It's all good

Three words that I noticed my friends started to use the closer they came to 40.


"Don't think about it." That's what my mother says about my potential joblessness. She was my age in the 60's, but somehow the phrases of peace, love and kindness eluded her. She is left, rather, with those old standard's of the 1950's. "Think positive." She even loaned me a copy of Norman Vincent Peale's book when I was a kid. Up late one night, I saw the black and white film about him and remember distinctly the story of the two frogs in the cream -- one gives up and sinks, the other waves his arms and legs so hard that he turns the cream into butter into which he does not sink. Do frogs have to worry about cholesterol?

My friends have mostly adopted phrases which are much more zen like -- which seem to have an inherent explanation of the potential good and bad. I wonder how effective their or my mother's terms would be on the night I pack myself up and the cats and prepare for a life back in my mother's living room which I have not inhabited since I was 17. "Don't be so negative." My uncle has an 80's moment -- he has the uncanny ability to shift between the catchphrases of several generations. "If you don't believe in yourself, how will others believe in you." At core, he returns to a combination of the 50's, 60's and perhaps even a little of the 70's "me" generation; he is always encouraging me to "love myself." I believe both he and my mother have those books by Dr. Leo Buscaglia (Who? Think Dr. Phil meets Harvey Fierstein.)

Neither my mother nor my uncle ever truly faced joblessness. Marty established a phenomenal dentistry practice and Rozzy worked for the city for over 30 years. Nobody names their kids Martin and Rosalind anymore. Their mother, Sadie, worked for Klein's department store for over 30 years. When the store was about to close, her boss fired her so she could collect unemployment.

It's very 1950's of me, I know, to wax nostalgic like this. Any minute you might expect me to yell, like Willy Loman, "A teacher is not a piece of fruit!"

We don't get angry -- my friends and I. We're so civilized. We find a way to balance it in the universe.

I did blow up at a student the other day who told me he didn't need to go to college. I later apologized to him in front of the whole class. I know why I blew up -- all I could think of was that I had gone to college and graduate school and here I was facing elimination almost namelessly. My school had poor atttendance statistics and, regardless of my role in their creation, I was now, at worst, "part of the problem" or, at best, "collateral damage." As I began to write cover letters I imagined trying to explain why my school closed and trying not to think that instantly people would think "so you failed." All I said in my apology was that I could have handled things better. I brought in an article about Warren Buffet -- he went to college and grad school and that helped him learn even more techniques for making money than he knew before he left. The kid was convinced and, for the moment, so was I. But, I don't even have the acres of farmland Buffet had bought before he graduated from high school--or the CD's my student has from selling cars. I have a BA and an MFA and even at this moment, I could not, for the life of me tell you how I might get into such a financial position, though I can tell you many things and direct you to works of literature which people might consider, "priceless." There is a sudden, dull thud in the obvious irony of that phrase. Like the "tin tooth" Saul Bellow's Humboldt reveals that allows a little jealousy to ring out underneath the praise he gives to the writer he mentors who outdoes his own success.

That big, neurotic book. Humboldt's Gift. I read it in 9th grade. I was promising and pretentious back then. Unlike now, when I am just bitter and self-referential. Alas, Willy Loman rears his ugly head again.

The scary thing is, I don't even think my friends or I would know what our "wrong dreams" were that placed all of us in the position of being possibly fired or laid off because we are now at an age where schools and businesses begin to consider us expensive. My one friend in business is well aware that there will be no more advancement for her in her company. There are fewer and fewer directors and, eventually, she will be offered a buy-out, probably just before she is 50. She gave up a career in the arts to get an MBA. She was being practical. Ironically, she is about the same age she would have been when she would have to consider teaching rather than dancing. Sure, she would have made half the money until now. So, that's the payoff, I guess. The lucrative youth.

I suppose, had Willy Loman, survived his suicide, his wife would've told him that their house (the big irony that she tells him this at his funeral) was now paid off and they had things to look forward to -- that the pain had brought them some security.

Instead, my generation relies on the safety of knowing that life is "a journey." Most of us are too young to have paid off our mortgages even as we face re-orgs and school closings.

And as most of us are so over-educated that we know there are no absolutes, we tell ourselves, "It's all good." It has to be.