The Day After

This is not the post I thought I'd be writing after S's bar mitzvah. It's amazing how something can turn so quickly--from exhilaration to anxiety, from relief to worry. Life is funny like that although it's hard to think of it as "funny" right now. After celebrating The Boy who is now A Man (not) with family, friends, delicious food, and happy drippy children, I thought I'd have a once-familiar feeling of the day after Christmas. A let-down after all that planning. A kind of sadness that such a big day was over. Now I wish I had that kind of feeling.

Instead, HH's bosses dropped The Bomb. In spite of The Economy (the longest four-letter word there is right now for me), I'd tucked away any worries I had a few months ago thinking that the worst was over and we'd dodged a bullet. HH wasn't surprised. When you're in sales, you know exactly where you're at, business-wise. In fact, it's one of the great things (usually) about the job; if you work hard, you see the benefits in an almost immediate way.

And HH always works hard. It's one of his personality traits I wish I could mention on his resume myself, as in "No matter how insignificant or 'important' the job, my husband will work like his life depends on it because it's the right thing to do." He has an amazing amount of integrity. If you hire him to do a job, you can be absolutely sure that HH will get to work early and stay until past the time everyone else leaves. It's who he is.

Which makes this so hard. Someone who identifies so much with his work will inevitably think "what could I have done differently?" no matter how much he intellectually knows the economy's in the shitter. I worry as much about how he feels about himself as much as I worry about what we're going to do. He reads my blog (even when it's a Free Pass Five post) so I hope he really reads this post.

I am proud of my husband. I know we'll be alright because he's such a great asset to every workplace he's ever been. I only hope he can believe it as much as I know it.