There are lots of changes in our household as a result of my husband's diagnosis, added to those that we are still trying to adjust to as a result of my still-new career. My identity shifts so much that I am having a devil of a time balancing and staying on my feet. With the new "normal" comes some decisions that cause me to wonder if the way I am actually living is consistent with my character (or what I thought was my character).
My husband, as a political enthusiast who is on rest, has had the television tuned into coverage of the Republican election hoopla close to 24/7. There is a lot of talk about flip-flopping and moral character and adherence to party values and such. The candidates love to point out inconsistencies between one another's actions and words. This has fed into my examination of my own tarnished record, so to speak.
It's a question I have wrestled with a lot as I travel through adulthood, because it is very difficult to live up to ideals. Making real life work often requires the moving of lines drawn in the sand. My favorite quote in all the world about parenting came from one of Jeff's former colleagues, delivered when we were talking about what we end up doing in the middle of the night to get our babies to go to sleep: "those lines we draw... it is after all, just sand." We feed them when we said we weren't going to, give them pacifiers we took away, bring them to bed against our pediatrician's advice, etc. We might have had really strong convictions about these things at 3pm. But at 3 am, the world looks like a very different place. Just as the world of parenting looked so much different from the non-kid side.
When I wrote the MLK day post, for instance, I wondered if people would think I believe I've made flawless choices in building bridges for those on "lonely islands of poverty." I have not. When my husband and I moved to Syracuse we made a decision to live out in a suburb. It just about killed me, the idea that I was deliberately choosing to contribute to what goes on in our urban deserts in order to benefit my own children. Real life presented me with a situation: I had a sensitive 6th grade girl about to start middle school in a brand new state, and I could put her in a safe school with good ratings and a good orchestra or I could put her in one where only 40% of the students graduate, extra-curricular activities are dismal, and not one person could assure me she would not be assaulted in the hallways every day.
Real life is a negotiation between what actually works and what we wish could work. There are many times parents say, "Before I was a parent, I said I was never going to _____. And now look at me." That is not just true for parenting. As a feminist, I have felt hypocritical about taking the luxury of staying home with my children in their pre-school years, and am trying to determine whether I am oppressing or providing a good job for a woman by considering getting someone to clean my house for me now that I have a career. And who do I think I am that I am considering not cleaning my own house anyway? It's not like I'm a lawyer or have 4 kids under age 5 or live in 4.000 sq. feet. The nutrition standards I would like to adhere to do not seem attainable at the moment. I see myself backing off of more and more church commitments, which nicely contributes to Christian guilt. I wonder if I'm being a bad wife by considering going to work tomorrow or a bad employee for considering calling off again.
How do we live with ourselves, when we make decisions that go against our beliefs? Are we hypocrites for erasing those lines in the sand and drawing new ones, or simply battle-tested soldiers trying to stay alive? A little of both, I would venture to guess.
The trick to the functionality of our bones is their ability to be both flexible and strong. If they were totally inflexible, they would shatter at our slightest movement. If they were rubbery, they could never support us enough to let us stand up. Their usefulness lies in the combination of both qualities. But what's the formula where perfect balance is achieved?
I think it's ok, as well, to run the results against a litmus test of sorts. Otherwise we can justify anything we decide to do. We may find some of our decisions still bother us, even if we would make the same ones again. Or maybe we can find ways to offset our carbon output, so to speak. We learn every time we hold ourselves accountable for our decisions. So I would love to hear from you. I find these conversations important, and would love to hear about how you have chosen your own personal shade of gray.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Standing on the Edge of a Nightmare
There is a term from nursing school that I adopted into my vocabulary because sometimes it is an incredibly accurate description.
Sense of Impending Doom.
While Jeff was in Kenya for 2 weeks, I would get this overwhelming feeling that I was truly single, all alone. He couldn't really call and we could barely communicate by e-mail, so perhaps that was contributing.
