Dear Journal #22 New Jobs

Dear Journal,

I am sorry. It has been a while since I’ve posted. Even though I have made a deal with Mrs. Walker to try to keep up with you daily, she said that as long as I had a certain number of pages she would give me credit so the next few entries will be catching up. Sorry about that! And just so you know… I am not just coming back for the credit… I really have begun to enjoy my time writing here.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to gracefully move out of my job at Amber Oil even though summer was half over, but I got a job at a dental office in Hawthorne. It was short-lived. It was at a clinic which was in a pretty bad area. Not that Amber Oil is,  in the best area, in the industrial section East of Los Angeles but I was so surprised when I stopped at a grocery store with a friend that I’d made there on the way back  to work after lunch, and there were armed guards outside the doors! So after a few month I left that job. I saw the writing on the wall there anyway. The turn over was crazy.

 

I actually had an interesting call the other day from Betty, one of my mom’s customers turned friends. Okay so let me explain…When I was about eleven, my mom started doing art shows and ever since I was very small, she’s always done something artsy. But my dad especially liked to walk around at different local art shows on his weekends off. He works a lot of hours but he always seemed to relax walking around looking at artwork and talking to artists. So he bought my mom some paints and she began painting these paintings of kids and forest scenes that actually were pretty good. She gave a few as gifts and began getting orders. So once my dad asked the organizer of one of the larger art shows how to get in and got my mom in. He built her A-frames for her exhibits and helped her set up. Soon she began having customers come to the house and that is where I met Betty.

Betty was a good customer and purchased several paintings for her kid’s rooms by the time I met her. Usually, I’d run in and run out and my mom would call me in to meet a customer. I’d roll my eyes and run down the hall to her paint room and paint a smile on my face and shake their hands and take a minute for small talk and excuse myself but something made me stick around that day. This was probably about a year before I met Jack because I’d just gotten my license. Anyway,  I stayed to play with Betty’s little girl Christina. She was about six or seven and couldn’t talk, not one word. Well, she could say no (smile) but she was so smart and I was so intrigued. Betty told me that Christina had something called Aphasia and that she was going to a wonderful school in Buena Park that was teaching her to talk.

I told her that I’d be glad to babysit sometime. I am not sure why. I was way past the babysitting place in my life. But there was something that drew me to that little girl. So I began taking Christina out on outings. We’d go to the park or to the library and I’d sit with her at story time. Or I’d take her to the mall and we’d ride the merry-go-round and then one day I bought her a balloon.  She kept pointing at it and I kept asking her if she wanted it and she kept nodding and I kept telling her to tell me what she wanted. Finally she said B-A-L-L-O-O-N!!! I freaked out! I was so happy! I bought her three! and we counted them and we talked about what color they were. She loves blue so she pointed to two blue ones so we talked about how there were two blue ones! And when I brought her home I said ….”Christina, tell your mom what you’ve got!” And she held them behind her back even though they were flying RIGHT over her head and  said… “bawooon” and Betty looked at me and cried. Later that month Betty took me to Christina’s school and she worked it out for me to volunteer two days a month during my sophomore year. (That is why I have so many credits and along with the ones I got from SCROC last year, can graduate so early.) Well, she called a few days ago and said that they missed me and they let her call to tell me that they wanted to offer me a real paying job working in the Pre-K class next year when I graduate in January!!!!

When Jack and I first met and we were getting to know each other,  I told him about Christina and the school and he seemed so proud of me and was even supportive about me wanting to explore going to school to become a Speech Therapist but we never really talked about it again. And then one time, when we ran into them at the market he was so sweet with Christina and it was my turn to be proud.  Betty even caught my eye and winked at me, as if she was telling me that she thought he was a good guy. But when I called him all excited about my job offer he got real quiet.