Bossypants

“You look like you’re leading something,” she said.

We met for an info interview. My former boss and I. I wanted to run past her my career ideas, my flailing, my desires, my questions. And what can happen in an hour (I should know by now), is phenomenal.

We caught up briefly, I heard about the cross-Bay move, the house hunt that fell magically into place after a year of city-looking, about the semi-adult kids, and about the current work.

I met her in 2008. I had a fever of 103 that weekend and had to cancel our initial interview, so we had to meet on a Sunday, fever or no fever -- I had a drastically depleting bank account, no safety net, and did what it took. What it took was meeting her in a Starbucks, rabid coffee addiction being the first thing we aligned on. We sat talking for over an hour, about the job, sure, but about lots of other things, too.

I didn’t even apply for that job. I’d applied for a different position in the organization, and having been passed up for that one, they handed my soon-to-be new boss my resume, and said, Here, she might work well for you.

I was blonde at the moment. I’d quit my job at the property management company with no net and no prospects. No plan and no direction. I’d simply had enough of crying in my car at lunch because I felt so stuck and lost over my “career.” I’d been there almost 2 years. They were great. But it wasn’t “me,” and I didn’t know what “me” was anyway, so I stayed.

Until I didn’t. Until my coworker there went out to lunch with me, and I can’t even remember exactly what she must have asked me, or exactly what I must have said. But it triggered action, for better or worse.

I called a friend of mine after that lunch, and he asked me two important questions: Why would you stay? “Financial security.” Why would you leave? “Love. Self-love.”

I’d never said those words before. I never knew I’d had such an impulse or a drive such as that. “love” or “self-love.”

What I didn’t have was a plan, a back-up, a safety net. And for all that people say about “leap and the net will appear”… well, I should do a leeetle bit of my part in assuring a safe landing, too.

So, that weekend, I gave my notice, hosted a my now-annual "Pre-Val Hearts & Stars" party, dyed my hair blonde. And then scoured the interwebs for hope. Which, FYI, is not where hope lives.

With a fever, a toilet paper shortage, and lots of “I want to do something 'creative,' but I don’t know what that is” spinning, one morning I woke up, and asked myself, What do I like to do?

Strangely, the answer was, “Well, I like being Jewish.” Ha.

So, onto the interwebs I went, and typed into google: Jewish, San Francisco.

I applied to everything there was. And I got called in for the first job at that organization. And then I got called in by my soon-to-be boss.

I was tired, desperate, and blond. I was feverish, scared, and brain-addled.

I got the job.

(Here, I could insert the same style story that got me the job at the property management company, under very similar circumstances including toilet-paper and food shortage, but I’ll leave that for now – except to say, perhaps you now can understand why it is that “Stability First” is my current motto and touchstone. – No, It’s not “fun,” it’s not zany, or “creative,” but – guess what, to paraphrase a friend I heard last week, It gives me the table upon which to build the puzzle of my life. Stability first gives me the freedom and the ease and the breathing room to … buy toilet paper.)

And here my now-former boss and I sat yesterday, at another coffee shop, so full circle it makes me smile, and here were are again, talking of Jewish, talking of organizations, of helping, of building, of changing. It’s 6 years later, now, almost to the date, that she and I have sat across tables sipping our addictions and exchanging our personal and professional lives.

She showed up for me during cancer. She brought me gift cards to Trader Joe’s so I wouldn’t go hungry or worry about doing so. She brought me a travel Shabbat kit with candles and a prayer that my mom and I would use once when she was here. She brought with her to Israel a prayer, a plea, I'd written during cancer that I'd asked her to take with her there, and she did, under a lemon tree in her parents' backyard, dug, burned and buried my prayer with her small niece and nephew. She told me how incredible I was and how inspiring I am.

And yesterday, she told me the same. She gave me hard answers, great ideas, helped me think through my own. This woman is a mentor and a friend, and lost or not lost, I have allies like her, unique as she is, all over this planet.