Then he came home, but for some reason I couldn't rest. Something was wrong with him. He would have what we thought was an asthma attack every time he exerted himself at all. He slept constantly. He was irritable. It was like he was here, but not really. I tried to tell myself it was jet lag; the long plane rides must have triggered his asthma. I tried to get him to go to the doctor. Today he finally went.
Tonight he is in a hospital room and the girls and I are alone again. I hope he comes home soon. I think everything is going to be ok, but maybe not. The doctors can't make promises. I know just enough from my nursing school days that half of medicine is guesswork. And I know exactly what pulmonary embolism means.
He has a large blood clot in each lung. The one in his left lung is so big that it has killed lung tissue. The doctors say that if something "catastrophic" was going to happen, it would have probably happened.
I have rehearsed this day in my nightmares several times. I know what comes next in the nightmare, so I hope I wake up soon, before that happens. I want him home safe. I want the doctors to tell me everything is going to be fine.
Do you know what I mean when I say that I feel as if I'm calling upon the emergency version of myself that I hoped I would never have to use? The one created in response to the lurking fears that pop up every now and then, the one invented "just in case" ever happens? The strong woman who can pick up the pieces of life and put them together in the event of a disaster ... I really never wanted to test drive her. I'm sure she's better in theory than practice. My friends are wonderful and supportive and I love them dearly and know that however strong Disaster Response Tiff happens to be that she is powerless without them.
I also know that Everyday Sustainable Tiff, whatever postmodern Christian feminist she fancies herself to be, is half of who she is without Jeff.
Sense of Impending Doom.
While Jeff was in Kenya for 2 weeks, I would get this overwhelming feeling that I was truly single, all alone. He couldn't really call and we could barely communicate by e-mail, so perhaps that was contributing.
Then he came home, but for some reason I couldn't rest. Something was wrong with him. He would have what we thought was an asthma attack every time he exerted himself at all. He slept constantly. He was irritable. It was like he was here, but not really. I tried to tell myself it was jet lag; the long plane rides must have triggered his asthma. I tried to get him to go to the doctor. Today he finally went.
Tonight he is in a hospital room and the girls and I are alone again. I hope he comes home soon. I think everything is going to be ok, but maybe not. The doctors can't make promises. I know just enough from my nursing school days that half of medicine is guesswork. And I know exactly what pulmonary embolism means.
He has a large blood clot in each lung. The one in his left lung is so big that it has killed lung tissue. The doctors say that if something "catastrophic" was going to happen, it would have probably happened.
I have rehearsed this day in my nightmares several times. I know what comes next in the nightmare, so I hope I wake up soon, before that happens. I want him home safe. I want the doctors to tell me everything is going to be fine.
Do you know what I mean when I say that I feel as if I'm calling upon the emergency version of myself that I hoped I would never have to use? The one created in response to the lurking fears that pop up every now and then, the one invented "just in case" ever happens? The strong woman who can pick up the pieces of life and put them together in the event of a disaster ... I really never wanted to test drive her. I'm sure she's better in theory than practice. My friends are wonderful and supportive and I love them dearly and know that however strong Disaster Response Tiff happens to be that she is powerless without them.
I also know that Everyday Sustainable Tiff, whatever postmodern Christian feminist she fancies herself to be, is half of who she is without Jeff.
Monday, January 16, 2012
No Bridges to Lonely Islands of Poverty
I admit that a 3 day weekend is a windfall, for whatever reason it comes. It makes my weekend actually relaxing instead of just the days I work really hard at home and church instead of at work. And I don't have to worry about what to do with my children and can just hang out with them, guilt-free.
