Saturday, December 11, 2004
Saturday, December 11, 2004
It's Saturday afternoon and such a lovely day in Los Angeles. After weeks of weather in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, it is in the low to mid 80's today. Oh, I know this is an odd time of year to have such weather, but California's climate gets weirder every year. I don't remember having 40 degree weather during the day when I was growing up. I think it hailed two or three times that I can remember, yet just a few weeks ago we were driving home from my parents' home, passing through Lake Elsinore and there were three and four inches of snow on every car! The hilltops were covered with snow, the grassy lawns and soil covered plots of land were covered with ice. It was amazing. My children were in awe with their mouths visibly hanging open. I just knew one of them would have drool dripping at any moment. It was an anomaly.
I've just spent the last hour or more reading archives of my friend Anne Hefley's blog. Discovering her blog last week made me feel guilty that we hadn't been in contact for so long. I knew that she'd had a bad time after CP.com, but many of us were. What I didn't know about was the depression. I know what that can do to someone and how disabling it can be. I don't think I'm immune from it either, I just know when I'm going there, I fight like hell to make a u-turn.
Back to Anne's blog...I started searching the archives, back to the last time she and I worked under the same roof, somewhere around mid-2002. After reading through a few weeks' worth of entries, I found the entries that were made when we re-connected in late April/early May. Part of it was curiosity (was I a good enough friend that she would have mentioned me in her blog), maybe part of it was vanity (does she think fondly of me?), and part of it was guilt. Guilt that I, had I been available to her, could have helped her through that rough patch. I mean, in a way I think I was helpful. She had an increase in income, albeit temporary. My philosophy is to always network for good, meaning, I always network with people and refer them for opportunities, employment, housing, education, or otherwise because it is a form of good will toward man. I have personally been the recipient of this kind of good will my entire life. EVERY job I have had was obtained, at least in part, by a personal referral or recommendation.
There is a difference between a referral and a recommendation. If I refer you to someone for a job, it doesn't necessarily mean that I vouch for your performance, it just means that I believe you have the skills to perform well in that particular role. If I recommend you for a job, it means that I am personally, sort of guaranteeing that you will do a good jor for someone. In Anne's case, I highly recommended her. I was always very fond of her when we worked together at CP.com and was sad when she chose to leave. I was also sad when we started getting retention bonuses to continue working there and she wasn't there to benefit from that. It was very honorable of our employer to do that for us. They were honest and straightforward about the nebulous direction the company was heading and to keep us happy, keep us working, keep our minds off the stress, they decided to compensate us. I'm not sure how they established who would get what. I think it had to do with rank or salary level, whether you were single or married maybe, and how long you had been with the company. At any rate, I was thrilled when I received my first bonus, then my second, then my third. The check increased by several thousand dollars with each incremental installation. It was like having Christmas in June. I bought my Suburban, moved from Studio City into the Larchmont/Hancock Park area, purchased new furniture, etc. I even bought my stepson a car (a bucket) and had it delivered to him at college. It didn't cost me much, and I was happy to do it. He was working hard, attending college on a football/athletic scholarship, and he needed transportation. Sometimes, something so small to one person can mean the world to someone else. I know that the kindness of others has lifted me up tremendously when I have been down. Kindness that is easy to give. I mean, I may have spent $500 on buying him that old, raggedy Lincoln Towncar, and maybe spent $200 for shipping it, but it meant the WORLD to him. He thought he had a Rolls Royce. He was SO happy to have his own vehicle, and I remember that feeling when I was young. The liberation that owning a car brought with it. It meant freedom....freedom to roam wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted. It was a gift for me to be able to do that for him and I knew he genuinely appreciated it. I used to laugh so hard listening to him tell me how his friends always wanted to ride in HIS car instead of their own. It was large enough to fit several football players, as compared to the compact vehicles his friends owned. He would describe how they all pitched in on gas and went cruising together. Even when it snowed, and he didn't have a working heater in the car, his buddies would pile up in the car with him and they would keep each other warm with their body heat. I was proud to see him committed to staying in school, whatever the personal sacrifice.
