On August 28th, my wife lost her job. 24 hours later, I lost mine. This blog is a continuation of the day-by-day chronicling of our emotional journey back to employment. This is bound to be upsetting, hilarious and hopeful.
Sunday & Monday – October 19-20, 2014
On Sunday I performed my first acts as President of the Elders Quorum in the new McKinley Ward. I attended a ward leadership meeting in AM, and then during church I called someone to a position within the Quorum. I’ve never done that before. I’ve been on the other side of the experience dozens of times, but I’ve never sat with someone, said a prayer with them, asked them to serve, and then told them what I expected from them.
Actually, we didn’t sit down at all. I don’t know our new church building well enough to know where we can go for privacy, so I opened the first door I saw and we ended up standing together in the janitor’s closet among the mops and brooms. Now I know where to change into my super suit to fight giant robots.
We held our first Quorum meeting during the third hour. I had expected maybe 8 guys to fill the chairs, but we had twice as many show up, all looking to me to for what to do for an hour.
I’ve lead people before, but this is on a different level. We deal in the things of the eternities and salvation at church, so the only way to do a job like this is to have wisdom that reaches beyond mine. This is a spiritual job, and I am very much a temporal being. I have great faults. I stumble. I fall. The only difference between me and the other 17 men in the meeting today is that I was called to preside at this time, however long that turns out to be. No doubt some of them are thinking, “Please find a job in Albuquerque. Soon.”
* * *
Today, I got connected a little more to my baby girl. Violet is at the phase where she’s constantly pushing me aside in favor of her mom. She might just hate me a little. “No, not YOU!” is something I hear a lot. She’s three.
We went to the mall together to exchange a belt at Macy’s, but that only took about ten minutes. For the rest of the three hours, I let her tell Violet be the guide. We went to the Disney Store and she explored every princess item they had on display, but she also got very excited when an ad for Star Wars came up on the big screen in the center of the store. If we’re going to have a geek girl, she’ll be the one.
She was fascinated by the fountain in the middle of the mall, and I had to explain to her why I couldn’t fish out the money to pay for the candy she wanted from the nearby dispenser. I also had to explain why my pockets cannot spontaneously produce quarters. We went up the escalator in JC Penney and back down again, per her request.
We ate at the Food Court, went back for another trip up and down the escalator, and dove back in for another round at the Disney Store. She insisted the singing Anna and Elsa dolls be next to each other so they could harmonize, never mind they were singing two different songs.
We capped off the afternoon with a double shot of Orange Julius. As we stood in line, Violet spotted more fountains outside. She asked if we could sit out there and drink. I told her we could and she screamed “Hooray”, jumped up and down, and hugged me.
I really needed this time with Violet. Not gonna lie, as heart melts go, mine turned to a puddle more than once.
I will allow that all this dad stuff is probably pretty boring, but this was one of the sweetest experiences I’ve had since starting this whole unemployment mess and I’m telling you about it, dang it. This was special. It deserves to be recorded.
And yet… there were odd moments of disconnect throughout the afternoon. At times, I felt like a passenger on the trip, not the one driving the boat. I didn’t smile as much as I wanted and lacked an energy you’d think would go along with making your daughter happy over and over again. Even now, as I’m writing this, I feel not totally plugged in.
It might be because I’m posting and rewriting this blog today, October 31st. Eleven days from the mall and Violet and fountains with money we can’t take for ourselves, things are tougher. The constant striving and disappointments are wearing on me. I’m not completely hopeless. I’m just having a harder time seeing the light.
But we’ll get to that.
Brock Heasley 