That being said, I have been thinking about Dr. King's contributions to the world this weekend. Every day now, I find myself working against the segregation that still exists in society. My boss is holding a sort of mini-summit tomorrow about getting serious about eradicating poverty in Syracuse, and we are supposed to come to the table ready to discuss 4 questions
1. Why do we have people in poverty?
2. How do we eliminate poverty in our county?
3. What will it take to get people out of poverty?
4. What do we (our organizations represented at the table) need to do in 2012?
In preparation for that conversation, I found an article I remember Jeff telling me about. (Actually, Jeff had shared with me a conversation with the author after attending her talk, and I had to go find the article it was based on). It is entitled "Living in Each Other's Pockets: The Navigation of Social Distances by the Middle Class Families in Los Angeles" by Alesia Montgomery in 2006 in City and Community. The article reports that when parents (in this article, African American parents on the outer edge of the middle class) are trying to "do better" for their children, they spend a lot of time and money shuttling their children to safer parks and recreational areas and schools with higher test scores. A major difference between families in the "lower class" and the families in the "middle class" is that the activities of children in the middle class are highly orchestrated by their parents, with a lot of the legwork being done by mothers (can I get an Amen, somebody?!)
What ends up happening are 2 significant things. One is that the neighborhood being "left" declines even further. The second, and the one that I think is a sucker punch in the stomach to people in my line of work, is that when those families started attending the whiter, more resourced, higher test score schools,
the families at those schools starting moving further out or sending their kids to even nicer private schools.
The circle of advantage moves further and further out, leaving an even bigger donut hole in the middle.
At my agency, we run a workshop called "Bridges Out of Poverty." It is all about building a way for middle class people and those in poverty to have real conversations and relationships in order to change things for the most disadvantaged families. But, I have said this to my boss before: Does the middle class actually want to build bridges, or do they like protecting the gulf?
So I can cite many theories as to why there are people in poverty in our county. I can propose solutions like employment and real banks and grocery stores in depressed neighborhoods. I can even talk about making communities more viable and getting the middle class interested in the plight of the poor. But how do we actually do that? I know how we can plan to do that, but in the end, we work against what seems to be a universal human tendency to distance ourselves from those less advantaged from us. I say universal because this is as old as serfdom or older. It's as globally present as a caste system in India, severe social class separation in Brazil, and urban sprawl in the United States.
Dr. King's dream is realized in that there are not signs hanging on establishments saying, "For Whites Only" anymore, but I strongly feel that still for some, in Dr. King's words, "basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one."
That being said, I have been thinking about Dr. King's contributions to the world this weekend. Every day now, I find myself working against the segregation that still exists in society. My boss is holding a sort of mini-summit tomorrow about getting serious about eradicating poverty in Syracuse, and we are supposed to come to the table ready to discuss 4 questions
1. Why do we have people in poverty?
2. How do we eliminate poverty in our county?
3. What will it take to get people out of poverty?
4. What do we (our organizations represented at the table) need to do in 2012?
In preparation for that conversation, I found an article I remember Jeff telling me about. (Actually, Jeff had shared with me a conversation with the author after attending her talk, and I had to go find the article it was based on). It is entitled "Living in Each Other's Pockets: The Navigation of Social Distances by the Middle Class Families in Los Angeles" by Alesia Montgomery in 2006 in City and Community. The article reports that when parents (in this article, African American parents on the outer edge of the middle class) are trying to "do better" for their children, they spend a lot of time and money shuttling their children to safer parks and recreational areas and schools with higher test scores. A major difference between families in the "lower class" and the families in the "middle class" is that the activities of children in the middle class are highly orchestrated by their parents, with a lot of the legwork being done by mothers (can I get an Amen, somebody?!)
What ends up happening are 2 significant things. One is that the neighborhood being "left" declines even further. The second, and the one that I think is a sucker punch in the stomach to people in my line of work, is that when those families started attending the whiter, more resourced, higher test score schools,
the families at those schools starting moving further out or sending their kids to even nicer private schools.
The circle of advantage moves further and further out, leaving an even bigger donut hole in the middle.
At my agency, we run a workshop called "Bridges Out of Poverty." It is all about building a way for middle class people and those in poverty to have real conversations and relationships in order to change things for the most disadvantaged families. But, I have said this to my boss before: Does the middle class actually want to build bridges, or do they like protecting the gulf?
