Thinking about my mother at my age. The differences and similarities. My mothers last work experience outside of mothering and running a household was as a ticketing agent for Continental Airlines. A job she both loved and hated. She hated the constricting rules and regulations, the insistence by management that everyone be dressed in uniforms that were not provided by management and were paid for by the employees out of their meager earnings, the hours which required her to get up before the crack of dawn, down a bowl of oatmeal (which she hated) and the dismal drive from Medford Lakes to the Philadelphia Airport. Continental Airlines was the scourge of the airline industry at the time and the CEO was hated. My mother got her job through an acquaintance with a woman who became her supervisor and whom my mother grew to loathe. My mother was/is very intelligent and independent. Like all of us in our family, no one is the boss of her. And she hated being supervised by someone she believed was less educated and less intelligent than she was. Furthermore my mother never mastered the art of work politics. She was straightforward and upfront. Workplace politics eluded her. What she loved about the job was the opportunity to travel. To take her family on adventures. It was the dream of travel and adventure that lured her into this job. As much as I liked the perks of travel that came from the job, I hated her job and the supervisors and pettiness of her fellow employees that hurt my mothers feelings and battered her self-esteem daily. Even now, I can feel the rage inside me. I hated those people. Hated my mother having to work under such idiots and morons and under such intolerable conditions. Truth be told, it might not have been as bad as my mother took it. She just wasnt made for that environment. Or rather, her early life had torn her apart in such a way that she wasnt able to steel herself against the every day of the routine, mundane work work the rest of us know, accept and deal with. I learned from my mothers experiences and coupled with my own resolve Ive learned to traverse the politics of the workplace and built a hard shell of protection. Those who know me best can testify to the private moments where even I have caved to the battering that comes with the work work. I get up early to go to shoots at often ungodly early hours and I work late into the night on creative treatments. Well beyond what I can imagine my mother doing for a job. Unlike her, I have no children to sit up with late at night when they are ill. I dont have a daughter fighting cancer or a child that brilliant, willful and lost. I have cats. 3 in fact. I share my mothers love of travel. And I am the personification of her ambition and dreams. We are as much alike as we are different.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 01:54:24 +0000