"Coffee Breaks" Different Now for Many

I did something this morning I've been thinking of doing for a long while: have a coffee break out. Usually after my early cereal, I take my morning Constitutional then have my second cup of coffee around nine while I catch up on the news. But for many years I went out for coffee with my colleagues and friends. The midmorning pick-me-up was one of the high points of my day, almost sacrosanct over the years. My friends and I called it "observing the amenities."

So today instead of coming back home after I picked up a few items, I stopped in at a McDonald's around ten and splurged on a Big Breakfast. And no coffee break is official for me unless I take along my notebook and jot down whatever's on my mind. So I put a few remarks on a page or so and felt like life was pretty good. As usual, nothing came to mind to pursue into a poem or story, but experience has taught me that I'm not very creative at coffee breaks. After a page or so of mundane journaling I cleared my tray and came home.

It wasn't till I got nearly into my drive that I noted anything remarkable about what I had seen at McDonald's, for it had been nearly empty at midmorning. There were a few individuals in scattered booths and chairs, some reading the complimentary morning newspapers one finds at such places, some just sitting with their thoughts like me. A few teens were chattering, then they left. A mother came in with three small children in tow, went to the counter, then abruptly came back and left. I wondered why. Maybe she changed her mind about ordering or decided they needed to be somewhere else.

Engaged as I was in my journaling, I didn't notice much else. A man finished the paper and left, another returned my glance looking a bit nervous, I thought. But after I came in my own home and put away the groceries, I knew what was possibly remarkable. All the patrons at McDonald's were young adults, mostly male. All were alone like me. But none of them had Big Breakfasts in front of them as I did. Some had a cup of coffee or other small item. And all of them were very possibly recently unemployed. Some were scanning the papers for jobs. Others seemed just trying to gather their wits about them and decide what to do next. Maybe their coffee break wasn't at all borne out of a desire for a break from routine like mine was. May theirs was an attempt to regroup or get ahold of a sense of provision and normalcy in a world that had recently fallen apart for them.

We don't usually notice the recently laid off or fired or foreclosed on or otherwise victimized by the economic crisis we've fallen into. Maybe we think being unemployed means looking like the stereotypical wino or skid row bum, unkempt, unshaven, the "Brother, can you spare a dime" panhandler or homeless refugee we normally only see in the bigger city streets. We don't notice a guy at McDonald's who looks just like us, dresses normally and is cleanshaven, scanning the want ads by himself in the middle of the day.

The recently unemployed still have their pride. They may even be professionals--engineers, software designers, bankers, accountants, writers, retailers, office workers and other white collar types--skilled and highly educated who until one day recently had a good, high-paying, steady job they thought they could count on to pay the mortgages and feed their families. Those who kept their jobs as the hell of layoffs and foreclosures deepened barely noticed as the guy down the street fell into the abyss. And the lady who sold real estate a few doors down moved. Where did she go? I wonder.

Six hundred thousand new unemployment claims filed since the first of January. Three and one half million jobs lost since the crisis hit last fall. Not just the big banks and brokerage houses, not just the bankrupted Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac government-backed giants and big insurance firms like AIG, but every sector of the economy has been hard-hit, and the crisis is worsening worldwide. We read about it, we hear about it on the newscasts, but it's still not obvious in our streets and stores, groceries and offices.

People don't usually look like they're in trouble. They don't look desperate yet in their faces. Maybe they have some reserves or are finding enough alternate work to stay afloat. Maybe they're hoping for a miracle or counting on the government's series of draconian "stimulus plans" to throw enough money hard enough and far enough that the cleverer thieves throughout our commercial fabric can't make off with it before it gets through to the broader masses.

Maybe--probably--I'm reading too much into the furtive looks of those fellow customers up at Mickey D's this morning. I'm prone to do that, suspicious by nature. But I think it's unlikely those younger folks were just there for a coffee break like I was. And I suspect we'll see a lot more like them scrambling for the morning papers in the near future.

Thoreau said that "Most people lead lives of quiet desperation." How true that is today.

