Yes, You Can Go Home

You can't assume it will be the same as when you left, but most of the pieces will be there.

I left school last night to go up to Ellsworth to hang out with my grandmother, mom, uncle, and aunt in the hospital. Another fall and another crack to the head has sent Grammie to the ICU- not because her condition is immediately dire, but because she needed to be where she would have the most attentive attention. When I got there, she was all bandaged up and looked like Yoda in a bathing cap. One of the nurses had finished off the dressing with a pink gauze printed with purple hearts. The result was actually quite fetching and cheerful, and Grammie generally rocked the adorable old lady look. She was also mellow and pretty chipper, all told. Because her short term memory is so poor, she didn't realize she'd fallen, and wasn't really fretting much. The Zen of Dementia. She had her family kicking around, some hands to hold, and a good dinner. On a sixty second loop, or really any loop, that's not so bad.

Hopefully that superannuated Buddhism will serve her well as the family moves her to a new nursing facility, where, we hope, she will have a higher level of care. Her former home is, as are most old-age homes in this country, a for-profit establishment, which wrests earnings from Medicare by underpaying staff, and under staffing the facility. Not the best recipe for quality care. So we will try another home, run by another company. Mom would prefer to keep her at our real home- the one run by our family, but the family can't afford to have a household member not working. As far as aphorisms go, "money makes the world go around" does, all too often, hold up to scrutiny.

But I am home- have been for a while. And the evenings, generally few and far between, spent under the florescent lights at the Ellsworth hospital, are a big part of the reason why. I remember the fall of my first year on IAH, when Charlie had had another heart-related complication. I took the evening boat off, and as the light faded during the crossing, I was glad that while it did require a boat ride, it was a relatively easy matter to get where I needed to be. And last night, packing up Grammie's room at the old old home, it had just been a matter of a familiar drive through the familiar fog. The world has gone green, and springy, and soft the way that it does, and the conversation in the car spun around the axis of education, the way that it does. Mom also pointed out to Uncle Vern what I had also been thinking: "at least we're not packing up her room because she's dead." Then we all thought, but no one said: "this is a dress rehearsal." For her passing, and then for our own.

But many hands make for lighter work. And every season comes back around.

Reckoning I am Very Lucky

Seems I didn't have much to say for myself in April. Turned 31, which was kind of pleasant, since I like prime numbers, and by the mathematical definition of "happy" 31 is a happy number.

In the wins/losses categories: the island successfully got a new fellow placement to help with ICDC and town business; we did not get the Community Block Development Grant for affordable housing; I did get that theater job, the one so serendipitously dropped in front of me. I even have secured rental housing on Little Deer Isle (my very home island) of all places, for the overnights that the new job will require. And I am very humbly gratified that the new job will pay a comfortable middle class salary, with benefits. As someone who entered the workforce with a B.A. in Theater, making a dependable living wage with benefits was my pie in the sky. Nothing fancy, just the economic clout to be stable, in a job that meant doing some good in the world. Through some wild quirk of the universe, this job- one requiring a Theater background- came into being in my own backyard and ended up being structured and supported in such a way that- even in this time of financial crisis- it wasn't cut.

So let's actually chalk that one up to stupendous good luck.

Now I will just have to make sure I do good work, and am worth those pennies, many of which come from private donations.

The job will start on July 1st, shortly after this school year ends (June 20th). I have to admit, while terrified of the learning curve of the new job, I am looking forward to a measure of clarity it might bring- allowing me to be more one thing (an arts educator) than so many things (tutor, volunteer theater director, non-profit part time executive director, selectman, chairperson, blah, blah, blah....). Granted: I will still be a selectman. I will probably still serve on the ICDC board. But there is a certain amount of divesting that could be done, and that I welcome. I harbor secret dreams of getting my weekends back. And not in a naughty "I am seriously shirking my real work by deciding to work with Dave on the boat" sort of way, but in a "this is my leisure time and I can do whatever the hell I want with it, guilt-free" sort of way.

The stuff I love doing? Problem solving and working like a mad theater geek? That will be my day job. Organizing a rehearsal schedule, planning the blocking, developing lessons, etc... they will no longer be tasks that need doing on the weekend, or on week nights after work and before a meeting. That's the stuff that will actually make up my work day. I will get to do what I love because I am supposed to, because I have been given the keys to a theater and I am contractually obliged to make it come alive.

Mwaa haa haaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Being brainwashed by the Protestant Work Ethic (or- just as likely- having no economic alternative to hard work) is not so bad, if you love your work. I can't believe I will get to do what I love in order to make a living. And because it is administrative, I actually get a large degree of independence. If I want to do Godspell as the next community theater production, and it seems like it will work, I get to make that call. Holy Smokesies. I get to say "hey guys, let's put on a show!" And then I have ability to make it happen.

So yeah. Consider this blog post as the official "Morgan goes into shock about the prospects of her new job" post.

At any rate, the whole package is a really nice thing to have on the horizon- a very solid idea of how the bills are going to be paid, the knowledge that if I get sick I can get whatever it is taken care of, and that there's a good 48hrs or so a week that I might reasonably use to decompress and just hang out with Dave. At this point I would have been happy with those three. Throwing in work I could see wanting to do for a long time...

31. Very happy. Very Primed.