From Great Love, Comes Great Loss... Comes Great Love.

Two weeks before I got the call to come back to home, I was on the phone, this time with him. He asked me about my temporary job that I had just gotten, as an assistant to the Dean at the Harvard School of Public health.

It was my first real job out of college and I was barely twenty-two. That summer after I graduated, I fought to get back to Boston. I fought him. I left that August, secured a dingy basement apartment in September and by October had my first job. If I had known better, I would have known that something in him was trying to keep me closer to home. But I was young and stubborn and hellbent on getting back to the life I had built for myself up north.

He was in the hospital and had just finished dialysis. His voice was breathy and broken across the phone line. "Keep your desk clean," he said, giving me advice when the only thing I wanted to hear was him asking me to come home. "It will show them that you have respect for yourself and your job."

For many months after his passing, I remembered less of the man he was, and more of the mourning that followed. The image of the dirt falling out of the shovel and onto his casket. Sitting with my cousins in the gazebo in the backyard, trying to find some sort of normalcy, in a world where our foundation had been swept from underneath us. Family coupled in the tables on the back patio. My grandmother. Bowls of olives. The images changed but the feeling, though, always consistent. I had lost my best friend. I lost my ally. More than anything, at its very truth, I lost the person that saved the seat next to him for me. I lost the feeling of comfort , and the security in knowing he would always be there.

It will be nine years now since he has been gone, and the more time passes, the more I remember the smallest moments. It's not every day and they come and go, it's true. But after a long day's work, when I prepare my things to start the long trek home, I clear my desk and turn off the light, and I hear him. . . every time.


Life is divided into these small moments -- both happy and sad. We keep them with us, hold them close. They are our strength to push us through and also our weakness and baggage.

One night this past week, the intimidating boss and I were packing in a late night and leaving work. She was talking about her new boyfriend, how he'd sort of mentioned the idea of a marriage proposal. This woman that was so normally rigid, became light-hearted, carefree -- a school girl floating on the air of her first kiss. Seeing her like that, just confirmed what I have always known -- I will feel that again someday.

Ever since then, even though I had felt it before, it's on the surface more -- the affirmation that I am a wonderful woman with so much to offer and so much love to give. And maybe I not-so-long-ago suffered one of love's most awful punishments. . . but I am no longer willing to punish myself.

If anything, I may even love smaller moments more now... freely, purely, whole-heartedly... and perhaps, with a school-girl hope, that fate's hand has saved a blessing for me.

I'll have the Ben Affleck...

Things I have learned from working at my current job the last two weeks:

1. The title "art director" is so much more fun than my previous title. Not that I do anything different, its just more fun to say.

2. I have way more work in the first 6 days of work than I have had possibly in my entire time at my previous position. I have worked through every lunch, save today, and have left work no earlier than 8:15 when my hours should be 9:30 to 6:30.

3. My Star-crack (aka '*$' or Starbucks) drink of choice also happens to be Ben Afflecks. I learned this last Thursday morning, where I defintely needed the coffee following my marketing brainstorm all-nighter. I collected my drink from the portly barista and headed over to the fixings bar, I was approached by this 20-something guy in a Jamba juice apron. "Iced coffee with a shot of sugar free vanilla, huh?" He says it the way the bartender looks at me when I order a Bacardi and Diet, also known as the "skinny bitch" -- as in, you do know you're not a skinny bitch, right??? So I ask him what the big deal with my order is, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking about how this guy I almost married once used to complain how my coffee order was so complicated. "Oh," he shrugs, "I used to work at the Starbucks in Savannah and Ben Affleck used to come in all of the time and order the same thing." I joked that maybe Ben and I were soulmates -- you know, right after he's done with his kick-ass-wife and little baby. Or that maybe its the Boston in me. Ben probably knows, like I have come to know, that no where but in the Boston Dunkin Donuts can you find the best French Vanilla Iced Coffee you may ever drink. The only thing you can get close to such a fine taste is my (I mean, our) concoction from Starbucks. Now, I could get into why you can't just get one at Dunkin Donuts in Miami or Savannah... but that's a whole other blog to itself. Anyway, the guy smiles at me and goes on his way into the white morning sunlight. I shake some cinnamon into my coffee, thinking to myself that the person that would get the greatest kick out of this story is someone who will never hear it.

4. I am not meant to drive on the highway. It takes me 60 minutes to get to a job that is only 30 minutes away. I also drive into Havana -- I mean, Miami -- where apparently everyone has taken a different driving test than I had to take when I got my license. Oh yeah, half of them don't even have a license, and forget car insurance. The State of Florida actually came out with a press release this week stating that using an indicator was merely a COURTESY. . . as if anyone used one anyway. When you put out your indicator, all it does is indicate to the cars behind you that it is time to excelerate.

5. Protein/ meal replacement bars still taste like chocolate flavored chalk. Never, in any circumstances, will I ever eat a Pria Powerbar Chocolate Almond Crunch bar EVER again. Worst.tasting.thing.ever. It was like chocolate, chalk, and Elmers glue paste.

6. If I go to bed now, I will actually be going to bed EARLY for a change.

*cue Dolly Parton....*

Independence Day

I started the new job this week and I could not be more thankful that I had a day off in middle of the madness. The beginning of anything new can be overwhelming to one's senses and this new job is no different. I love new challenges and new stimulation. . . but when I have to be creative and I am overly stimulated, it's a lot like asking me to paint something pretty with red and green paint. It will just come out looking like mud or muck.

The first two days certainly had its challenges. I had moments when I wanted to crawl underneath my desk and I had moments when someone needed to talk me off of a ledge. I am still kind of waiting for them to look at me at the end of this week and say, You know, we thought we liked you, buuuuttt, not so much.

And wouldn't that just be the story of my life.

That's why I'm here blogging at 11:44 at night. I've been racking my brain trying to think of a marketing idea for a hotel chain revamp so when my boss looks at me tomorrow for some answers, I don't look quite like a chump. And that's just it. . . it's why I am blogging. Because I am a chump. My brain feels so completely drained of creative juices. I can't hear the brilliant ideas over the other voices in my head -- the ones reminding me who is who, what is what, and whatever you do, don't ask the senior art director anymore stupid questions tomorrow.

Women don't usually scare me. In fact, I have oddly been told by many women, some my closest friends, that when they first met me, I scared them. But this woman, the senior art director, intimidates the crap out of me. She's fearless, confident and brilliant. A creative, out of the box, in the zone kind of designer. It's so simple for her because she's been there for a few years, knows her co-workers, knows her clients, knows the industry... I may as well be asking her if red and yellow make orange when I ask her the anything. Judging by the look on her face, she lets me know it, too. But she is brilliant and most of the reason that I haven't quit is because I am going to learn so much from working with her in this arena.

Tonight, I am thankful for this pit stop in this week of craziness. I'm thankful for new challenges, new opportunities to show up to life. I'm thankful for the glimpses of independence I have felt in just this short while. My hope is that this path will bring me to a higher place in my life... a life I caught a glimpse of once, as it sailed on by in the night.

I Got The Job!

Somewhere, someone was smiling down on me on Friday afternoon. Finally, I get to get back to work. I am so excited to be in this new company, in a new arena, a different field to test my creative strengths. Most of all, it seems I can't wear sweatpants here and they certainly don't seem to use instant messenger to communicate -- they actually get up and speak to one another! Imagine that... perhaps it will give me more to write about...