What are you thankful for? Part 1

This little story has been swirling around in my head for the last few days. I thought I would write it down and get it out before it drove me crazy. Hard to concentrate on other writings when something like this is percolating. I have no idea where and if I will ever use this, but I thought I would share it with you. I hope you enjoy and as usual, let me know if you find something that needs correction or just have a comment on what I write.

Thank you and I hope you had a very nice Thanksgiving for those of you who are in the U.S. For the rest of you, I hope you had a very nice weekend.

Peter Wilson grabbed his cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch. “There’s just some things you can’t give up, no matter how much you want to be self-sufficient,” he thought as he took a sip. He looked out over his backyard and took in what he had created over the last three years. Others, like his mother, saw his large backyard as a mess. The nice patch of green grass with a few trees and bushes on the edges had been replaced with three dozen raised beds, fruit trees, berry bushes, grape vines, a corn patch, and various garden sheds. A compost heap was tucked away in the back near the goat pen that housed Mable and Suzy. Over to the left side a large chicken coop was filled with birds meant for meat and eggs. Over to right side was a shelter used for rabbits, growing worms, and as a green house in the winter and spring. Near the goat house were pens for a small flock of turkeys and runner ducks. No. He didn’t see a mess, he saw security. A sense of security he never felt when he spent his time chasing a paycheck.

He continued drinking his coffee until he heard the milk goats telling him to put down his coffee and come pay attention to them. Mable was still being milked each morning. They had recently allowed Suzy to dry off so she would be ready for when she delivered her next kid. One goat was enough to supply them with milk, but they seemed to do better in pairs and when both were being milked it gave his wife, Mary, more than enough milk to make small batches of different kinds of cheeses for them. He never drank goat’s milk or ate goat cheese in the past, but he loved them now. The taste was much better than the watered down milk they bought at the grocery store. He still had it on his list to purchase a separator so they could make butter.

He walked past the chicken coop on his way to the goat’s pen. The chickens all lined up waiting for the door to be opened. Peter’s youngest daughter Becky just loved to be the one opening the coop each morning. She would stand there and act like she was a horse race announcer.

“And in this corner, we have Millie. Millie is a two year old chicken who has come along great in these morning chicken runs. She easily takes the trophy on most days. Her biggest competitor is right next to her waiting. Mini may be small, but she is fast. The world is waiting to see who will be the first one to grab a beak full of worms scattered among the leftover greens. The signal is given and the race begins,” she would cry out opening the coop’s door and standing back to watch the chickens rush out to start their day of discovering all the little tidbits scattered throughout the yard they could eat and enjoy.

“Go get it girls,” was all Peter would say as he walked by and opened the door. The girls sauntered out and just looked at him. They were not dumb. They knew he didn’t put anything down for them.

“Ok. Ok,” he chuckled spreading the leftover salad and a few other tidbits around. “I didn’t forget you.”

Peter continued to head to the “back forty” as they called it. It was really the back end of their oversized yard, but he could pretend that he had a real farm in the country. He made his way into the goat’s pen and easily coxed Mable up on the milking stand. Suzy made herself busy eating up the goodies Peter had thrown into the feed bin.

While sitting there milking Mable, Peter had time to think. It had only been a few days since they celebrated Thanksgiving with his family in Irving. His mom always insisted that they come to her house for the meal, even though both her daughter-in-laws were more than willing to host the meal. His mom would always reply when they offered, “Thanksgiving is for me to host. I’m the grandmother and everyone should come here. That’s traditional.” Peter would just shake his head and laugh whenever he heard her say something like that. What was traditional about their meal? Over the years, his mom stopped cooking for the meal and just ordered it for a local store. All cooked and ready to serve. Her “big” adventure involved getting up early and picking up the order. Granted, he didn’t want to get up early and go stand in line with dozens of others who had just purchased their premade, “traditional” meal. She would then spend a few hours warming everything up and setting it on the table. The dinner was one tradition after another. Peter never really understood where the traditions came from, he just guessed it was something out of her childhood or more than likely, something she read should be tradition at Thanksgiving.

