Sometimes I complain too much.
My office is cold. My butt is too big. My apartment is too small. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I don’t want to get up. Work stinks.
I’ve never heard her complain. She works in my office. She’s the ever-kind receptionist who sits by the door, greetings guests, and more importantly, holding our office together.
She is a grandmother, raising her grandaughter. The grandaughter, the last time I heard, was in a foster home 50 miles away, in hopes that a change of pace would be a good change for her. ADD. On medication. A runaway. In hearings. In therapy.
Yet, she never complains.
“Thank you,” she emails us, “for letting me use some of my vacation time to attend a counseling session with her.”
She never complains. We meet every day as on office team, huddling around the fireplace at 8:30, to share news of what we’re doing, what’s happening at home. On Fridays, a “balancing act” — stritctly un-work-related news of home, family, cheer, grief — reminding us that life is more than our 8 to 5 office. She? Quiet on Fridays.
“I’ll be out of the office,” she emails us again this morning, “seeing the doctors today. Hopefully they’ll find out what’s wrong.” Today she’s at Mayo while they do a biopsy on her lung. The headaches? Related? Or maybe not. The water in her chest, fluid in her ankles. Causes unknown. “Thank you for the beautiful spring flowers you sent. I picked up the mail yesterday and will have my cell phone today. I promise to call if I hear anything.”
She never complains.
Today, my thoughts are with her.
Congrats, Rog, on the new prized possession. Can’t wait til summer arrives and the top is down!
The defunct Eve.com is once again sending me gift certificates to other online beauty retailers. I can’t believe how much I’ve enjoyed a favorite store closing.
The other night I dreamt I met Derek Powazek. He was selling apples at an orchard and I was wearing a t-shirt with his picture on it. He asked me whose web sites I visited. Now is that a strange dream, or what?
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