To Florida

2/22/2013
O’Hare Airport

It has been over ten years since our last air travel together. I decided to use Priceline.com to do my booking for the flight, hotel, and car. Saves me time and money, right?

We check on-line hours before leaving for O’Hare. Delayed from 2:17 to 3:30 gate B-9 (we think “benign”) Spirit Airlines. OK, it’s been snowing. We get to the airport looking for our flight. Fort Myers, Florida... B-9 is in Terminal 1 and Spirit is in Terminal 3...Spirit/United... Maybe Spirit dumped all of their passengers to United? No matter. We shall go to United.

The United agent is very helpful but does not know anything about Spirit Air and United being combined for the flight. Our names are not under any of their flights. One thing is certain: all remaining flights to Fort Myers, Florida, are with United, and our names are not on them.

So we call Priceline. Long drawn-out pre-recorded messages. How long ...I just want a real person and time is slipping away. Customer service finally answers. She only knows that the flight is delayed. Our names are still there. Other than that, she is not aware of anything else. So what was B-9 and United/Spirit all about?

We are rushing to Spirit Airlines in Terminal 3 after a long walk and shuttle ride. We found it. The take off time is now 4:45 pm. Another delay. No matter, we will get on it and get to our destination.

So who did the mix up of gate info?

We then go through long winding rows of humanity for x-raying our luggage, coats, shoes, and liquids like shampoo and lotion. It felt more like hundreds of cattle waiting for slaughter. Everything is OK...

It Was Then

When I come to Chicago to visit Henna and family, I make a point to visit mother. Age 77 seems young to me. After all that is only twenty years from now for me. Yet my mother has become very aged from spending countless hours in painful memories. We spend hours together, rather I listen for hours of her past. I have encouraged her  to think of the sweet moments. They are like gems. One must search  because they don't surface easily.

Last night she told me of my father. He has sacrificed his life to take care of his parents and family. At an early age he was working full time for US army. This would be early 1950s during Korean war. He did not want to spend (rather waste) his hard earned money to rent a small room for himself. He had a large family to support; his father, mother, sisters and their husbands, their children, and his younger brothers. He was allowed to put a cot under a stairway of army bunk. He was hardly able to sleep when GIs would run up and down the stairs.

He gave all his money to his father. Even after he married and started to have his own family the burden and responsibility for his parents and family was with him. I could feel sadness and bitterness rising in my mother. I heard this story hundreds of times. How we suffered...

Mother, what I hear is some one so noble, he was able to put so many people before himself. Maybe grandfather was so grieved in his loss of his farm and his inability to take care of his family, all he could do is try to stretch that money father gave him to take care of war displaced family.

Does that mean I am noble too? Said my mother.

Once you release the bitterness and sadness from your heart, you too are noble. I responded.

Your father never complained about his family.  He just took care of them at our expense.

As our conversation continued, I wish I could have known my father for a man with such a big heart rather than through my mother's suffering soul. I saw the world through my mother's eyes of how life should be or should have been. In that I missed the grandness I could have seen in my father.

Wet and Dreary Morning

It was  cold and dreary this morning. As if that was not enough, rain was driving hard against my windshield.  I was trying to make out a road ahead of me in the midst of blackness while wipers are dashing back and forth .  I relied on my GPS  to turn onto a small road rather than by sight. At times unseen puddles would blanket the sides of the car.

I was asked  if I would  open the pharmacy in Plymouth. The resident pharmacist had come down with a bad case of flu.  As I was driving I was fully aware that driving in this dark and wet road did not disturb my peace.  I was serene. I had changed.

There was a time when I would have been upset... that I would have wanted to sleep more, that I should have a job closer to home, that there should be some stability to my schedule. Yet here I was...so much at peace and even enjoying my peaceful drive in the dark. I have learned in my life journey that always pursuing "what should be" often left me tired and exhausted after initial euphoria wore off if I had gotten my way or all energy sapped out of me in my trying, if I did not get my way.

In my struggles with "wants" and "should be"s I learned it is OK just to be. My desire to pursue God in Jesus has brought me to this place and I was bubbling with love for God with whom I so often struggled with.

Soon after I opened the pharmacy, Sheryl walked in and gave me a big hug. "It's been soooo long since you worked here!"  Soon Melissa walked in. Her face was beaming. "Look who's here!!!" and she gave me welcoming hug. I had told my supervisor that I would work till noon only. I would not cancel my other engagements for the day to put in a full day of work. At noon Diana walked in to replace me. "When I heard it was JaeHi, I had to come." She said it was an hour and forty five minutes from her home to this pharmacy... I was so overjoyed to see her.

Yes I float and work in many towns and work with many people. In this floating job with schedules that can change at moments notice with unpredictable shifts, yet I am experiencing such variety of human relationships in so many different ways.

As I was driving home I thought, it was a good day....

I am recalling the faces of people who look at me with expression, "oh poor JaeHi" when I comment about my job. Some times I can work a full shift with out any breaks or time to eat, I mean like eight or more hours straight. Often I will bring back home my lunch sack, never touched.

My work schedule is erratic. Sometimes I leave for work before six am. Other times I can leave at other times and I have come home as late as almost midnight. Also there is no pattern in my work days. The daily distance to work varies from fifteen minutes to almost two hours. I may also express to my friends about some of very challenging experiences I encounter with my patients/customers who can yell at me in anger in spite of my best efforts to help them. Some times serving becomes downright scary when I refuse to fill prescriptions that are too early for refills (usually for addictive drugs). I have learned to have alligator skin.

