Landslide

Last August I got a job at an interior design firm. I had known and worked near this business many years ago and nobody was more stunned than me when at the end of the second interview, they offered me the job. I felt like I’d hit the work jackpot. It has lived up to its expectations, and when the day is rocky and I feel like I’m in over my head, there is a massive collection of fabric in the basement for me to run my creative hands over and reset my tired brain.

The job is mostly accounting, and at the start of every month creating client invoices of billable design hours from an Excel spreadsheet. In the interview they asked me if I could write and I confidently said I could, but I was unprepared for this kind of writing. My first month of flying solo in invoicing, I proudly turned over my work and it came back with so many redlines I felt like I was back in my 4th grade math class with Sister Morrison. This writing is laborious with an “L”, as a front entry isn’t a front entry but a Front Entry, and you’d be surprised at the amount of time and lines required for a Front Entry. But I have learned and slowly gotten better, and last week because of a new hire not starting yet, I was asked to help out in creating cost estimates.

Cost estimates take invoicing, sprinkle it with steroids, hand it back, and say, “Take every tedious detail you can find in a description of a light fixture, read the fine print until your eyes go bonkers, and include all of that but not too much”. When my first batch was redlined because among other things, antique bronze is Antique Bronze, I looked at that stack of sheets and shakily said, “You are not the boss of me.” It took four tries to get it right, and that part of writing I am familiar with because it’s always about trying to get it as close to perfect as possible.

The day prior to learning this new skill set, I had made some changes to my phone plan and decided to cancel my landline. I never used it and rarely answered it because nearly all of the calls were trying to sell me something. Last week my cell phone had a whisper of battery left and my youngest daughter and I had planned on talking. I picked up the landline and no matter how many times I tried the call it wouldn’t go through. I texted Mal to call me and when that didn’t come through either I admitted defeat. I have always hesitated on canceling the line because it’s the only number my mom ever used to call me, and it seemed like the final admission that her dementia had won and calling me was never going to happen again. Oh, to pick up the phone and hear her say in her ever cheerful voice, “What are you up to today” or “How are Mark and the kids?” It would be such a gift but she has been unable to do that for several years, and every week when my sisters Facetime me with her I wonder if she knows who I am or that I’m the one with the dead husband.

I texted the kids to let them know our landline had gone the way of the dinosaurs, and while I was working on these cost estimates they were texting me back to say that POOF there went a part of their childhood. I smiled at the memories of all those calls coming through the phone that hung on the wall in the kitchen, the one with the cord that was long enough to answer the front door, and then from out of nowhere was gut punched by the thought that if Mark wanted to reach me he’d never call my cell phone. Without his cell phone he wouldn’t know my number. Of course he’d call the landline and I had just canceled service on it, and how is my mom supposed to remember my husband is gone when even I can’t? And how is Mark supposed to let me know this whole being dead thing wasn’t working out like he thought and he needed me to pick him up?

Before I could comprehend any of it, a new round of redlines were handed to me for corrections because I forgot that a slim cone shade is a Slim Cone Shade and I looked down at them like they were the dumbest things I’d ever seen. Then I looked around my work space for some kind of answer to what had just happened and it was as blank as Mark’s side of the bed.

Landline. Landslide. Mirror in the sky what is love when I’ve built my life around you?