The Ties That Bind

Pardon to Daphne Du Maurier, if  you would. "Last Night I dreamt I was at (the State Bar) again. " It wasn't a dream, and it was not the Bar, but some of the people of the Bar that I saw again.


It has been nearly six months since, as an at-will manager, it was somebody's "will" that I no longer work where I had for 25 years. I have nearly made my peace with that unfair (from my point of view) ignominious end to my hard won career because I see that, as my former pastor used to say, "with God there are no accidents". I am where I am supposed to be at this time of my life, though for now, while I dabble at voice over, and write things, like this blog, and do some charity work, it is not entirely clear what my part of the cosmic puzzle will be revealed to be. Maybe I'll never know. I just have to let it go, something my "type A" personality resists, and say, "Not my Will, but Thine be done."


One of my colleagues, Robin, retired this week, and so I was invited back among them, those still toiling there and those not, many of whom had begun with me, when we were all very young. It was held at the festive upper room of J Lounge across from the former ATT building, formerly TransAmerica, where I had an office and responsibilty only a blink of an eye ago.  I did not know how I'd feel after all the time in which I have adjusted to my new pattern, but I wanted personally to recognize a fellow traveller of the same number of years who is off to another phase of her life. I was a tiny bit afraid. And, there is a bit of a gauze, a haze, over what used to be the largest part of my life, my work.


In some ways, despite the extended period of my life in which I went from young to over middle age, it seems like it never happened. But then, what I realize, what I realized  in particular tonight, it is the people that make me sure it did. And makes me grateful, it did.


The work, yes, I guess it was important. Still, there will always be someone to do it. But the interactions of this group of people, now, this time, this place, that will never come again. And they were what made often mind bending craziness in the work place tolerable. They were the ones that banded together in a crisis, shared joys of births and marriages, of small occasions and large. Amid changes and changes back and changes again, they kept plugging along. There may have been some grumbling, but mostly there was laughter and sharing.


I don't miss the work as it happens. Been there, done that, and in some ways, it was becoming soul killing. But I see I do miss the people. Luckily that is a choice we each have, to stay in touch, to share the next part of our too quickly passing lives, to count ourselves lucky that we met in an improbable confluence of circumstances doing a sometimes improbable job of holding people who don't want to be so held, to their ethical responsibilities.


I have a tendency, despite my apparently outgoing nature, to become reclusive if I am not in a structure outside of my control. But tonight made me realize, that would be terrible. We have, we current and former staffers at a difficult task, ties that bind us together.


So, get thee onto Facebook and friend me; let's call each other; let's have lunch, or dinner; let's not let the ties loosen.  We don't have all the time in the world. Now is the time. . .




Delores Faile and our recently departed friend and colleague Nancy Bollaert.