I’ve spent way too much time getting over him. He was always so quick to toss off a studied laugh, grab the reins of any conversation and start throwing ideas around the room. Never mind if those ideas were only loosely tethered to reality, he was going to sell ‘em to you like an old-time preacher saving souls at a revival. 

I grew up with a mom who was determined that I would not marry a guy like this. So I worked for him instead. 

Let’s back up here and bless my mom for raising me financially feminist. She drilled it into me that I would not depend on a man. By the time I was in elementary school I could recite the creed – go to college and then support yourself for at least a year, before you even think about marrying anybody. It was fine and well to get married, if I wanted to, but my future would depend on My Career, not My Husband. (She would’ve been cool if I’d married a woman too, cause my mom is cool like that. She just would’ve told me not to marry her until I’d paid the bills solo for awhile.)

We didn’t fall for the Mr. Right or the Ms. Right fantasy in my house. We fell for the Dream Job fantasy. Oh, and we fell hard. “You’ll be the next Danielle Steele!” my mom would proclaim when I was picked to read my essay aloud in 3rd grade. My dad wasn’t into the romance novelist future, but he played right along with the Power Suit narrative. He’d clip articles about women with high-flying careers and leave them at my place at the table. My job, like a lot of other kids growing up in my generation, was clear – Get Into the Right College and Everything Will Be Perfect! Young Millennials and Gen Zed, I hear you laughing. I swear I wasn’t the only one who drank this Kool Aid. 

Being life and not a Hallmark movie, my high-powered college experience didn’t go as planned. Turns out, our plans were missing some critical steps between the degree and the job I actually wanted. Having been weaned on the well-intended fantasy of Good School Leads Directly to Dream Career, I assumed it was my fault and mentally flagellated myself on the daily. Once I got past the life pit of the mid-20’s, things started to gel. But then in my mid-30’s, first my husband’s career and then mine hit a series of bumps. That’s when I fell into Dick’s clutches.

Okay, I didn’t literally fall into his clutches, and no his name is not really Dick, but wouldn’t it be too perfect if it was and I had? My husband’s career was struggling, I’d had a once-great job take a new-management turn down a rocky road, and Dick offered me a position. I’d met Dick at church. We’d volunteered together on some committees. What could possibly go wrong?

My very first week of work started with a cross-country flight to a conference in Seattle. From the floor-to-ceiling windows of my swanky hotel room, the deep blue waters of Puget Sound framed the city as it rolled out before me. I felt like I’d fallen into a scene from Adulting: The Movie as I cobbled together a business-evening look for a prospective client dinner. 

Dick charged ahead of the rest of us as we walked to the restaurant, his coiffed hair practically vibrating with excitement as he delivered an impassioned monologue about sales strategies and bold predictions for the future. I don’t know if he even saw the man approaching him, but I did. “Excuse me, sir,” the man began, just before Dick reached him on the sidewalk. “Could you help -“ the man’s voice cut off as Dick plowed past him so closely that the man lost his balance and stumbled backward. Without a break in his stride, Dick continued down the sidewalk, still waxing poetic about the year’s growth to come. My new co-worker and I exchanged a pained glance. The man, steady on his feet again, stood with his head down. I tried to slow down the moment – did I have any cash in my wallet? What could I say to the man? Ahead of us, Dick was almost at the crosswalk. I looked back at the man again, then at my co-worker, and the two of us ran after Dick. At dinner, I found a crumpled dollar in my purse and kept scanning the sidewalk for the man on the walk back to the hotel, but of course he was gone.

The longer I worked for Dick, the more upset I got. Dick, seemingly oblivious to my frustration, loved me for my work. Sometimes he’d ask my opinion, or tell me about things above my pay grade that were going on. More frequently, he’d interrupt me, sometimes to suggest an idea that the customers and I had thoroughly dissected and decided against. He was a master of snap judgment, and at the moment of snap, Dick always presumed that he was in the right and was always very, very eager to tell me and everyone else why. Every few months, I’d talk to him about these traits, how belittled they made me feel. He’d thank me and back off for a few days before falling right back into his heavy-handed groove of interruptions and mansplaining. Meanwhile, I was finally bringing in enough money that it felt like our family was secure. Financially, this was the most successful I’d ever been, and it wasn’t just me, but my husband and daughter that were dependent on my paycheck. 

After a few years of gritting my teeth, I started to look for a new job. And then, Dick knocked me off balance. He called me on April 20th and told me my last day of work would be April 30th. There would be no severance.

Eleven days’ notice and no severance. Eleven days’ notice and no severance. I obsessed over these facts. When Dick and the owner of the company tried to deny us COBRA, I added it to my obsession stew. I had lived by the gospel of hard work and tried so hard to do everything “right”. So how could all this possibly be happening? How could Dick, who considered being a Christian central to his identity, toss me and my family out into the early pandemic economy, when job ads had all but disappeared?

I didn’t have an answer. I did have people standing by me, and one of them was a love force named Beth. 

It was impossible to go anywhere with Beth without running into someone who knew and adored her. “How have you been?” she’d exclaim, before bringing me into the circle and explaining what environmental cause or mission work or neighborhood project had brought them together.  This was a person who literally twinkled when she spoke to you, who regularly did things like haul her family china across town so a community group could have a beautiful Christmas tea. 

Beth told me once over sandwiches that she was a disappointment to her family. “No!” I protested, and promptly went into resume mode. “Look how much you’ve done for the environment with your blog! Look at all the work bullshit you’ve come through and always landed on your feet. And you’re so close to your niece and nephew and all the kids in your neighborhood!”

Before I could scream, “You do so much for so many people!” Beth held up her hand to stop me. She told me she was happy with her life. But it wasn’t the one that others had envisioned for her.

Beth kept careful track of me in the weeks and months after I was let go, and she’d come after me if I went too long without checking in. One of the last times I spoke with her, Beth told me a story about a conflict in her tennis league. I groaned, ready to empathize with her on a good old fashioned complaint session, but that wasn’t what Beth needed at all. “I started to get annoyed, “ she told me, “then I looked around, saw that the sky was blue and I got to be out there and play. Attitude of gratitude.”

If those words had been directed at me as a how-to, I would have found them unempathetic and triggering as all get-out. Coming from Beth, about her own imperfect but joyfully lived life, it felt like a beautiful little pebble of wisdom. That was my friend, always generous and loving enough to show me some truth in a way I could understand it.

I wish so much I didn’t have to write this next part. Beth left us way too soon. She died not long after that conversation. A year and a half later, I still haven’t taken her number out of my phone.

A few weeks ago, someone finally put into words the answer I sought in the wake of my pink slipping. The values of late-stage American capitalism aren’t the values that Jesus lived by…at all. Somehow, hearing that obvious truth helped it click. Dick may have loved the Jesus talk, but it wasn’t his walk. Not at work, at least. Which is how he literally almost knocked over the man in Seattle. It shouldn’t have been surprising when he metaphorically knocked over me. 

Goodbye Dick, I’m leaving now. Or should I say, you’re leaving, leaving my head that is. I’ve spent more than enough precious time and brain cells on the whole sorry episode. 

Don’t get me wrong – now even more so then before, I’ll be pushing back against the agendas of the Dicks of this world. But even more of the time, I’ll be looking for the blue skies and smiling whenever I find them, in gratitude. 

In loving memory of Beth Bond