Even though none of them ever went to church, his mother would ask them to pray before ‘carving’ the turkey that she had paid extra to have pre-sliced. They would all bow their heads and pretend to pray for a few minutes before attacking the meal like they hadn’t eaten anything in months. Most of the time, his brother and the boys tried to take their meals into the living room so they could watch whatever football game was on. Mother would always act upset enough that they would come back to the table and sit down with the others. This didn’t mean they didn’t keep one eye on the game the entire time. His brother, Henry, had started streaming the game on his phone. He tried to hide the phone in his lap, but everyone knew what he was doing. Including mother. It was more important to show you were following traditions than too actually follow them. “A lot like life. More important to look like you were successful than to actually be successful,” Peter thought relieved he had gotten out of the rat race.

He finished his milking and let the goats out for the day. He had divided his yard into several different areas with temporary fencing. This allowed him to let the goats out to eat up the remains of his garden and enjoy plants he had planted just for them. Kept their feed bill down and spread out their manure at the same time. Slowly, he was increasing the number of raised beds he had in order to grow food for his animals. In a few years, he wouldn’t have to go the feed store at all. All the food for his small collection could come from his backyard.

He headed back to the chicken coop to gather the eggs laid during the morning. His mind kept going back to his Thanksgiving dinner. His mom would try to make small talk as they ate, but usually it was just to ask him if he had become tired of slacking off and tried to get his old job back. As usual during these family events, he had to defend his choice of leaving his old job to work on his mini-farm and make a living with his blog and books. His mom and dad lived the typical Texas mid-city lifestyle of malls and restaurants. While they thought his new life was quaint, they never could get over his leaving his old career behind to work from home writing a blog and a books he self-published. In their minds, no one would ever leave a job making over a hundred thousand a year for anything. You just didn’t do that.

Peter had spent decades working as a technical project manager. He took classes, obtained certificates, and changed jobs when he needed. Before he left it all behind, he had spent eight years working as a senior project manager at AllTex. His mom and dad were so proud of him when they found out he made over six figures. To them, making six figures meant he was rich. Peter never felt rich. In fact, even with his wife making eighty thousand a year they still had problems keeping up with their bills.

It wasn’t that Peter didn’t like working at AllTex, he did. He went in each morning at eight, took an hour lunch everyday with his coworker, Paul, and went home every night around five-thirty. For an IT company this was great. A lot of his fellow PMs around town talked about twelve hour days. Meetings on weekends. Calls during the night with out-sources in India or China. Peter was lucky, he had none of that. His job was steady and for the past fifteen years, they have always been steady. He always assumed it was because of his skills. He would often take a new job and it would be a mess. He would implement rules and processes he had learned and soon the mess would disappear and the projects would run smoother. He often helped others around town straighten their messes out and soon he became well known around the Dallas-Fort Worth area as a very skilled project manager. This reputation was what enabled him to snag the job at AllTex at a much higher salary than his previous ones.

He usually managed to make it through the meal without becoming too upset. They didn’t understand and probably never would. He didn’t have to die like Paul did before he understood the truth. His old lifestyle was killing him and everyone around him.

Thinking about Paul caused Peter to remember back all those years ago. Peter and Paul, or the two Ps as everyone called them, had known each other for years. Peter had graduated from SMU and Paul from TCU. Both with degrees in computer science minoring in business. They both became project managers after a few years of development work and met each other at the local project manager’s monthly tech meeting. Over the years, Peter and Paul had worked together three times at various local companies before both getting the job of Senior Project Manager at AllTex during their big hiring boom. They did the same work. Their cubicles were next to each other. They went to lunch with each other every day. In fact, they were almost identical in their likes and dislikes. They watched sports, but it wasn’t something they had to do. Neither one was really an outdoor person, computers were their livelihood and their hobbies. Both read whenever they could and loved to watch movies. Very similar personalities.

Over the years, they even started to look like each other. They both wore the same type of clothes to work each day. Slacks, always dark colored, with causal collared shirts. The shirts had to have a pocket to hold their cell phone and glasses. Both had thinning hair and eyesight that was growing worse each year. Each walked with a slump in their shoulders marking them as someone who spent all their time hunched over a computer keyboard.

Those features were not the only things that made Peter and Paul so similar. Peter was over sixty pounds overweight and Paul was nearly eighty pounds overweight. It wasn’t until about six years ago that Peter discovered Paul had Diabetes just like him, although Paul had to have insulin shots which Peter had managed to avoid. Both had high blood pressure and took pills for high cholesterol. Neither one was in any kind of shape other than round. Walking up two flights of stairs gave way to one flight which gave way to only walking down stairs. The year before Paul died his knees didn’t even allow him to do that. He rode the elevator when he had to leave their floor. Peter would often looked at himself now and couldn’t believe he was like he was a handful of years ago. He couldn’t believe he didn’t die of a heart attack like Paul did. He still remembered that day at the office when one of his best friends didn’t come into work.

