An Adaptive and Dignified Career

In 1985, I experienced a “career interruption”. Mind you, my choice of vocations had not been focused even up to the events that preempted this change, but it had definitely been interesting and remained so for the rest of my working life.

I had my first real job at about age 12. It was clerking at a little local business that sold records and flowers. “Running Bear” by Johnnie Preston was continuously playing in the shop because they were trying to push it off the shelves before Christmas. It was 1959 and I still hate that song. This was my one and only retail experience. I had various jobs through Junior High and High School, some normal things like babysitting and ironing, but I also sang for funerals. Since my father was a mortician who worked in a Funeral Home with a flower shop; any morning I was free on a Funeral Day was spent making funeral sprays.

In 1965 I married and left the town in the Texas Panhandle where I had been living since Junior High. I became a statistic at that moment, although I didn’t understand economics well enough to realize it. From where I stood at the time, almost anything looked better, but I was looking with untrained eyes. There is much more to this story of young love and escape from the known to the unknown but imagined life of glory forever, but that is for another time. I was speaking of occupations.

I found out quickly after I married that lack of education IS a problem in getting work. I also found out that a little ingenuity, personality and hard work can get you a lot further than a resume without experience. I was fortunate that getting hired was never a problem for me. I’ve always been able to ace the interview and field objections in a way that put them in my favor. Often I ended up with work that exceeded my skill level, but I was always able to learn quickly and rise to the task.

In my early work life, money was the most important thing, with a family to care for I was looking for an occupation that paid the highest rate possible for my skill level. It just happened that in 1965, this was about $1.35 an hour. When my husband went to Viet Nam in the fall of 1965 leaving me at home with a new baby, I moved back to my parents and went straight back to school. I could already type well, so a quick course in 10 key and alpha-shorthand and I was back in the workforce. This has been the pattern of my education; one small skill at a time over many years, edified by a succession of jobs that grew beyond their bounds into nightmare workloads of epic proportion.

It’s not that I didn’t like working; it’s that I seldom worked at anything I particularly liked. I think that this is a common dilemma among people who do not have a strong passion that they follow for a career. My saving grace was that I did have a passion for accuracy and that is a highly valued strength. By the time I was 23, I was a widow with 3 children, so choices were limited and my responsibilities were indelibly defined. My first husband came home from Viet Nam, but died in a car accident within 3 years. This is not a pity party. My children are my life and we’ve had a very interesting, if somewhat difficult journey together. Some of that journey was my work as an accounting clerk, full charge bookkeeper, financial services administrator, salesperson extraordinaire, temporary employment service manager, customer service manager, and cab driver. Did that last one get your attention?

1984-1985 were two years I’ll never forget. I almost took my own life in despair over my job and the sure demise of my second marriage. I found out my mother had cancer and lost her within 6 months of the diagnosis. I left my husband and went to stay with my brother and his partner until I could find a home, and ended up after a short while living in a house with 9 people that included my son and his new wife and one of my high school age daughters. No one was working but me and my brother’s partner. I lost the house that I had made the down payment and all the payments on for the previous 7 years. I was forced by my financial condition and living circumstances to leave my youngest daughter to live with my ex-husband. I was broadsided by an 18 wheeler in my sister’s car while I was taking her children to pick her up at work and all of us survived the wreck but the new Buick was totaled and the rig had no insurance. A few months after that, we found out that my brother had AIDS.

In the midst of this, I gave up God and converted to Buddhism. God still loves me and I found my way back to his fold. I was just so very angry and unsatisfied with the world that I forgot that He never gives us any burdens that we can’t handle. I don’t want to mask this as a minor infraction though; I was a practicing Nicheron Shoshu Buddhist for almost 10 years.

The advent of my brother’s illness cast me in the role of caretaker. He was 10 years younger than me and I had been more of a 2nd mother figure to him than a sister. It was logical that I should help with his care since I was in the same town and I didn’t have small children living with me. How was the question. A rigid work routine of 40+ hours could not accommodate running him to doctor’s appointments, seeing that he had food to eat, medications and proper care and contact with family. When his condition began to deteriorate, the needs were so obvious that I could not turn away.

I tried waitressing odd hours, but there was not enough money to survive on. So, I saved a down payment and bought a taxi cab. This was an odd solution, but one that ultimately worked out well. I drove the cab 12 hour day shifts and was able to pick my brother up for appointments, take him meals and check in on him anytime that I was in the area. I hired two other drivers to pick up all the shifts that I couldn’t work and the cab ran 24 hours a day. The cab was a 1984 Chevrolet Impala police car that I bought with 42,000 miles on it in mid-1985. When I sold it (for $1000.00) to another cab driver in 1991, it had almost 500,000 miles on the odometer. It was still clean and had some life in it.

My brother died in 1991 and I went back to jobs that society would deem more appropriate for a lady of my age and education. Sales, mid-management, then a small business (very small). I gave all this glamour up in 1996 when I married my dear husband, who I met in a chat room on the internet. Then I spent 10 happy years in Boston with him and now I am retired and living in Sun City Texas.

On the surface this may sound like a story of immense tragedy, but if you think this, you should look deeper. There were many happy and treasured hours with the people I love during this time, there were learning experiences that formed personal values, and there were lessons in tolerance, patience and the practice of living with diversity. I learned the difference between surface acquaintances and true friends. Most importantly I found God again and I found my true life mate in my husband. He made it possible for me to live life in a calmer, more structured way and to build resources to support that life. With an opportunity offered by my last employer, I went back to school while I was in Boston and trained as a programmer.

There are still unresolved issues in my life. I have two daughters that have had problems with drug addiction and have suffered legal consequences from their actions. They are struggling to restructure their lives and recover from this devastating problem. I lost my father to an embolism far too early. I have arthritis and my husband is disabled. Through all of this I am blessed. I am blessed with love from my family, with acceptable health and the ability to improve it, with a wonderful husband, with 6 grandchildren and a small but cherished group of friends. I am blessed with survival and I am eternally thankful to God for my life.

My father used to say “There is honor in all work.” He was trying to tell me that I should never judge anyone by the level of their formal education or how they make a living. He was also trying to make the point that common labor is a necessary and proper element of society. He was right. The truth is that if you could count the layers of complexity in any one person’s life, you might be counting to the end of your own. Work is only one layer. Try to make it a layer that you love, but if you can’t, love yourself while you perform the task. There is dignity in that.

Paula