TheMommyBlog

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 Me, Me, Me

I have had a call just now that left me in a puddle. A good kind of puddle. It was from the former president of our organization, a man who was caretaker of not only the foundation but of all of us for twenty-four years. He retired six years ago, and has since become a Trustee. He and I have always had a special relationship.

The first year I was here, I needed to have abdominal surgery. The day before I went into the hospital, he stopped in to offer me his touch stone, a comfort object he carried in his pocket for years. He hoped that it would help calm me and ground me. It did. I took it with me to the OR and gave it back to him a week later when I returned to work.

He—for reasons completely unknown to me or to him—was the first to guess I was pregnant the first two times I turned up that way. We had been talking about other things when he just peered at me and asked me if I was expecting. Just like that. It pleased us both.

He had wonderful rose gardens, and when the blooms were particularly lovely, he would cut a few and lay them on each of our desks, all the way down the row.

When I lost our first baby, he came to me privately to ask what he could do, and what I wanted staff to hear, if anything.

When I had my first newborn at the company picnic and was trying to figure out the nursing in front of strangers, and also people you work with, and was fumbling with the cloth and the baby and wondering why I’d come, when this man walked up and sat with me as if nothing unsual was going on and asked all about my new motherhood was going. He has a very calming presence and a way of speaking to you as if you are the only person in the room.

And this morning, when he walked past my office and saw my head in my hands, he made a point of calling me later in the day and asking if I would like to come visit him and talk for a while. He knew that I was having difficulty, and that the struggle was intensifying, and he has valued my presence here for the last 11 years, and wanted to do what he could to help ensure my security and stability and to let me know that I always had a friend who was willing to listen.

Santa, you knew what I wanted, even before I did.