A Day Off? A Matter of Definition!

Many thanks to all of you who have wished me well and prayed me well! Finally, I seem to be coming back to life. Not that I have completely avoided living -- or working -- while feeling mostly dead! Anyway, I think the flu is behind me; just some stuffiness and little aches and pains reminding me that perhaps I am not in top condition yet. Still, I managed to drag myself onto the plane yesterday and reach my Maryland destination. Today I led a meeting with a major client, did some training for the local staff, put out a fire at our Georgia branch, raised a ruckus over a stupid decision back in my office in California, conferred with the director of the Maryland branch over lunch and in the afternoon had a joint conversation with his boss (my direct report) back in California about various issues, had dinner with my administrative assistant from the days when I worked in Jordan (quite a surprise -- she is visiting her children who are in graduate school here), talked to Julie in Virginia about a possible visit after the conference since Shura (the dying-child-artist-now-healthy-adult whom we rescued from a Siberian hospital 15 years ago) is in town from Russia (another surprise) and did some initial networking to set that up with others who would want to see him, and then went to the airport to welcome a professor/guest speaker from Jordan who will be at the conference I will be attending at the end of the week and got him settled in the hotel, after which I turned to email and the like. Oh, and some scattered moments for prayer -- wish I had more! I always wish I had more. Sometimes the best I can do is a frequently interrupted running dialogue throughout the day, especially the plea for "help" right before a major decision or the feeling that a gasket is about to blow -- it rarely does blow. God has a way of cooling off the gasket. So, anyway, I would have to say it was a pretty normal day.

Thinking about the "normal" work day, I recalled recently taking a day off work to be available should my son Shane and his wife Lemony need my help in support of their daughter Nikolina's hospital visit (she has an appointment at Stanford about once every other week). I always look forward to babysitting Nathaniel; already at age 7 he is a little scientist and, like his father before him at approximately the same age, has declared me "eccentric."

As it turned out, Lemony did not need me, so I got a "real" day off, or at least the best version of a day off that I seem to be allowed. Lemony did not need me, but my office did. My assistant faxed some paperwork home, and I was off to the races. I finished that just in time for the daily noon mass. Fr. E was out of town, and at those times the priest at the noon mass is unpredictable except to those working in the parish office. To my delight, Fr. Terry had come down from the retreat center on the hill, where he is director. Mass with Fr. Terry is always special: intimate and personal, with lots of time devoted to silent prayer, even in places during the mass where one does not expect it. For that reason, Fr. Terry's masses are very spiritual in nature, constantly giving the congregation time to absorb the joy of being in the presence of God together. The undoing for me is always the way Fr. Terry asks everyone to circle the altar. I always feel God's presence more strongly the closer I draw to our humble altar. (Our mission church is old and made by the hands of Native Americans before the days of precision architecture; there are even animal paw prints in some of the floor tiles.) So there we stood, and I could feel the tears coming, the ones that well up in God's presence. They are good tears. One, however, might feel foolish for them except that among God's parishioners there is no need for embarrassment. That is why I love this community and this church. People understand and accept and love. Noon mass, when I can make it, is my psychological oasis during the day.

Then, quickly, I was back in the bramble bushes. One after another they rolled in, those pesky emails, about 200 all told, about par for my daily intake. Most of the issues I could send off to one of the senior managers, and having delegated them, I could go on to the other big issue of the day: a problem employee who had taken the first steps to filing a law suit against us for firing her. Of course, she had no grounds for filing, but that rarely stops aggrieved people who seem to enjoy watching us push aside everything else and pay attention to them. Sometimes, as in the case of this person, if the immediate supervisor had paid attention to her early on we would not have been facing a potential court case. Our lawyer called. I gave him all the details I had in my head. Then, a real surprise kicked in. My boss called with the news that another directorate wanted her. Well, that was a win-win. We released our claim on her, and she dropped her lawsuit. The last I heard she has been doing a good job. I like it when we can help even the people who seem to us not to deserve it. (Yep, problem employees are my specialty; I love them, literally!)

The rest of the day was routine, but full. Not one minute of the afternoon was a free one. And so that night, I went to the store, searching for some pleasure. I wanted my day off, even if it were only an ice cream cone.

As I took $20 from the ATM, I mentally added up the outstanding and incoming billpayer checks. The total was higher than cash available. Oops! Another one of those days! It reminded me of the time that Lizzie, then in the fourth grade, was asked by the teacher what she should immediately think upon seeing a problem that she had copied down as 24-36. The answer for fourth graders was, of course, that they had copied the problem wrong. Not for Lizzie! What, Lizzie give a traditional answer?! "I should think that I need to remember to include the negative sign in writing -12," she volunteered. That flustered the teacher who certainly did not want to get into negative numbers with fourth-graders. She hastily said that negative numbers do not exist. I suppose she wanted Lizzie to move back into fourth-grade math. But nothing doing! Lizzie was genuinely puzzled and innocently asked her teacher, "If there are no negative numbers, why does Mommy have them in her check book?" Sr. Beatrice, do you remember this? Thank you for not telling the principal -- St. Leo's would never have taken another check from me!

Well, I would have to find some money to change the color of my future checkbook from red into black, but I was not worried. All the outstanding billpayer checks were for donations of various sorts. So, since these were God's bills, I trusted that God would find me the money to pay them. (In case you are wondering, the money appeared, as it always does for good causes.)

As I walked into the store, my pocket buzzed with five more Blackberry messages. Argh! I sat down on one of the cafe chairs and answered each of them, then walked over to the ice cream counter. After all those enotes and a day off that had mostly turned out to be a day on, maybe, just maybe, I had earned some ice cream! And even if I had not, I was going to get some anyway -- and I did!

And that, folks, is how my days go and how my life meanders on. Well, perhaps "meander" is not the most appropriate word! That's why I do sincerely appreciate those noon-mass oases, scattered moments of prayer, surprises like seeing Fr. Terry, opportunities to lend a hand to those in need of any sort, and ice-cream cones whenever they come my way. Those are the important things, not the training and meetings and clients and business travel and supervisory tasks. I consider those things divine gifts, the most important of which is being surrounded by the Clan of Mahlou and God's love.