This younger generation, I know I must sound old, but they just don't have the same balls that we were raised to have. I was taught that nothing would be given to me, but that I hard to earn it. I was taught that if I could save a few bucks on my purchases, I would be a fool not to take advantage of it. I was taught to respect my elders and my teachers. I was taught about manners and etiquette, about cleanliness and punctuality. I was taught that I was responsible for me and that I couldn't rely on others to be successful. I was also taught about kindness. With all of my parents' shortcomings, they were good people. We just weren't good together. My mother used to take us to the bank, Gibraltar Savings in the Carson Mall, on Saturdays, at least once or twice a month, to make $100 deposits. These deposits or savings would be sent to her father, and her uncles in the Philippines. She made us (my twin sister and I) make deposits into our own savings accounts and taught us how to be responsible for managing the account by making entries in the passbook/savings book. What she did was teach me how to give to others, even when you aren't rich, or affluent. Her small deposits equated to a nice stack of cash in the Philippines when you consider the foreign exchange ratio. It showed her family loyalty and her graciousness. These are things I try to teach my own children, knowing that one day, they will be influential adults and have their own children to pass these attributes on to.
It's so difficult in this time to teach children these things. They are so distracted with homework, sports, or music classes, video games, and MTV/VH1/BET, etc. When I was a kid, I went to my local, public school, within 3 miles from my home, which meant I could walk to and from school. My children have mostly been in private schools all of their lives, so they don't get to learn the street smart skills I had to in order to negotiate the streets on the way home. They are driven to school each and every day. I didn't have after-school enrichment like they do, so I went home, did my homework if I hadn't already completed it at school, and I started preparing dinner per my mother's instructions. She would call us punctually at 3:30 to make sure we made it home (she didn't work from the time we were born until we were in the 3rd or 4th grade) and give us instructions on what to do for dinner. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, or stir what she put in the slow cooker that morning, or make a pot of rice, or boil noodles for spaghetti, or shred cheese for tacos, or make a fresh, green salad. She was good at making her money work for her, and good at providing nutritious meals for us. We drank lots of milk and water, and we always had a fresh green garden salad before dinner. She didn't use canned or frozen vegetables, it was always the real deal. It's difficult with the distractions our kids have to teach them the things we were taught considering commute times, etc. There just aren't enough hours in the day. We don't get home after school until 6 p.m. My second grader sometimes stays up til 9:00 p.m. doing homework at night. My eighth grader stays up until 10 p.m. and there are endless "projects". Either a history, or science, or english, or geography project. My second grader has to do a community service project over the winter break and I have to take photos of it to "prove" that he did it, along with helping him do a report on the activity. Whatever happened to a good, old-fashioned Christmas vacation, where you actually just have a vacation? I thought vacation meant you don't work.
I'm way off track. Back to Anne. I was happy to recommend her and facilitate her contract gig at USS.com. It was comforting having someone I knew working with me, and I suppose I was searching through her archives to see if she made any comments about that period, or about me. I wanted to know if I had let her down by referring her to a place that I myself was miserable at. I wanted to know if she harbored any resentment toward me because the idiot she worked for was such an idiot and went through copywriters like a fat man goes through a bag of cookies. I wanted to know if she knew just how fond I was of her, and if she felt the same. I wanted to see if there was anything that I should have recognized in her that would have triggered me to help her through that rough patch.
I think I found the answer. I mean, she clearly understood that the person she reported to was an idiot (per her blog entries), so I feel okay with that. But she mentioned in her blog that she really looked forward to working with someone at USS.com that she had previously worked with, and that must mean me. So yes, I think the feelings were mutual and I'm at ease with that knowledge.
It's funny, I'm finding that she and I have more things in common than we ever knew about through casual conversation. We've had similar experiences in our lives. Again, I'm glad we've re-connected, and happy to know I have a friend in Baltimore that I could visit if I were on the East Coast.
It's cooling down now, after an hour or so of writing. It will probably hit the high 30's/low 40's tonight, requiring me to turn on the central heat. The cold weather is not good for my body. It causes aches and pains, like just before the rain comes. I do enjoy it better than the horrible dry heat of summer in the Valley of the Stars.....
- posted by Suzanne @ 2:31 PM
