her head. “Dottie’s the cook,”
she said. “They’re both in the quilting group. Couple of real
characters.”
Back at the house, Phoebe felt better, so she
and Kiera headed straight to the quilting room to start on their
new project. I sat and watched them awhile, pretending interest,
but paying no real attention. My thoughts were on other things.
Like Nick. All of a sudden my situation seemed freaky.
What did I really know about him? That he’d
grown up in a dysfunctional family and was now a successful lawyer
whose wife didn’t live with him. That he had everything except a
child and was prepared to pay the earth to get one. That we had a
past. And that he was attractive in a powerful, almost frightening,
way.
What was I thinking, even being here at all?
It was an awfully big step I was taking. But then, except for those
few high school years when I’d lived with the Wembles, I’d always
made a point of shunning the conventional. I didn’t want a
predictable, unchanging life. I wanted a wild blind leap into the
unknown every so often.
Like the leap I’d made when I left the
Children’s Agency. Others saw it as negative, but I’d never
regretted it. I’d known clearly that what I saw around me was not
something I wanted to be part of anymore. And since I knew I
couldn’t change things, I’d simply left.
I was fed up with working with clients in
constant crisis on one hand, and with the Agency’s pointless
meetings, bureaucratic procedures and hierarchical decision-making
on the other. There was such a vast gap between the two. Most
important though, I was sick of what our government had done to
social services. The cutbacks made it almost impossible to help
anyone. The number of homeless was growing while the funds to
support them were shrinking.
Each day I found it harder and harder to help
my clients. There were so many families with no place left they
could afford to live. There were so many desperate street kids,
selling drugs or even themselves, just to get by.
It didn’t help that I was also suffering a
broken heart because Jay had gone back to Vermont to live with
Becky. But I pretended that didn’t matter. I focused on my
work.
I lost sleep over my clients, something I’d
never done before. I’d wake in the middle of the night in a cold
sweat, full of panic that the emergency worker was calling me. I
started having trouble eating too. I knew how hungry many of my
clients were, even though the rest of the city, people like Nick
and Kiera, could afford to spend their weekly food budget on one
dinner party. I’d go into a grocery store and come out with
nothing, sickened by designer-outfitted shoppers sweeping
extra-virgin olive oil and fresh pasta and Belgian chocolate into
their carts. The people I worked with were eating Kraft dinner, if
they were lucky.
Friends had been suggesting for years that I
was trapped in a kind of hopeless hippie nostalgia. They’d all
given up trying to save the world years ago. I needed to build some
equity, they said, a good high mortgage would straighten me out.
Then I’d get on the fast-track and care when the next raise was
coming.
But I kept on living in my tiny apartment in
a rundown house on an iffy street in an undesirable neighborhood. I
cropped my hair, lost weight, gave most of my money to a women’s
shelter. I stopped taking time off. I stopped seeing anyone but my
clients. I became obsessed with trying to make life better, or at
least a little more bearable, for them.
One day in June of 1994, in an effort to
convince me I needed a new perspective, my supervisor, Emily
Phipps, suggested I go with her to the annual Social Workers’
Conference in Ottawa. I’d already refused once. Such things were
bogus, a complete waste of time and money. But the caseworker
scheduled to go was sick, so someone had to make use of the prepaid
registration.
I was feeling very down and frustrated by my
job. Totally futile. I’d used up all my resources and
she said. “They’re both in the quilting group. Couple of real
characters.”
Back at the house, Phoebe felt better, so she
and Kiera headed straight to the quilting room to start on their
new project. I sat and watched them awhile, pretending interest,
but paying no real attention. My thoughts were on other things.
Like Nick. All of a sudden my situation seemed freaky.
What did I really know about him? That he’d
grown up in a dysfunctional family and was now a successful lawyer
whose wife didn’t live with him. That he had everything except a
child and was prepared to pay the earth to get one. That we had a
past. And that he was attractive in a powerful, almost frightening,
way.
What was I thinking, even being here at all?
It was an awfully big step I was taking. But then, except for those
few high school years when I’d lived with the Wembles, I’d always
made a point of shunning the conventional. I didn’t want a
predictable, unchanging life. I wanted a wild blind leap into the
unknown every so often.
Like the leap I’d made when I left the
Children’s Agency. Others saw it as negative, but I’d never
regretted it. I’d known clearly that what I saw around me was not
something I wanted to be part of anymore. And since I knew I
couldn’t change things, I’d simply left.
I was fed up with working with clients in
constant crisis on one hand, and with the Agency’s pointless
meetings, bureaucratic procedures and hierarchical decision-making
on the other. There was such a vast gap between the two. Most
important though, I was sick of what our government had done to
social services. The cutbacks made it almost impossible to help
anyone. The number of homeless was growing while the funds to
support them were shrinking.
Each day I found it harder and harder to help
my clients. There were so many families with no place left they
could afford to live. There were so many desperate street kids,
selling drugs or even themselves, just to get by.
It didn’t help that I was also suffering a
broken heart because Jay had gone back to Vermont to live with
Becky. But I pretended that didn’t matter. I focused on my
work.
I lost sleep over my clients, something I’d
never done before. I’d wake in the middle of the night in a cold
sweat, full of panic that the emergency worker was calling me. I
started having trouble eating too. I knew how hungry many of my
clients were, even though the rest of the city, people like Nick
and Kiera, could afford to spend their weekly food budget on one
dinner party. I’d go into a grocery store and come out with
nothing, sickened by designer-outfitted shoppers sweeping
extra-virgin olive oil and fresh pasta and Belgian chocolate into
their carts. The people I worked with were eating Kraft dinner, if
they were lucky.
Friends had been suggesting for years that I
was trapped in a kind of hopeless hippie nostalgia. They’d all
given up trying to save the world years ago. I needed to build some
equity, they said, a good high mortgage would straighten me out.
Then I’d get on the fast-track and care when the next raise was
coming.
But I kept on living in my tiny apartment in
a rundown house on an iffy street in an undesirable neighborhood. I
cropped my hair, lost weight, gave most of my money to a women’s
shelter. I stopped taking time off. I stopped seeing anyone but my
clients. I became obsessed with trying to make life better, or at
least a little more bearable, for them.
One day in June of 1994, in an effort to
convince me I needed a new perspective, my supervisor, Emily
Phipps, suggested I go with her to the annual Social Workers’
Conference in Ottawa. I’d already refused once. Such things were
bogus, a complete waste of time and money. But the caseworker
scheduled to go was sick, so someone had to make use of the prepaid
registration.
I was feeling very down and frustrated by my
job. Totally futile. I’d used up all my resources and
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