******

Six years ago everything was going fine at AllTex. Peter worked his eight hours, spent time during the day talking to his coworkers and went to lunch with Paul each day for at least an hour. They could easily handle the workload without overtime and calls on the weekends were non-existent. Other project managers around the Dallas-Fort Worth area were extremely jealous of Peter’s work. They worked incredible hours and often came in on the weekends to catch up. Not Peter. He always managed to dot his I’s and cross his T’s before five on Friday. He couldn’t understand why all the others always complained about their workloads. Then it all changed. The entire upper management of AllTex changed overnight. New executives with large company experience replaced the aging executives who founded the company. Soon division presidents and vice-presidents were let go and replaced. They replaced directors and managers under them. In less than one year, Paul couldn’t tell the name of a single person in charge at AllTex beyond his immediate supervisor.

The change in management wasn’t the only thing that changed at AllTex. The new management decided they needed to replace everything so they could compete with Fortune 500 companies. The linchpin computer system that had been in place for years was the first to go. This system was eighty percent of the work in Peter’s department. Without it no one had anything to do. All of Peter’s checklists and processes were built around this system. He recognized he would have to start over.

“I can do it,” he would tell himself each morning. “I learned all this stuff once. I can learn it all again. Besides, most of the time all you have to do is make some small changes to the way you do things and it will fit the new system. No problem.”

What Peter hadn’t counted on was the deadlines the new aggressive leadership wanted. His eight hour day full of talking to coworkers and lunches with Paul started becoming nine hour days without any breaks. Lunch became something he ordered in each day or was served during a lunch time meeting. He bet for at least a year he ate pizza three days a week with the other two being some form or pasta. He was already forty pounds overweight when all of this started. A few months in, he had gained another ten.

“We keep eating like this and I’ll have to have Sheila buy me all new pants,” Paul would often complain after yet another meal of pizza and soft drinks.

“I never thought I would grow to hate pizza,” Peter would say time and time again. “Maybe, we should look at joining a gym nearby before we both explode.”

“Sounds good,” Paul would say. Peter bet they had this conversation two dozen times. They never joined and gym and continued eating pizza.

Weeks went by, nine hour days turned into ten. Ten hour days turned into eleven. Peter caught himself having to spend most of Saturday and a good portion of Sunday trying to catch up on his emails as they went from a few dozen each day to hundreds each day. He just didn’t have time to read them all during the weekday. He bought and configured a new phone for his business email address and read emails whenever he stopped for a few minutes. Those few minutes, right before a meeting was no longer spent catching up with his coworkers. They were spent reading emails. Reading emails in the restroom became common as was sneaking in a few each time he had to stop for a red light. He had been honked at more times in those years than he ever had in his life.

People in Peter’s group started leaving for new jobs. A senior developer here. A junior one there. A DBA one month. A technical writer another. Peter’s group were leaving in droves. If you happen to dress nicer than normal, everyone would comment on the job interview you must be going to. At first it was all in fun. Over time, it become serious after so many people left. Peter’s job became even more difficult. He didn’t have the resources he needed to meet his project deadlines. He spent hours trying to find developers and the other IT people he needed. Paul was in the same boat. They soon found themselves ordering pizza at night to go along with the pizza they ate during the day. They both started looking for other jobs as well, but it didn’t go too well for them. Being older, they had a harder time than the younger people did. They reached out to all their contacts and were told the same things. “We don’t have anything right now.” or “You don’t want to work here. It’s a sweatshop. You easily pull ten hour days and work most weekends.” To Peter and Paul working only ten hours each day would have been a break.

It wasn’t until Friday the 19th of April that everything came crashing down. Peter remembered the day very clearly. He woke up that day and could recall everything.

“Hey, Paul,” Peter said walking into Paul’s cube. He wasn’t there. Maybe he had one of those early meetings they both hated so much. “Oh well. It can wait,” he thought to himself as he walked back to his cube.

Three hours later, Paul was still not in his cube. Peter searched through his email to see if Paul had sent him a note that he was out sick that day. They usually told each other when they were out sick or would be late. That way, the other could handle questions. “Nothing. That’s strange,” Peter thought to himself. “I wonder what’s going one.”

About that time, Peter and Paul’s supervisor came to Peter’s cube. “Hey. Have you seen Paul? He’s missed several meetings this morning and no one has heard a word from him.”

