I’ve not written anything in a while for a few reasons, chief among them is I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and have been binge watching The Great British Baking Show. I don’t cook or bake, never will, but if you need to discuss the nuances of Swiss or Italian meringue, soggy bottom pastry or why you need a mirror glaze on your chocolate fondants, I am very surprisingly up to the task. Binge watching TGBBS is going much better than last fall when I binge watched the entire series of Criminal Minds IN THREE WEEKS which so messed with my head that I started wondering if I might secretly be a sociopath but people were just too nice to mention it. I took it to such lengths that I asked at least 5 people if they thought I was, in fact, a sociopath, including my therapist. It was an unusual session and she actually laughed out loud when I asked her, which was an enormous relief.
So far in this blog, I’ve written about two people: Marsha and myself. Today I’m writing about someone else. I’ll do my best to keep out identifying details. Let’s just call her Grace because it’s one of her favorite words.
If you want someone to encourage you, Grace is the person you want in your life. If you want someone who can tell you hard truth in a way that motivates you to do things differently, you want Grace. If you want someone who cares about you beyond your job description (yep, she was my boss once upon a time), again, Grace.
Grace has the gift of making the mundane extraordinarily fun. At the beginning of every year, she decides on a theme for the upcoming year and launches it at an all staff meeting and literally screams the theme with decorations, music, snacks, swag, the whole nine yards. Maddeningly, it is kept super super secret squirrel until the launch and I’m not embarrassed to tell you I’ve lost sleep in my life over the mystery theme out of sheer excitement. One year there was no theme, no decor, no swag, lame snacks and I was so horrified I thought I was going to ugly cry in front of the entire staff. Happily it was a smokescreen and within five minutes all was revealed and it was MAGICAL and yes, I squealed with delight. Grace, if you’re reading this, just know those were the most shocking five minutes of my entire life. *pointed look*.
If you have a scattered squirrel of an idea (I am the scattert-est of squirrels), Grace is the person you want to tell and she will help you turn it into a realistic plan. She’ll also give you “the look” if your idea is absurd like the time someone (not me, I swear) asked why we couldn’t have a Starbucks on campus.
I’ve known Grace for 19 years and I worked for her for 14. The first couple of months I was working for her, my work with children was on point but paperwork (things like turning in lesson plans, keeping track of things) was decidedly not. She came into my classroom one morning and there was a stack of stuff in my teacher corner that was SO HIGH, she was visibly startled. All she said was, “you might want to tidy that up” instead of screaming at me for having the leaning tower of paper and God knows what else in plain sight. And instead of leaving me in the cold wilderness of Mount Paper, she connected me with a mentor who helped me get organized and do strange and weirdly wonderful things like make labels for things and put items in their proper place.
There are so many times in my life I’ve slunk into her office for no particular reason except the fact that I like to chat and she is pro-chat, provided there isn’t something extremely urgent going on. She is the type of person I like best: interesting and interested, reflective and has a sense of humor that appreciates my own warped one.
I sometimes what it must be like for Grace; caring so much about so many people and things and giving grace to others and being kind and understanding, in all ways, always. I know for a fact there were multiple times she was just so over me for some reason or another but she believed in me still and offered me kindness instead of a well deserved bawling out and *that* is what made me want to do things better because really, who among us does well with shame?
Grace, thank you. For so many reasons. You mean so much to so many.
P.S. I recently went through my office closet and found some excellent resource books that I obviously borrowed and never returned, so if you could throw some Grace my way and grant me library amnesty, I’ll be happy to return them sometime in 2021. I seem to recall a staff meeting where you asked if people would please check to see if they had any resource books because many were missing. “How awful!”, I thought. Well, it was me, alllll me. You probably knew it, too. It was not theft, it was forgetfulness. Again.
Driving in Reverse 