Yet there is something that is so wonderful about my job. All in all I love it. I feel so sorry for those who are so frustrated with their health and medical treatments. I feel for the frustration they feel when their insurance will not pay. I have learned to take their treatment of my staff with grain of salt. When I come home, all that is behind me. There are always people who are reasonable and rational who are actually grateful for any help I can provide for them. And there are such lonely people who call for medication counseling yet I know that this person is so lonely. They want to hang on to this phone conversation as long as they can.

Yesterday I worked with two technicians who can't wait until they quit. One is a school teacher. This is her second job and her debt is almost gone so she will quit the first chance. She cannot handle all the demeaning attitudes of people treating her as if she is inferior. She says she may need long therapy. I love working with her, laughing with her, and letting her know it will be so sad when she leaves.

When did my attitude change? It must have been over many years. I remember the first time I worked as a pharmacist. My thought was, "Is this all there is to it?" I wanted to be important, looked up, like a doctor. This job made me feel more like a servant. Also I battled with 'what should be' in life. Over the years 'what should be' has been chipped away bit by bit and each little bit brought in freedom. This went for my job, my marriage, and life in general. Hanging on to 'what should be' has brought much frustration and anguish.

I am considering to stop my traveling pharmacist role. Next June (2013) I told my boss that I will take a store and be a stationary person, one location, one group of technicians, and one group of clientele. That means I will have to be a full time pharmacist. There is job security with full time.  Again so many of my friends will feel sorry for me. At my age (ripe old age of 57) lot of ladies are busy in their leisure. Yet this will be another bend in the road for me. Another exciting phase.  I will miss all the different technicians I work with in different stores, all of the relationships I have developed and loved, all the different socio-economic environment I have experienced as I go from one store to another store.

I have one more year of being a traveling pharmacist and I will enjoy my time to the fullest no matter where I float to.

Our planning

My cousin and I were planning how we would get to our young cousin’s wedding when so many factors are seeming to interfere...and this is her reply...a gem.


Yes, when I think of all we have lived thru, OF COURSE, it will all work out ! :) 

Really, at this stage in my life, I marvel at all the things that have already worked out and then I realize that most of them did not really work out as I had so beautifully planned them, and yet, it's funny, I feel that they still worked out....I tell my kids never to worry if Plan A falls thru, they just have to be nimble and embrace Plan B, and if that falls thru, Plan C isn't so bad either...and at the end of it all, they will find that Plan Z will be the one they find themselves living and that will have been the best plan of all...it is trite, but so true, that it is not the hand that life deals us that will define our life, but rather, our attitude toward that hand and how we choose to play it. 

To Have Life

I often hear term "....have life."  It is meaningful things happening and it usually happens outside of work. It is fun and meaningful. Last couple of years I was thinking, my work is part of having life. I am not thinking of work itself. It's the people that I work with.

As I go to different location every day I work with different staff. They come from different walks of life. Some are from middle class with middle class value. Others are from hand to mouth life earning just enough for that day or that week. Some from life of abuse to life of leisure, all have some how found themselves here with me. Of course I go from one town to another daily. Each day as I work and talk with them I try to enter their lives, to understand as they do. I have learned to love so many of the technicians that I work with. Their age and back ground is as diverse as east is to west.

Yesterday I was at a store. Emily came in to store to be with me. It was her day off. She said it was more meaningful to spend time with me, helping me at my work than to stay at home (her husband has passed away). Often I encounter different techs watching out for me or taking care of me and I know that is coming from their love for me.

As I was driving home, I was thinking, I hope to work a long time. Maybe into my seventies and eighties. If I was at home doing what other women in their fifties do, I probably would not be as satisfied. I have life and this life includes my job which includes learning to love others and accepting their love for me.

Expectations

This morning Tom collapsed as he was getting dressed. It was surreal. One minute he was going through every day morning routine and next minute he collapsed like a lifeless puppet. Once he was settled back in bed I reluctantly went to work.

This would be almost two hour drive to Peru Indiana. I thought of how short a human life is. Tom can get back to full health yet there is no denying that signs of aging is catching up with us. We both groan as we get up just like my parents and their generation did and we were too young to realize that one day we too would cross that passage of time. Sadness welled up in me. There was almost a pleading within me. I want to live a full life with my husband whom I have so much taken for granted in our younger years.

I never fully appreciated his work because it was not tied to income and we have battled many long years over that. Because Tom spent so many hours working while sitting at his computer, I felt his work is robbing his health from him. He tried hard to listen to all my stories of events and happenings at the various pharmacies I work and yet I always knew his thoughts were not in my stories. Neither of us could really fully appreciate each other's work.

When Lizy left in August, we found ourselves empty-nesters. We had sold our Chicago house to Henna and Aki and we finally could start working on our Goshen house. To me that meant being together with Tom, a time we can bond together and be in total enjoyment of each other...time I so treasure.

I thought of various projects we would do; The garden to be created, the walls to be painted, the color selections, so many things to me meant...a time with Tom, Tom and I. Soon after Lizy left Tom's hip began to cripple him. That was in August and he experienced deep pain. In March I bought him an ultra-sound gadget and he recovered quickly.

Now we are back to square one...  So I let go ...learn to accept life as is. After all God is writing a beautiful story no matter where we are in that story...