the beetle, in basically the same spot; every morning, I would wake and there it would still be, maybe having walked up an inch or two, or down. I considered getting a jar and putting something inside for it to eat so it could survive through the winter, but what did Asian beetles eat, other than aphids? (Thankfully, there were no aphids in the house…)

I Googled. The only information I could find was how to KILL Asian beetles, not how to help them survive a winter in my house. I decided to let it wing it on its own…so to speak.

It walked along the windowsill, then along the bottom of the blinds. The next morning, I awoke to the beetle lying on its back, its delicate legs splayed out. The sorrow I felt was admittedly out of proportion to the death of an insect. I said out loud, “Oh no….did you DIE?” I turned it over, hoping somehow that Asian beetles hibernated on their backs on windowsills like lazy snowbirds with the entire beach to themselves.

A few days later, I was given a second chance. Another Asian beetle appeared and I quickly retrieved a Ball jar, threw some fresh parsley inside and put a piece of foil over the top, punching some holes for air. I popped the little guy in the jar and hoped s/he was happy. The next day, checking up on it, I saw the little ingrate had run away from home.

Where did that deep sense of grief over a dead beetle come from, though? One dear friend told me, ‘It’s because you’re kind.’ That made me feel good, though I know that’s not why she said it. I hope that I’m kind. I know I try to be.

Last night, while watching something — I can’t even remember what it was now — I was reminded of the time I spent with our dog a year ago December, as she lay dying. She had collapsed and could no longer support her weight, or even move. She hadn’t eaten for more than a day, but had been vomiting. I had just cleaned up where she had been lying and, as I was lifting her to lay her down on the clean pillow, she began vomiting again. I instinctively held her pitched forward, her head down, her body limp in my hands, as everything emptied from her stomach. Now, a year later, I was crying uncontrollably, wondering if what I had done was right, or if she had been suffering while I held her.

Sometimes we do things that we think are the right thing at the time. I still believe that it was the right thing to allow her to die in the comfort of her home. She did not seem to be in pain. I know that dogs can be stoic; it pains me to think this may have been the case with our pup. While I certainly mourned our loss of her at the time she died, I think I still hold on to feelings that come out at the oddest moments. A commercial with a certain image. A song with a particular note.

A tiny beetle.

I hope it was just that beetle’s time.

Invisible

One of my facebook memories came up recently from two years ago. I was sitting alone in the office cafeteria eating lunch, escaping the sound of squealing kids enjoying the Christmas decorations in the lobby of the bank where I was working. I was upset because I’d been excluded from the holiday celebrations at both locations where I worked.

When I was told that I was going to return to an office downtown, to the main branch of the bank, I was excited. I had worked for many years downtown and had fond recollections of lunches with coworkers, of trips to summer festivals like Bastille Days and Summerfest. I was anxious to discover what had changed for daily city workers in the decade that I had been working mostly in the suburbs.

What I didn’t know was that I would be spending nearly a year and a half in probably the loneliest work setting I’ve ever experienced, next to days I worked alone in a printshop early in my work career. The half of the lobby in which my cubicle was located was deserted, with desks designated for people visiting from other locations. This didn’t happen that often, and the visitor(s) rarely said a word to me, unless they had a computer question because — because there were always those.

Out my floor to ceiling windows, I could observe a parade of businessmen and -women, and the homeless, who shuffled much more slowly, but not because their destinations were any less important.

My co-workers who occupied the office just across the street had a camaraderie of which I was envious. Whenever someone left the firm, my remaining co-workers would jokingly place the departing person’s nameplate next to one reading ‘returning soon’ and put that on facebook with a post about how lucky it was, that it had somehow brought people back to the firm in the past. When I left, I took my nameplates with me, thrown into a box packed with the usual office detritus that you collect after nearly a decade of work. A half-used calendar. Personal photos. A vase or two. Mugs. A little tea brewer I had proudly brought downtown and used a few times until I realized it was too much of a pain to clean because, strangely, there was no sink at that location, except in the bathroom, and the tea leaves had sat looking dopey in the sink and I’d had to clean them out with paper towels, hoping no one would walk in and force an explanation out of me.

My last day was so uneventful that I don’t even remember it as I write this now. I wouldn’t be returning soon, and no-one tried to magically make it happen. There were no cards, no gifts, no going-away parties, no one took me out for a drink. For a second, I was going to be added on to another party that was planned for someone else, but that one was canceled for some reason, so even that didn’t happen. It sounds pitiful recalling it here, but it’s laughably true. What kind of people do things like this? This is social ineptitude at its best.

What do I wish for, thinking back on this memory? I wish for more kindness. I wish for more thoughtfulness. Not apologies, because frankly it’s not anyone’s fault that a bank is impersonal and decides that its profits are more important than its workers. But people can care about their coworkers, and can decide that each one has feelings, and those feelings are important.

One year, one of my co-workers sent me a little kids valentine in an inter-office envelope. Just a tiny valentine that took probably five minutes of her time. I have it to this day.