Pure Krevil

I remember my grandfather once told me that finding a job during the Depression filled him with a sense of triumph. That job was making buttons in a factory--and he was the first in his family to finish college. Back when a bachelor's degree was more of a heavy-duty accomplishment than it is now. (I have trouble picturing young Grandpa plopped onto a contemporary couch via time machine, his admissions-essay consultant and an SAT-prep coach mopping his fevered brow. )

Be patient, gentle reader. There is a point lurking somewhere around here. I think it's this: At the tender age of Pushing Forty, I find myself clutching at straws, employment-wise. The writing jobs that have afforded me some measure of income without having to shell out for childcare are ebbing away. This has never happened before, and now I'm competing with hordes of overqualified people for the chance to answer phones, to sell dog food. To do things I once considered swell endeavors for a struggling college student. 

Well,  college was back in the Jurassic Period for me, and I feel no small measure of shame for having failed to plan, failed to knuckle down and choose a career/life that had a definite trajectory, rather than enjoying all the side trips along the way. Having an abstract expressionist resume was cute back when I was cute, but now? My cheeks blaze and a sense of failure roils up in my throat with every online application completed.

But wait a minute. This just might be ennobling. I need to keep my family afloat, and it's time to take care of business. There is no room for small, dumb, or awkward feelings here. 

One of my long-ago vocational side trips involved working as an activities person in a nursing home. The stories I heard back then have all melded into one emblematic voice. Never once did that collective voice complain about taking care of business during the Depression. In repose, glancing back over the yawning expanse of years, the men and women who talked to me seemed to be calmly enumerating corners cut and sacrifices made. But never was there any bellyaching: "We paid for milk with potatoes," or "Mother would give us kids beer at the dinner table to keep the meat on our bones when food was scarce." 

Back then, I thought it must have been resignation--the sense that there wasn't anything better out there, so why not apply your fancy schooling to operating an elevator?

And so far, what's going on now versus the Great Depression is a hangnail versus a decapitation.

What filled those gray heads was maturity. May God grant me some soon.