Are We Now Who We Were at Three?

I am almost four and I am in a strange bed in a very large room. Actually it is a crib and I feel embarrassed and mad because I am too old for a crib. There are seven other cribs in the room. Some of them have other children in them but I am not interested in them or why they are here. I want to go home. 

My crib is by a window that looks into a hallway. I can see out the window because it is big and not too much above my head when I sit up.  I spend my time waiting for my mother and father to come. I hope they do. I feel afraid that I have been forgotten and will never be fetched from here.

This morning I have made a nurse very mad at me because I won’t eat the blobby bowl of oatmeal she has thrust into my crib. She does not know that something very awful will happen if I have to swallow it.  I watch her walk across the floor straight toward me looking like she’s going to make me do something I do not want to do. But my mind is made up. I will not eat the oatmeal. As she stands over me looking very mad and talking to me mad-like, I think I might start to cry. But then the nice nurse comes to my rescue. “Why,” she says, very kindly “Would you like some frosted flakes? I think we have some frosted flakes in the kitchen.” “Yes, please,” I manage to squeak out. “But I don’t want any milk on them.”  Something awful will happen if I have to swallow mushy cereal too.  She looks at me like she’s puzzled but she brings me some frosted flakes in a bowl. No milk. The mean nurse shakes her head, still looking mad-like but goes away and leaves me alone and in peace to eat my dry cereal… just the way I like it.

I am in this place with all the cribs because I have a kidney infection. I don't know what that is. But I know I have it because my family – my mother, my father, and my little sister who is two – has just driven home from Florida after visiting my grandma and grandpa. My father gets mad when I say I have to go to the bathroom too much, and so I don’t tell him. I hold it. But I’m not supposed to do that any more. 

Later, a lot of men in white coats come in to the big room and hover over me in my bed. They lift my right arm high above my head and look at it closely under a big light above my bed. I feel a lot of little pin pricks on my arm. I don’t know what they are doing and they don’t talk to me about it at all. I only know I want them to finish soon because they are hurting me. I want them to go away and when they finally do, I spend my time worrying that they will come back.

When it is finally time to go home, after five long days and nights, lots of people are standing around in that room looking at me as I am dressed in my real clothes. Someone asks me which nurse is my favorite. I hesitate a minute and point right to the nice one who’d rescued me. I know immediately it wasn’t nice to have done that, because, after all, the mean nurse is standing there too. Later in the car, I will be told that, in fact, it had not been very nice of me to express my preference. I was not sure what I should have done.  

This story springs forth from a seminar on gerontology that I am taking this semester. During a lively discussion this week about the process of aging, my professor quotes a writer who states that beyond age 30, our characters are firmly set. One of my classmates laughs and counters that by three our characters are set. “What do you think,” Dr. C asks. “Does anyone remember being 3? Are you who you were at 3... or 4?”  We sit in silence for a few minutes, each of us drawing on our own first memories. And then some of us begin to nod our heads.

So – what about you…. Are you now who you were at age 3?

Good Enoughness

A reader comments on my post, If I Just Worked Harder (9/6/10) saying that she’s trying to get away from the belief that she has to ‘work hard in order to prosper.’ She points out that a generous employer for whom I once worked would have just reinforced that connection for her. She struggles with knowing she and her work are good enough and wonders if I have any beliefs about this.

I’ve been thinking about this since she asked.  A couple of things are at issue here. One is the connection between working hard and getting paid (enough). I should clarify that my definition of working ‘hard’ is about pouring my heart and soul into my work, whatever it is, from a restaurant kitchen to newspaper design to managing a department. It doesn’t mean sweating up a storm or being a slave to one’s job (although some would argue that I surely seem like a slave to my job). It does mean that it’s not part of my DNA to do a half-a** job. And in that regard, I am my own toughest critic. Working ‘hard’ (for me) really means working ‘well,’ a.k.a. being competent.  And I do believe that there should be a connection between competence and salary.

When my generous employer announced a bonus for me in connection with the new (and lucrative) contract that I’d helped win, after the shock wore off, I thought FINALLY. This is how it should work. Share the wealth when there’s wealth to be had. That’s also a deep belief of mine, the end result of which is I will probably never be wealthy. 

Good enough-ness is another issue, a sore one. In my work, I know I’m good enough. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say I’m better than good enough. My work is the only area of my life where I have ever been certain I have value. Someone who’s known me most of my adult life has said that any one who gets me (in the workplace) is getting a treasure, a prize. That’s part of the trouble – I don’t want to be ‘won’ or ‘found’ serendipitously (and cheaply) – I want to be paid for the value I bring to the table. I earned it.   