“No. I was just wondering where he was myself. Let me give him a call.” Peter dialed the number, but only got his voice mail. “Voice mail. I’ll keep trying. Let me know if you hear anything and I’ll let you know if I get ahold of him,” Peter said to his boss.

Over the next few hours Peter kept calling. He finally became concerned enough that he looked up the number to Paul’s wife’s cell phone and gave to a try. “Hello,” a female’s voice came over the line.

“Hello. Is this Sheila?”

“No. This is Sheila’s mother. Can I help you?”

“Yes. This is Peter Wilson, Paul’s coworker. We haven’t heard anything from him today and we are getting worried. It’s not like Paul not to send an email when he’s sick. Is he all right?”

Peter didn’t hear anything for several seconds before Sheila’s mother whisper, “Peter. Paul had a heart attack last night. He died early this morning. Sheila is still at the hospital with the body.”

“What? How? Why?” was all that Peter could get out.

“It seems his health had started suffering with all those long hours you guys work. He simply gave out.”

Peter sat there in silence. “Peter? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Sorry. Can you leave a note for Sheila to let us know the details of the funeral? I’m sure there are a lot of people here who would like to come.”

“I can try. Sheila is blaming your company for Paul’s death. I don’t blame her. No one should have to live like Paul did these past months.”

Peter heard silence as Sheila’s mom hung up on him. Maybe she was right. He didn’t know. He did walk over to his supervisor’s office and give him the bad news. Peter wanted to go home, but his supervisor talked him into staying. He was really needed for the status meeting at seven and they needed him to cover Paul’s eight o’clock meeting with the CIO. “You can do that for me, can’t you?” Peter didn’t want to, but agreed anyway. He did walk back to his cube and call his doctor to set up an appointment for a checkup. It had been over a year since his last one and his health was not much better than Paul’s had been.

A week after the funeral, Peter received the results of his checkup from the doctor. It was not good news. Peter remembers thinking he should go out and buy his casket that day the news was so bad.

******

“Peter? It’s your turn,” his mother said. She always wanted them to stand up and tell each other what they were thankful for each year. He never liked this tradition and always thought it was a joke, but his mother insisted. It was tradition. He grins when he thinks that he always has a hard time not bursting out laughing when his oldest brother always said the same thing.

“As always, I’m thankful for my family and being able to see my girls grow up,” Bill would always say. Bill’s wife would put on a fake smile and his mother would beam.

Peter would always think, “But you work eighty hours and week and never really see your girls. Also, didn’t you just have your third affair with that new accountant? How can you be thankful for your family when you are having affairs and be thankful for seeing your girls grow up when you only see them three or four hours a week?” Peter never said that out loud. Bill’s lame speech would placate his mother.

In the past, Peter would always mumble something about being thankful for his family, which he was, and for his job, which he wasn’t. It was a job. It provided money. He always thought he could just go out and get another. He found out the hard way those last few years at AllTex that his ability to get a new job was an illusion.

As Peter stood on the porch watching the goats chew up a dead squash plant and the chickens and turkeys scratch around for bugs and greens, he remembered what he said three days ago.

“This year, I am thankful that I wised up and left that damn job at AllTex before I died in my sleep like my friend, Paul, did. This year, I am thankful that I left the corporate rat race and all that chasing around for a paycheck is behind me. This year, I am thankful that over the last three years, I have built a new life I can be proud of. A life that has meaning. A life that allows me to spend all those precious minutes with my wife and daughters instead of in the car during rush hour or at a job away from my family. This year, I am glad I have been able to lose over seventy pounds in the last three years because of the good food we grow in our yard. This year, I am glad I have been able to get off of Diabetes medicine, high blood pressure medicine, and cholesterol medicine because of how healthy I am now. This year, I am thankful that my life now has purpose. I am thankful for all those emails I get from my readers about how they are changing their lives around by following my advice to live a simple life. This year, I am glad for the first time in a long time I can actually enjoy taking days off for holidays and not worry about all the stuff I have to get done. This year, I am thankful for my life.”

He still cherishes the looks on his entire family when he sat down. His wife was beaming with pride. His mother was shocked beyond belief. His dad sat there with a “you go boy” grin on his face. His brothers looked at him like he had lost it. But mostly, he remembers seeing the look on his own face in the reflection of a mirror his mom had put on the wall. He remembers seeing someone who was very thankful for his life.

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