First things first: thank you. Thanks to everyone who reached out yesterday, who helped yesterday, who offered words of advice and encouragement. You truly helped carry me/us through. A special thank you to Howard County Constituent Services, most especially Paul Thompson, who managed to listen with empathy and make me feel as though I was the Queen of England at the same time.
There are other folks who went above and beyond but I don’t know if I have permission to name them, so: if you are reading this: thank you. I sincerely hope you know who you are.
A special shout-out to the friend who taught me the magic words: I would like to escalate this to a manager.
A quick update: I am eating breakfast at the Doubletree which, if you know where I live, is almost like walking down the street to stay with Grandma. We finally got authorization for emergency housing late yesterday afternoon. It turns out the delay in getting help from our insurance company was that someone at Liberty Mutual was sure we lived in Columbia, South Carolina.
At least, that’s their story and we’re not going to quibble now that we are finally getting somewhere.
By the end of the day all of the appointments were set and dates finalized to assess damage, clear away debris, etc etc etc. Insurance seems to think it will take a week. I do not, but I have the advantage of having seen it. We shall see.
But we are safe and have somewhere to be and I am content.
Now, about the Cool Kids. The Cool Kids appeared rather regularly in the blog during its earlier years. I guess you could say they are the spectre of the popular kids in high school you can never seem to emulate successfully. Think of that, but on a local scale.
I was forever dogged by the feeling that I was never going be one of the folks who was invited to restaurant openings, received preferential seating at public events, whose blog was mentioned in the Columbia Flier, etc, etc, whose photo was taken with the Important People.
Over time I realized that what I was envisioning was not even really what I wanted and that the most important thing to me was for people to value my writing. The only way to achieve that was to keep writing and to push myself to get better. Period.
Yesterday was a huge lesson for me. As the day went on I realized that every single person I reached out to made time for me right that very minute. Everyone listened, connected me with help, gave valuable advice that helped everything else in our day make more sense.
While I wouldn’t recommend having your ceiling fall in as a way of finding out one of life’s great lessons, the fact is you don’t get to choose when they come your way. No, I won’t ever be one of the Cool Kids, but the validation I received from my community yesterday was something that mattered far, far more to me.
It was there all along. I just didn’t see it.
The past few days have been rough. But each of them had moments of sweetness, humor, and deep gratitude. And, although he’ll probably squirm a bit to see this in print: my husband is a prince. There are times you are overwhelmed by how right a choice you made to spend your life with someone. I am blessed.
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