Lest you think I’ve sprouted a gigantic ego, in the spirit of authenticity, not good-enough-ness is also part of my soul. I’ve struggled mightily with that my entire life. Among other life circumstances, I had a very narcissistic father whose attention I could not get and keep. I tried everything I could think of to interest him – from embracing his interests to trying to be best at mine. His attention was fleeting and superficial and eventually I slunk off, defeated.  I’ve learned to believe that I’m not pretty enough…. not whimsical enough…. not socially ept…. not funny enough but never that my work isn’t good enough. For many years, knowing my work was good enough was all I had.

On Loyalty to Objects and Jobs

A reader asks me to explain what I mean when I say I’m “loyal” to something. She points out I have used the term in reference to purses [The Commitment, 8/17/10] and jobs [If I Just Worked Harder, 9/6/10]. I think about this. It’s true that I usually connect loyalty to humans somehow. Have I endowed objects with personhood status? The stuffed animals that hang out in my bedroom because I don’t want to hurt their feelings by packing them away would answer unequivocally “yes.” You’re invited to laugh aloud at that revelation. But the animals and what they represent are perhaps a different issue to be addressed in another post.

Maybe being loyal to something like a purse is more about not getting sick of things easily. “Fickle” would never be an adjective applied to me. I find a purse I like and I still like it even when it’s falling apart and I’m forced by pride or my daughter to replace it. My daughter and probably many people would argue that wanting more than one of some items doesn’t mean they stopped liking others in their collection. They just want more than one for variety. For me, a variety of purses represents pressure to change them to match whatever I’m wearing. I never save time enough to think about things like that nor is it something that’s important to me so a last minute change inevitably means I don’t have something I need because it’s in the “other” purse.

There are other items that (for me) fall in the “don’t need more than one or two” or “don’t need new until the old falls apart” categories. Things like shoes.... coats…. linens….nightgowns….. I don’t replace electronics until the old stops working and the parts are no longer made (well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but not much). I’m the first to admit these distinctions do not necessarily make logical sense. You perhaps have your own list.

With respect to loyalty and jobs, I’ve never started a job thinking of it as a stepping stone to somewhere else. I settle in, want to learn the ropes, and want to contribute to and be part of the team. Then I get attached to the people and in most instances, to the work itself. I don’t start out loyal, but I become loyal. In at least a few instances, I’ve stayed past the start of boredom – afraid of change, feeling stuck, not wanting to let my colleagues down by interrupting the status quo. Perhaps in some cases, I have deluded myself into believing that my presence is required. That’s yet another issue. Nonetheless, in two seven-year stints, I stayed at jobs until, due to mergers, I had to leave. And at that point, I found myself in positions of desperate fear that I wouldn’t find another job, and when I did, I acquiesced without question to the less than desirable terms that someone else had determined. The ‘one step forward, two backwards’ phenomenon that kept me struggling financially for so many years contributed to my need to acquire once I was able to do so. I was going to acquire under my terms and nobody (least of all me) was going to say “no.”

Next up… more about working hard and self-worth.

If I Just Worked Harder.......

The commentary behind the scenes of this blog is fascinating. Everyone has their own theory on motivation to have (or not). I sit with my feelings and memories. I go back again and again to my first job, remembering how hard I worked, how little I made, and that I despaired of ever doing any better in life.

 I remember sitting at my kitchen table, which my mom bought me, in my first apartment figuring out how much more I would have to earn in order to be able to start a ‘vacation fund’, a ‘clothing fund’, and a ‘Christmas fund’. Those were the wants that seemed most important to me at the time. As I did the math, I clearly recall the sinking and hopeless feeling in my stomach. With yearly raises of 25 cents an hour (which was what the policy seemed to be), it would take forever. I don’t know if my employers were wealthy – I thought they were. I worked very hard to be indispensable – but my efforts did not translate into dollars. My solution was always to work harder. I’d been raised with a serious work ethic but I felt like I was spinning my wheels. Someone else held the keys to my prosperity. I was not in control.

 My first years in NYC were very tough. I often didn’t have enough money for the bills, for food, and I certainly didn’t have anything left over for fun. Most of the time, I walked around without any money at all, a condition that drove my mother nuts. Either loyal or scared of change (jury still out), I stayed in jobs until a merger or a buy-out ended them, and in subsequent positions, I always started out earning less than I’d been making. So I was always struggling to regain lost ground.

Inside I was angry. I couldn’t work harder – or more. There weren’t enough hours in the day or enough days in the week. It didn’t seem fair to me. Why did I not deserve to have a good life?

Then I went to work for a generous man whose work ethic rivaled my own. I remember sitting with him in the car on the way to a ‘seal-the-deal’ presentation we were to make to a behemoth health insurance company. He cleared his throat and told me there would be a substantial bonus for me as a result of my hard work. I was stunned. I fought the urge to look around to see to whom he was speaking because surely it wasn’t me.

His generosity along with other factors in my life changed my situation and outlook. There was a connection, after all, between my actions and the end result. Now I was going on a shopping spree.