So I can cite many theories as to why there are people in poverty in our county. I can propose solutions like employment and real banks and grocery stores in depressed neighborhoods. I can even talk about making communities more viable and getting the middle class interested in the plight of the poor. But how do we actually do that? I know how we can plan to do that, but in the end, we work against what seems to be a universal human tendency to distance ourselves from those less advantaged from us. I say universal because this is as old as serfdom or older. It's as globally present as a caste system in India, severe social class separation in Brazil, and urban sprawl in the United States.
Dr. King's dream is realized in that there are not signs hanging on establishments saying, "For Whites Only" anymore, but I strongly feel that still for some, in Dr. King's words, "basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one."
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
A New Year's Blessing
That I made up. Which will be obvious.
May you not feel you must adhere to the decorating, entertaining, and other standards found in magazines or on HGTV. Nor the standards set by your neighbors. Or that snotty woman in your book club.
May mountains of laundry not raise your anxiety level one fraction of an inch.
May Zillow lead you not into temptation to peek at the value of your house.
May you be oblivious to the high fashion demands that only look good on those with the dimensions of my thirteen year old nephew (5'9, 108 lbs).
May your best haircut and color last you well into 6 months without needing refreshing.
May blissful blindness obscure from you such things as blueberry muffin batter splattered all over your walls, floor, and dog.
May you have the shrewdness to determine whether your children have a genuine need or are simply attempting to manipulate you.
May you perfect the art of saying no to the PTA, Sunday School, or other requests for you to volunteer time you really don't have.
May all of your houseplants be healthy and hearty and not die.
May the deer not know your garden even exists.
May you order appetizers, drinks, and dessert with your meal sometimes, and not worry about it in any way.
May dust not accrue on the surfaces of your home.
May you get to go on more dates with your husband.
May you delight in down time spent with your children. May you take it.
May you muster a little courage to try something new.
May you love with abandon and be deeply rewarded for it.
May you discover that you are more at home with who you are than you ever have been.
May the sun shine on you this year more than it did last year. But kind of like filtered through 30spf sunblock. Yet still providing sufficient amounts of vitamin D.
May you know that I appreciate the connection we have through this little nook of cyberspace.
Happy New Year!
May you not feel you must adhere to the decorating, entertaining, and other standards found in magazines or on HGTV. Nor the standards set by your neighbors. Or that snotty woman in your book club.
May mountains of laundry not raise your anxiety level one fraction of an inch.
May Zillow lead you not into temptation to peek at the value of your house.
May you be oblivious to the high fashion demands that only look good on those with the dimensions of my thirteen year old nephew (5'9, 108 lbs).
May your best haircut and color last you well into 6 months without needing refreshing.
May blissful blindness obscure from you such things as blueberry muffin batter splattered all over your walls, floor, and dog.
May you have the shrewdness to determine whether your children have a genuine need or are simply attempting to manipulate you.
May you perfect the art of saying no to the PTA, Sunday School, or other requests for you to volunteer time you really don't have.
May all of your houseplants be healthy and hearty and not die.
May the deer not know your garden even exists.
May you order appetizers, drinks, and dessert with your meal sometimes, and not worry about it in any way.
May dust not accrue on the surfaces of your home.
May you get to go on more dates with your husband.
May you delight in down time spent with your children. May you take it.
May you muster a little courage to try something new.
May you love with abandon and be deeply rewarded for it.
May you discover that you are more at home with who you are than you ever have been.
May the sun shine on you this year more than it did last year. But kind of like filtered through 30spf sunblock. Yet still providing sufficient amounts of vitamin D.
May you know that I appreciate the connection we have through this little nook of cyberspace.
Happy New Year!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Our (Sick) Days Are Numbered
My husband and I played our first real high stakes game of "who takes the sick day to stay home with the sick kiddo?"
After a really big day for my sweet little girl, who bravely made it through her interpretive dance and the Sunday School Christmas play in truly admirable fashion, she came home looking suspiciously flushed and glassy eyed. When we offered to take her out for dinner to celebrate she didn't seem interested and mentioned that her head hurt. Fever. Poor thing wore herself out.
