Starting March 17, I’m doing a series about some of the wonderful and amazing friends in my life IRL, for three reasons. First, because I’ve always wished I could publish a book of photographs of my friends’ faces so skilled that one could look at the images and feel their character, their goodness, and their beauty. Then I wished I could write well enough to create a word-picture that would do the same.
Second, I live in fear that I will die or something and the people who have impacted my life the most won’t realize the magnitude of their giving to me. That would truly suck, so if I write it here, they can’t say they didn’t know. And third, because my son Creed, watching me “empty-nest-it”, is scared to death I will be “lonely”. I want him to see what I have.
Oh, God. If there was ever any friendship destined to start out on less than auspicious footing, it would be my friendship with my “big little boss”, Sharon.
I call her that because, a) she is the administrator where I work, the Big Kahuna, the name above all names to invoke when you need something done - or someone to blame everything on - hence the “big”. She also, b) happens to stand about three feet tall. No - maybe 5′2″. Shorter than me, which isn’t common. Hence the “little”.
I met her in November of 2004 when the administrator who hired me, whom I adored, left to take a job in another state. And in comes this upstart. Who has the nerve to change everything.
Have I ever mentioned to you how much I hate change?
Not only that, but she didn’t know my residents like I did - their individual personalities and needs and quirks. She didn’t cut up their toast in the morning at breakfast for them - she moved the damn aviary we had. And - the mortal sin - she dared to express opinions about how we nurses did our jobs.
Where Jess, my previous administrator, had been warm and huggy, Sharon is efficient and professional. She told me something one time about how she is a “blue” and I am a “green” or something like that in explaining the differences in our personalities - I can’t remember now. But we were not at all, I thought, cut from the same cloth.
It all came to a head after a few months when she called me in on the carpet for something and I completely lost it at her, to the point that co-workers were lining up down the hallway to listen in at the door.
I cussed, I swore, I called her everything but - well - a white woman. I impugned her ethics, her abilities, her integrity. In short I did everything I could to verbally flay her alive. And then I resigned.
Very calmly, she told me (this was on a Friday, and I was scheduled to have the weekend off) that she would accept my resignation if I tendered it again Monday, and released me immolated out onto the floor again.
Well, I have a few ethics of my own, and as the shift passed (because I still had to work, of course), my conscience got the better of me and I called her. I told her that I still meant a lot of the things I said, but that the way I said them was inexcusable, that I had no business talking to her or to any human being the way I did to her, consciously seeking to belittle her and cause self-doubt. I told her that if she wanted to fire me, I certainly had it coming, but that I was absolutely and sincerely sorry for the way I had treated her.
And ever since that day we have gotten along great.
I have gotten to know her as a woman, and some of the struggles she has faced in her life, and she has earned my respect and my camaraderie. She really does have the shittiest job in the place - and I make it worse for her by continuosly teasing her in front of people for this and that.
She’s smart - really really smart. She knows rules and regulations that change every time the damn wind blows - and she knows them like the back of her hand. It’s bizarre.
She bleeds for the people we care for - especially for the ones who are the hardest to connect with and like.
Shae stands alone, in the worst job in the facility, and takes it - all day long every day. And she never looks ruffled.
But personally, she is just like the rest of us. She takes shit she doesn’t want to take, and she takes it just because she’s so damn tired of fighting. She stresses out in that “sandwich relationship” worrying about adult children and grandchildren and an elderly mom.
She comes up to the nurses station and makes me laugh by telling me some hysterical but potentially embarassing situation she was in - and she listens to me and encourages me, both as a nurse and as a woman.
She believes in me, and she makes me believe in myself.
We’ve never seen each other outside of work, and that is also a bonding thing for me, because the reason we don’t is the same for both of us.
But she is a source of strength and laughter in my life every day - and I would pity the next one that ever came in and tried to take her place!