My Mother-in-law, My Friend

I grew up with mother-in-law jokes about the overprotective, interfering, always siding with her son or daughter mother of the bride or groom, but none of them applied to mine. Dorothy was the best friend I ever had, always in my corner, always rooting for us in our marriage from the first, helping us raise our three sons in Huntington, Indiana and never complaining about the many impositions we inadvertantly thrust on her during hectic times.

When I started dating Barbara, ten years my junior, it was Dorothy who thought I might be the right man for her despite my chequered artist-musician, twenty-jobs-a-year past. I was a high school teacher now and had a steady future. And it was Dorothy who nudged her Barbara my way, and was thrilled when we asked their blessing of Dexter and her. We announced our intentions in their living room, and Dorothy broke out in a whoop and a smile ear to ear and clapped her hands. "We'd like your blessing," I said.

She leaned over to Dexter and said, "Well, what do you think?"
"Sounds like a fait accompli, don't it?" Dexter grinned.
"Well--" I chuckled.
"Sounds fine by me," Dorothy said.
"Don't think she could do any better?" Dad kidded with his characteristic dry humor.

We got a ring and got engaged, and set a date for the following March 17, ten days after Barbara turned nineteen. I had already taught at the high school her senior year and we had begun dating near the end of that year, going to Ft. Wayne to movies and getting together at her house to watch tv. Our courtship had been low-key and a little furtive till she graduated, but I knew she was the girl I wanted to settle down with and hopefully start a family.

And Mom was the best friend our marriage had. When we'd quarrel or get upset, I'd ask Dorothy's advice and she'd step in and smooth out the bumps; she was always there for us. Dexter was a frequent presence also, but I never knew what he might bring over. One morning in late spring he showed up with a tiller and plowed us a garden to tend, On the lot next to another house we move to later he started several rows of corn.

Dexter died this late October just before his Halloween birthday, at ninety-three, after several years in the nursing home. We went to his funeral in Huntington just eight weeks ago.

This afternoon Mom died as well, very quickly. She was eighty-eight, and again, only a few weeks away from her birthday February 22. She had "left us" for all intents many years before, poor soul, with acute Alzheimers, and in recent years she often couldn't recognize us for a time when we'd visit, then not at all. But when we went up for Dad's funeral eight weeks ago and visited her, she recognized some of us and even laughed a little when Stephen told her jokes. We got it on videotape, that last visit, to hold onto now. It was the last time she showed any spark of the woman we have loved for so many close years together. By yesterday she had stopped eating and drinking and was taking on fluid in the lungs, and they put her in hospice in Fort Wayne. I got the call to expect the worst within hours earlier today, and by the time Barb got home from school her brother called with the confirmation of their mother's passing.

No, I can't think of any of those mother-in-law jokes I heard growing up. Dorothy basically erased them from my memory with all her friendship, kindness, and love. I feel like I've lost one of the best friends I ever had.

Worlds of Warcraft and Supermonitors

This is my first blog this year, so I wonder what to report. I guess I'll just express thanks for a great Christmas and New Year's holiday period to my incredible family, whose visit these past days made Barb and me so happy and full of cheer!

I got to see my sons and daughter-in-law, and spend some time with my grandson and granddaughter too. I even got to speak with my New York son because he's a major game-player of World of Warcraft, the incredibly imaginative game from Blizzard corporation of California that produces mages, gnomes, healers, dragons, mechanical chickens to ride around on, shapeshifters and other medieval spirits galore. Since both Scott and Barb play it many hours a day and Mark joins the raids whenever he's not designing sounds in Manhattan, I got a lot of ear time.

This year might be called the year of the big monitor. Barb's always looking for a bigger screen for her WOW quests, and I had already returned the wide screen HP monitor that came with her computer to her desk before Scott arrived and wired in his even larger 21" monitor. Then we bought him a flat panel high-def 32" Visio, and after hooking in a slingbox so he can get cable channels slung to it, he used it for a WOW monitor! That meant Barb got to use his 21" one, which she loved.