Jeff lost the coin toss. Because he can grade papers from home - classes are out for the semester. And honestly, he seems to be fighting what she's got. He's been out like a light before 9 every night this weekend. A day home might do him so good.
I feel an even more exaggerated panic around sickness in the house now. 6 sick days for 2 kids and a mom?! The HR rep when going over my benefits packet sweetly lamented that we can't roll our sick days over. Oh, no worries about that. I'll be using those babies up by spring.
I also feel a little sad that I won't be the one babying my baby tomorrow. Although, again, Daddy will be just fine for the job. I always feel sorry for the kids when they are down for the count with fevers, though. There's always this little worry in the back of my mind that it's something really serious.
And the prospect of me catching what they've got is just as frightening as ever. Because no matter what kind of mom you are, the world never stops for sick mamas...
After a really big day for my sweet little girl, who bravely made it through her interpretive dance and the Sunday School Christmas play in truly admirable fashion, she came home looking suspiciously flushed and glassy eyed. When we offered to take her out for dinner to celebrate she didn't seem interested and mentioned that her head hurt. Fever. Poor thing wore herself out.
Jeff lost the coin toss. Because he can grade papers from home - classes are out for the semester. And honestly, he seems to be fighting what she's got. He's been out like a light before 9 every night this weekend. A day home might do him so good.
I feel an even more exaggerated panic around sickness in the house now. 6 sick days for 2 kids and a mom?! The HR rep when going over my benefits packet sweetly lamented that we can't roll our sick days over. Oh, no worries about that. I'll be using those babies up by spring.
I also feel a little sad that I won't be the one babying my baby tomorrow. Although, again, Daddy will be just fine for the job. I always feel sorry for the kids when they are down for the count with fevers, though. There's always this little worry in the back of my mind that it's something really serious.
And the prospect of me catching what they've got is just as frightening as ever. Because no matter what kind of mom you are, the world never stops for sick mamas...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
A Good Friend
My 13 year old has a really sweet group of friends. She has a surprisingly big network of nice friends, but in particular I am speaking of her cluster of 4 good buddies. They are very silly, but very supportive of one another. My daughter got a text at 8:00 last Saturday morning from one of them wishing her good luck on her all-county orchestra audition. They decided to do a little secret Santa lunch party on the last day before break. That kind of thing.
Today we Rozelles pulled out a marathon shopping afternoon. On the Saturday before Christmas. Further initiation into the world of 2 career families with a busy teenager. While I was selecting a birthday card for my dad, my daughter said "I would like to buy this for (one of her buddies whose parents just divorced)." It was a supportive "so things have been rough, hang in there" kind of card. She bought it with her own money and said she was going to have the other 2 buddies sign it.
When I see evidence of my children's true compassion, I feel a sense of deep peace. Partly because they display character and give us a reason to hope in our future generations. But I also love to see this group of girls forming a supportive community, a safe haven in their turbulent adolescent world. I love it. She's going to be ok, my girl. When life gets ugly, she will know how to draw on the strength of her circle of girlfriends. And even more wonderful, she already knows how to give of herself to bolster the spirits of others. She knows how to be a good friend.
Today we Rozelles pulled out a marathon shopping afternoon. On the Saturday before Christmas. Further initiation into the world of 2 career families with a busy teenager. While I was selecting a birthday card for my dad, my daughter said "I would like to buy this for (one of her buddies whose parents just divorced)." It was a supportive "so things have been rough, hang in there" kind of card. She bought it with her own money and said she was going to have the other 2 buddies sign it.
When I see evidence of my children's true compassion, I feel a sense of deep peace. Partly because they display character and give us a reason to hope in our future generations. But I also love to see this group of girls forming a supportive community, a safe haven in their turbulent adolescent world. I love it. She's going to be ok, my girl. When life gets ugly, she will know how to draw on the strength of her circle of girlfriends. And even more wonderful, she already knows how to give of herself to bolster the spirits of others. She knows how to be a good friend.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Power to the People
Soooo... I thought I knew what busy was:) Have to give ya a quick update before I plunge in; my little one has transitioned well to her new arrangement! She did inform me that if we needed after school arrangements for her, she would like to go to her reading specialist's house:)
Ok, I want to finish up the description of Visions For Change with the community piece. Even though it is my employer and the consumer of 80% of my time and energy, we need to move on.
