Glass Houses / Billy Joel
The first call, two actually, came as voice mail. They both had been placed the night before, but I was just retrieving them in the morning before going to work.
The first was longer than the second. It was my mother, tearful and sniffling.
“Hi…sniff…I know you’re not home…sniff…but … I need your help…I just can’t seem to get things under control here…” I rolled my eyes. Perhaps not nice, but how many times had I heard this? How many hours I had spent going to organize the explosion of paper she lived with? “I just can’t seem to get organized, sniff…” I had set up filing systems, box systems, schedules. I had suggested all mail get sorted immediately and junk thrown. All had been rejected. It was a cycle I had lived with for a quarter of a century at least. “The house is just out of control…” This I believed. “I know you’ve got no time, and are interviewing, but…sniff. You should have vacation, right? Don’t you have two weeks of vacation? Maybe you can take vacation next week and come help me?”
I started to steam, the teary, sniffling having a grating effect. Usually this tactic worked. Guilt was a powerful weapon. However, the last conversation I had had with her we had talked at length about my work situation.
My work situation was quite literally eating me up. I had developed digestive issues which caused great pain. It was clearly the result of stress. My employer, I seemed to have a knack for finding the psychotic ones, was making me ill. Just before our last conversation I had been formally reprimanded for speaking when my boss was in the room. I, as well as everyone in the building, was being reminded daily that we were ‘at will’ employees and our jobs could and would be taken for any act of insubordination. Since any blink of an eye could be deemed such, we lived on edge. We had been told that vacation time had to be scheduled months in advance. Sick days needed doctor’s notes and personal days had to be approved in advance.
By that point I had spent six months sending out applications and we had finally entered a hiring season. My employer of course didn’t know I was looking, that was insubordination I had been told. So, I was playing a delicate game of claiming illness when I had an interview, playing around with timing and cajoling the local walk in to accommodate my requests for notes. I had also since I seemed to be “getting sick a lot” started to try to negotiate that I could use my vacation time as sick time. A plan my employer seemed okay with, as in her mind it meant less time I could actually take off.
My mother knew this. We’d talked about it. Was she really asking me to take vacation time to come clean her house? It sure seemed that way to me, but still. I listened to the rest of the message scowling.
The next message was from her also. It had arrived in exactly 1 minute after the first. Clearly she had hung up and redialed. This was not uncommon. Frequently she rambled on enough to use up the allotted space and would call back several times. I braced myself.
The second message was completely different from the first. There were no tears, no sniffling. Her voice was clear and fine. In a cheery voice she said to disregard her first message. She hadn’t had her coffee yet and was not fully awake and really all was fine.
I sighed. This, too, was not uncommon.
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