===== blessings all around =====

Fridays are a good day to get things done at a Jewish organization, because the office closes at 4 PM, and most of the staff works from home. I only discovered this recently as my grant-funded position was coming to an end and I used every remaining day to try to wrap up my last project and clear out my files and desk. 

I've known since the beginning of the year that my position was ending but it didn't sink in until I brought in my wheely cart and started loading it up with the typical accumulation of worker bee stuff: shoes to change into from the practical Doc Martens I wore for my walk from the train, a few photos and pictures to hang up and try to make it homey, or at least filled with things that made me smile because except for the occasional colleague who helped me with my spreadsheets and metrics, people rarely visited me or sat in the two chairs that lay in wait for the co-workers I initially hoped would stop by.

The last few weeks it took more and more effort to quiet my mind and the increasing anxiety about an unknown future. I've been trying to get back on track for years now, but it's been a slow and spotty process since I was completely derailed over a decade ago, watching from the  passenger seat as my promising, multi-faceted professional and creative life went careening off the rails.

I’ve always loved riding on trains and the imagery and imagination of railroads, but there are many more terms and metaphors in my life since becoming a parent. First, there's having two boys in the age of Thomas the Tank Engine, that ubiquitous cartoon originating as a series of stories (and later, books)  Reverend Wilbert Awdry invented in 1943 as a way to entertain his son Christopher during a bout of measles.  It’s mix of oligarchy – the railroad is run by Sir Topham Hat, aka the Fat Comptroller, who is like an English Trump: an arrogant paunchy guy who likes to take revenge on those who displease him - and European Socialism – the trains always run on time and are accessible to everyone who lives on the island of Sodor.  

When I had postpartum depression after V was born, just thinking of Sodor could make me cry: a combination of despair at its dystopia, its humorless hum of productivity, and a longing to live within its perfection, with those utterly reliable trains providing easy access to its entire topography, from the valley to the sea.  We will all die, I’d think, but the stations, the well-traveled routes and tracks will remain.===========

Both boys loved Thomas and his friends, and each episode was just long enough to read an article from the island of Manhattan so I learned to tolerate the repetition. There was a brief time when B & V knew the names of every single train. But then B got older, moving on to more age-appropriate shows, and V regressed and lost all his language and the two of us languished in Sodor for years, with those same insipid tunes and stories and my tolerance was tested. Henry stuck in the tunnel again?! When will Thomas stop being so cheeky? Why aren't there more female trains in positions of power? How can I get voted off the island for eternity?

 Trains were constantly getting uncoupled, but in the English version there was always someone to come to the rescue and save the day, albeit often after some chiding at the childish and irresponsible behavior that caused each mishap. 
Meanwhile on this side of the pond real-life derailment was far more unsettling and isolating, although I found an ever-expanding cadre of compatriots in similar circumstances: other parents and partners of those requiring full-time care; people in rehab or recovery; anyone facing an illness or condition that required constant vigilance to the point that other priorities beyond survival slipped away.

We'd offer support and empathy at our often thwarted attempts to get back on track, to retrace our steps or reconstitute our former selves.  Often as not there would be a setback, regression or relapse and we would find ourselves in entry level jobs after years of working, or we would need a second mortgage or face foreclosure after being comfortably middle class. I once saw a woman in her sixties sob as she spoke about giving up her car because she could no longer make the payments.  I heard mothers mourn the careers they once had, losing touch with colleagues with enviable achievements; I spoke to other writers who slipped from days to hours of work each week, trying without success to 'follow their bliss' amidst mounds of laundry and medical treatments    Being derailed was our private struggle we rarely shared with the rest of the world, not wanting to face their pity or discomfort at not knowing what to say, when all we wanted was to be seen, to be acknowledged for the person that still shone under the surface of the duties and difficulties of daily life.  We're all in this together, they'd remind me, and it was enough to keep me going. 

I'm woefully sentimental, as I always am when things end: this is the last time I'll use my security badge, this is the last cup of coffee I'll make from a pod, this is the last time I'll sit in this windowless room, as I remove the items that had traces of who I was and who I remain. 

 I say goodbye to the few co-workers in the office. I've said thank you many times but I don't know that they realize how much I mean it, how grateful I am for colleagues - other people who care about the same things and can laugh at the same absurdities, sharing small pleasures or challenges:  apps to download for a free coffee or sandwich;  sharing when the guy that sells really cheap produce from a  truck outside of the CVS sets up shop; the prognosis of a sick cat, the cold that won’t go away, or the train that broke down - the type of minor derailments it's okay to discuss.

My overstuffed bag and I walk out of the office, out of the building and onto city streets in that mid-afternoon moment when the happy hour signs are just going up.  I pass so many every day, you'd think that all people do in Manhattan is drink from 4-7, if they aren't at 12-step meetings held in churches tucked between the bars. The universe provides all, but often not in the way you'd expect.===  ===

Near Penn Station I walk into Jack's, a mainstay of my life through thick and thin, sugar buzz to gluten-free, Jack's welcomes the world as only a bargain store can.  Last week it was a 99-cent belt (to hold up my $19 jeans from Costco), today challah for a dollah (now a dollah and a half), some bagels, another pair of $2 readers so I can drown my sorrow in the news on the way home.  My cart, really a backpack with wheels, is a bit unwieldy but narrow enough to go in and out of aisles.  

The sight of the challah, the strain of the bag, I feel my normal Friday melancholy magnified. Tonight we’ll light candles,  with challah and some wine for us, soy milk for V, a lonely Shabbos as a start to a lonely weekend.  But I don't let myself go down that road, instead remembering that Saturday will be our monthly service by, for, and with others with disabilities and their families.  I love every part of it: my fellow daveners, our funny and wise leader with her brief and timely parsha, the singing, the accessible Siddur (prayer book).

Dear God [or goddess or higher power or whatever you believe in]

I have been given so many blessings:
food to eat, clothes to wear, people who love me.

Thank you, God, for all my wonderful blessings.

Can you make that enough? That simple prayer gets me every time and I silently let it sink in until I can answer Yes.

I get in line, then notice a man holding a bag of pretzels, hovering at the end of a long row of customers. 'Are you in line?' I ask. 'Yes,' he says, 'thanks for asking. It's hard to stay in line and keep track of my stuff.' and he motions to his bags, also a wheely cart with another bag attached on top.  'People often butt in front of me, they pretend they don’t see me.'  I nod and smile, in a way that I hope conveys the empathy I am feeling.  He's not carting his stuff home, he's carting his stuff period: to a shelter,  a friend's sofa, hopefully a warm and safe place somewhere, but it's a whole other level of insecurity, an entirely other degree of derailment.  =====     ===  =

We chat for a few minutes and I focus all my attention on him, because the most I can do right now is to see him, to notice and treat him with respect.  

In the week since, with snow days interrupting any progress I had hoped to make,  I stop and take in my blessings  (I'm warm and safe) and then I think of the nice man in line at Jack's and send them his way: that he too has clothes to wear and food to eat and people that love him.   May we all see and be seen, because we're all in this together.