Coming Home II--Restarting Life

While sitting in my chair, I realized that I not only needed to sort through the memories created by my trip, but I needed (2) to attend to the mundane tasks of life at home. By "tasks," I mean the things you need to do just to keep life going. I often have looked at these things (like bill-paying, doing the laundry, shopping for food, meeting with a few people) as necessary evils, but yesterday after making up my list of a dozen things to do, I tried to coax some meaning out of some of them, too. Actually the meaning and lessons I derived from these mundane tasks ended up being different from what I thought I would learn--and almost all the tasks turned out pleasurably. Let me give you a few examples.

At the Bank

I went to the bank. Even though we live in a techologically advanced age where many people will never again see the inside of a bank, I still go inside, greet the staff, make deposits, get my money. Some people feel it is always good to have a judge as a friend; I believe that people who work in banks can do you a lot of little favors at crucial times in your life. So, I go into my bank and talk to the people. Well, yesterday I had a big deposit to make. Big doesn't mean huge; it just means beyond the amount authorized for the front line tellers to accept without getting "approval" from the boss (normally around $3,000). These approval amounts are getting less and less as banks, having been burned in the last few years, vow never to be burned again. So, the teller, with whom I frequently work, told me she had to "get approval" to accept my deposit. No problem. Then, a minute later, a 23 year-old (so she looked to me) came to say, "Well, Mr. Long, we are going to have to put this check on hold for a while." "Why?," I ask. "Well," she said in a mature voice, "I have no previous banking relationship with you."

Thinking quickly, I said, after learning her first name, "How long have you been working at this branch?" She said, "since July." I responded, "Well, I have been banking here for 12 years, and I frequently bring in a check above $3,000 without any approval difficulty." She said, "Well, if you want to call the bank on which it is drawn, once we send the hard copy to them, then perhaps we can release the funds a few days earlier." I thought quickly that this situation was getting a little out of hand. But I wasn't flustered. Just amused. So I, trying to determine her level of humanity, said, "Well, it seems like it is tough to form a relationship with you" (skillfully leaving out the term 'banking'). I didn't know if she would fly over the counter at me, but I picked up a tiny glint of humor in her eye. Then, to relieve the tension, I pointed to another senior person at the bank with whom I had a "banking relationship," and she quickly allowed my full deposit (which mean the funds were available for me to pay my property taxes, etc.).

I smile now as I write about that encounter. So many things were in it, but it added a little more to the complexity of my return day than I imagined.

One Other Story

Another brief encounter, this time at the supermarket, added another dimension to my return day. As is customary with me, I go to about four different markets, because some are really good on some products and some have really low prices on items they can't mess up (like soy milk or canned peaches). At the first place I noted a special on Bosc pears--98 cents a pound. I needed pears, so I carefully picked two, put them in the basket and continued. When I checked out, I noted that I was charged $1.59 per pound for the pears. So, I stopped the transaction, took the checker to the display, pointed out the 98 cents per pound and said, "What's up?" He grabbed the fruit/produce guy working nearby, and asked "What's up?" The produce guy said they were out of Bosc pears. The pears over the "on special" sign were actually Anjou pears (I should have spotted the difference!), and they were $1.59 per pound. So, I interrupted their little encounter and said to the fruit guy, "You need to remove the sign right now saying that Bosc pears are on special." He glared at me as if I was ruining his day. I stood my ground. "Please remove the sign. It confuses customers." He walked over and ripped the sign down and returned to work.

So, these were two unexpected little encounters as I proceeded to do the dozen or more "errands" that took me most of the day when I returned. I pass over my trip to the county building (to hand over my check for property tax payment in person), where going up in an elevator with county workers at 10:00 a.m. made me instinctively realize what absolute boredom looked like; I pass over my trip to the health care provider to pay a bill, where the receptionist had to try five times to print a receipt because she was "in training" and then decided to give me all five copies of the receipt when she realized they printed in a printer in another room.

Thinking About the Mundane Tasks

But it was a day that actually gave me, now that I reflect on it, a lot of amusement, simply because I was, for the first time, thinking about the process of "re-entry" into life and work. I had put my time into the Kansas memories, and they were all safely stored in my mind. Now I was doing task no. 2--which was to do all the little things that I was "behind" on because of my trip. Because I had confidence that there would not only be time for no. 2 tasks but also for the beginning of no. 3 tasks (next essay), I could look at my encounters during the day after my return in a sort of amusing way. It only took about two more minutes of my time to go through the bank encounter; the supermarket conversation was also dispatched quickly. But had I not taken the time to sort out my life, I would not have looked at these events as amusing. I would have been angered, bothered or even indignant. But I ended up not only getting what I wanted (the deposit money was immediately available to me; I actually got the Anjou pears at the Bosc prices--the checker offered to give it at those prices "for my trouble"), I got some stories which I am sure will bring smiles to the faces of audiences in the future.

All of this results from just having the confidence to take an hour, sit in my chair, and sort out the various features of my life. One task remained (and remains): to get back into my regular flow of work and living. The next essay describes how I am doing that.

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