So here I sit at my computer while being attacked by two four year olds. I tried to watch the Health Care Bill signing ceremony, but my daughter insisted I watch her dance instead. I am home because I once worked for a firm called "Lehman Brothers". I have been out of work for 11 months.
I am watching my friends kid because she had to fly to Alabama to find out if her brother was going to either die or lose his leg due to a staff infection that he never had checked out because...you guessed it...he has no insurance. He has a wife of course...and three children...but you know the drill...three kids, she quit her job to take care of the kids, gave up her insurance, etc etc.
This is reality.
I am lucky. My wife has a good job. Even when I worked for Lehman, her insurance was superior to theirs so we are all covered. But many of my friends are not. Members of my family are not. At 39, I am the youngest of six children; four of us have been laid off from our various industries (By the way-one sibling doesn't work).
I have been interviewing. I was actually recently told that I had a job. I celebrated for about three hours only to receive an email that due to the fact that the project I would be running was being pushed off, my offer was no longer valid.
The comedy is that I am not a banker. I can barely add. I was an actor for 14 years in NYC and gave it up for something more "stable". Ha. I worked in an HR capacity where I had always joked was the retirement home for artists. In essence I failed at my life's dream. I was fortunate enough to find another career in which I managed to find some miniscule splinter of altruism in it and I am failing at that. What will my daughter think of me when she grows up?
My marriage is strong, but we have had our moments of frustration, fear, anxiety and friction due to the stress on her at work and the fact that we don't have my income. How many meals can I cook (I have a pork loin in he slow cooker right now)? How many loads of laundry can I do? How many times can I clean the apartment? What else can I do to alleviate my guilt and her stress? Will we argue tonight? Will we manage to be sensitive to our respective situations and be gentle with one another?
I am grateful for this time to have developed a great relationship--dare I say--"friendship" with my daughter. She is amazing. Full of love, life and enthusiasm for every new day. She's an inspiration. I hope that my current lack of those qualities never, EVER infects her. I am trying.
Eight and a half years ago, five days after I was married, my father succumbed to a horrific staff infection that he endured during a kidney operation. It was a long, slow excruciatingly painful death; A process that took five months. He was in a drug-induced coma for the last two months of his "Life" on a respirator. He was supposed to be my best-man We had more than enough evidence to sue, but my mother refused because, as she claimed her "heart couldn't take it" (She had triple bypass four months later).
Five days after we buried my father (and one day after we returned to NYC) 9/11 took the towers, 3,000 lives and my job. I was out of work for two years. That was not entirely the fault of anyone but myself. I had gone into a kind of shock. But I recovered. I got back. I worked as a contractor. I worked with people ten, fifteen years younger than me, but I fought back and landed.....at Lehman Brothers.
My passion for politics, policy and fair government has been the one truly constant thing in my life these last nearly nine years. I have been a daily reader and sometime (even recommended) diarist for this site since 2004. While I sit being pelted with stuffed toys by my daughter and her buddy, Thomas, I listen to the sound of the city outside my window; listening as life goes by seemingly unaware of the enormous step forward this country that I love so dearly has just taken.
Health Care Reform.
And guess what....
I'm smiling.