On the second Thursdays of the month, a group of representatives from the community that my boss has invited and assembled meets, along with the Circle Leaders (the participants in our program who are trying to get to a better place in life). We discuss what barriers are in the community that make it difficult for people in poverty who are making good choices on an individual basis. On our coalition we have the executive director from countless non-profit agencies and businesses around the city,some pastors and ex-CEO's too, and of course the staff and our participants. The top 5 broad barriers everyone agrees need addressing and are working on are transportation, childcare, healthcare, jobs, and housing.
It's amazing what happens whena group of powerful people put their heads together. It's amazing what happens when the powerless get a chance to contribute, or dare I say guide, the discussion. I think I've put this post off because I had a hard time wondering how I could narrow down all of the things I wanted to share into a readable length. So I picked just a few.
The commissioner of DSS came to listen to Circle Leader concerns. When has a person on public assistance had the opportunity to have the full attention of the guy in charge? My fellow Circles Coach and I prepped our participants ahead of time, helping them put their concerns on paper and honing them into a rational little speech and then practicing their presentation. They did a great job. He listened respectfully, gave honest feedback, and is tackling some hefty change as a result of his encounter. He has offered to return to give and get updates and keep the conversation open.
You know I have had a long time beef with Centro, the bus system here. I'm not the only one: it was the top concern and target of the coalition. I wrote earlier that I missed the coalition meeting when a board member from Centro was present. By a stroke of luck (for me), my boss was sick the day she was scheduled to meet with the executive director of Centro and that board member, so I got to fill in. My co-worker did all of the necessary schmoozing and I played the devil's advocate (a nice one, though). We walked away from the meeting not sure if we accomplished much of anything. The next morning we received a call from someone directly beneath him who handles all of the day-to-day stuff and had a meeting with her earlier this week. While I don't think things will drastically change for our clients, we did get some tools and ideas to pass on to them that should make their lives a little easier. Most importantly, I learned that some people at Centro, like this woman we met with, really care about people too. We gained information that helped me understand that it isn't greed and negligence that are responsible for the shortcomings of the bus system. 70% of Centro's costs are subsidized. The Ride-to-Work program that is free and available to folks for the first 90 days of a new job outside of the bus route or scheduling costs Centro $41 per ride. Centro has been forced to cut staffing and busses and therefore routes by 20% in the past few years. Why? Because the middle class doesn't need the bus. 20 years ago, there were 5 full express routes into my neighborhood that took people straight downtown in 20 minutes. Now, everyone drives. Except poor people. I, of course, had to press the issue with the director that he needed to make riding the bus more attractive to middle class customers again - what is the critical balance between enough convenient and quick routes offered to middle class workers and losing tons of money trying? He didn't really want to have that discussion. With me anyway. Imagine:) But I looked him in the eye and told him that my family was a one car family in East Lansing and tried to be in Syracuse - but that 1 hour bus ride one way (not including the 9/10 of a mile to walk to the stop and the time to transfer downtown) was not something an SU professor was willing to sacrifice when he could be walking into his office after a 25 minute car commute. I didn't know Audacity was one of my middle names either.
Anyway, it is wonderful to have the opportunity to work for change on a larger scale for my clients and community. We Circles Coaches are trying to make connections to large employers to get our participants a foot in the door, showing employers the benefit of the program and learning what kinds of skills and support our clients need to be equipped with. We have a meeting with the CEO of Upstate, the hospital and SUNY med school in Syracuse to set up some sort of career exploration project between us, for instance.
When I opened up the blog today to start writing, the title caught my eye and I thought about the place I am now. It's less that I've reinvented myself and more that I am actually becoming the person that in my heart, I knew was longing to break out. What about you?