We also got Steve and Rhonda a big 52" tv for their new house, which they richly deserved. Their help for Mark's back surgery since June saved us all many thousands in costs. But Scott seized the first chance he got to set it up as even a more humongous 52" high def monitor for WOW, sending his 32" Visio over to Barb to use and making his originally very large 21" monitor look like a handheld toy screen.

They all went home to Kissimmee and Hernando in central and northern Florida today, taking all the big, beautiful, colorful WOW tv/monitors with them, alas. Barb went into shock to see her puny widescreen HP back on her desk. I think she wants a wall.

Lessons of the Holidays

Christmas season used to be so much fun, especially as a child. But as an adult--a senior adult at that--I'm beginning to empathize with the Grinch. I haven't reached the "Bah-Humbug!" state yet, but in racing all over South Florida looking for those gifts I suspect everyone wants, I'm getting old enough to wish it hadn't become such a frustrating thing.

I can appreciate why more people shop online, but even that can be a chore. Grandpa, God rest his soul, gave up the shopping frenzy after reaching age 75 or so and just gave cash in envelopes at the family gift-opening on Christmas Eve. "Ehh, what's that up in the tree?" he would say and point, and we'd all stare up at some small white envelopes with our names on them which he'd tucked away in branches earlier. We'd try to react with total surprise and delight each year. I thought about doing that, but it seemed like a cop-out since I'm still able to get around like everybody else. Someday it may come to that.

One year he introduced a novel wrinkle to this tradition that spiced things up a bit: he put up the envelopes sealed without any names on them, and let us choose one in turn. One had a twenty-dollar bill in it; one had a ten, another a five, and if memory serves me right, one had a one-dollar bill. He got a real kick out of our greedy reactions as one of us hit the jackpot opening the twenty-dollar envelope, and one got the booby prize one-dollar gift. This casino-style game wasn't very well-received by everyone, however, and he didn't repeat it the next Christmas. But he was just expressing the frustration of holiday shopping we all feel.

This year, as usual, we started off trying to get relatively modest gifts others could match without going into bankruptcy, but we always manage to overspend. We ask all the family members to keep it sane, but they want that "wow!" factor from our reactions when we open their gifts just like we do from them, and they get us too much.

One thing Scott came up with that helps all of us, however, is setting up a Wiki web page we can each access with our own passwords and post what we'd like for gifts, and each family member can change and edit the lists at any time right up through the holiday. Most of us post a variety of things we'd like, some kind of reaching and expensive, some pretty modest, many in between. So shoppers can choose what range they have in mind to give, knowing each gift will be appreciated. Its only disadvantage is the risk of duplications, but discreet phone calls usually help to avoid that. I still try to get one gift for each of them, though, that they really want, something they'll really like. Nevertheless, I end up buying more than one so we'll each have something to open around the tree besides an envelope.

The thing about Christmas giving is it comes but once a year, but it challenges us in many ways like no other holiday. Birthdays, being for only one person at a time, have so much more focus on what we ought to do and are much easier to prepare for. But Christmas is the only time we're expected to consider everyone simultaneously--each family member, each generation, each special friend--all at once, with some token of our love and regard.

So the holidays challenge us financially, personally, spiritually, emotionally, and certainly physically. Expectations are often unattainable, and the stress can be as severe as a job loss or divorce, moving, or an auto accident. It's no wonder Grandpa just had enough of it at some point and the tree envelopes solution made a lot of sense. But the rest of us know it's not as much fun to get a gift so easily given. When we open a present we suspect a lot of thought went into, and maybe effort, frustrations and sacrifice as well, we really do appreciate it, because we know the secret ingredient is love. And any gift given from love is the elusive link we hope for in all this--celebrating Christ's birth.

So Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas one and all.

New Day

As I look out on a beautiful, crisp morning, I marvel that the sun, indeed, has again had the unmitigated gall to rise on yet another day, despite the world's financial crisis, despite the callous greed of corporate barons, despite the crimes and wars, despite all the sufferings of humanity and prophesies of doom and despair. Doesn't the universe understand how bad and hopeless everything has become?

The sun also rises, the persistent earth still glides silent through time and space, oblivious to all that advises against it, as it has since the world's beginning. Where can a better renewal of hope be found?