Ourselves, Emerging?
Ok, I want to finish up the description of Visions For Change with the community piece. Even though it is my employer and the consumer of 80% of my time and energy, we need to move on.
On the second Thursdays of the month, a group of representatives from the community that my boss has invited and assembled meets, along with the Circle Leaders (the participants in our program who are trying to get to a better place in life). We discuss what barriers are in the community that make it difficult for people in poverty who are making good choices on an individual basis. On our coalition we have the executive director from countless non-profit agencies and businesses around the city,some pastors and ex-CEO's too, and of course the staff and our participants. The top 5 broad barriers everyone agrees need addressing and are working on are transportation, childcare, healthcare, jobs, and housing.
It's amazing what happens whena group of powerful people put their heads together. It's amazing what happens when the powerless get a chance to contribute, or dare I say guide, the discussion. I think I've put this post off because I had a hard time wondering how I could narrow down all of the things I wanted to share into a readable length. So I picked just a few.
The commissioner of DSS came to listen to Circle Leader concerns. When has a person on public assistance had the opportunity to have the full attention of the guy in charge? My fellow Circles Coach and I prepped our participants ahead of time, helping them put their concerns on paper and honing them into a rational little speech and then practicing their presentation. They did a great job. He listened respectfully, gave honest feedback, and is tackling some hefty change as a result of his encounter. He has offered to return to give and get updates and keep the conversation open.
You know I have had a long time beef with Centro, the bus system here. I'm not the only one: it was the top concern and target of the coalition. I wrote earlier that I missed the coalition meeting when a board member from Centro was present. By a stroke of luck (for me), my boss was sick the day she was scheduled to meet with the executive director of Centro and that board member, so I got to fill in. My co-worker did all of the necessary schmoozing and I played the devil's advocate (a nice one, though). We walked away from the meeting not sure if we accomplished much of anything. The next morning we received a call from someone directly beneath him who handles all of the day-to-day stuff and had a meeting with her earlier this week. While I don't think things will drastically change for our clients, we did get some tools and ideas to pass on to them that should make their lives a little easier. Most importantly, I learned that some people at Centro, like this woman we met with, really care about people too. We gained information that helped me understand that it isn't greed and negligence that are responsible for the shortcomings of the bus system. 70% of Centro's costs are subsidized. The Ride-to-Work program that is free and available to folks for the first 90 days of a new job outside of the bus route or scheduling costs Centro $41 per ride. Centro has been forced to cut staffing and busses and therefore routes by 20% in the past few years. Why? Because the middle class doesn't need the bus. 20 years ago, there were 5 full express routes into my neighborhood that took people straight downtown in 20 minutes. Now, everyone drives. Except poor people. I, of course, had to press the issue with the director that he needed to make riding the bus more attractive to middle class customers again - what is the critical balance between enough convenient and quick routes offered to middle class workers and losing tons of money trying? He didn't really want to have that discussion. With me anyway. Imagine:) But I looked him in the eye and told him that my family was a one car family in East Lansing and tried to be in Syracuse - but that 1 hour bus ride one way (not including the 9/10 of a mile to walk to the stop and the time to transfer downtown) was not something an SU professor was willing to sacrifice when he could be walking into his office after a 25 minute car commute. I didn't know Audacity was one of my middle names either.
Anyway, it is wonderful to have the opportunity to work for change on a larger scale for my clients and community. We Circles Coaches are trying to make connections to large employers to get our participants a foot in the door, showing employers the benefit of the program and learning what kinds of skills and support our clients need to be equipped with. We have a meeting with the CEO of Upstate, the hospital and SUNY med school in Syracuse to set up some sort of career exploration project between us, for instance.
When I opened up the blog today to start writing, the title caught my eye and I thought about the place I am now. It's less that I've reinvented myself and more that I am actually becoming the person that in my heart, I knew was longing to break out. What about you?
Ourselves, Emerging?
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