SPARKLES

SPARKLES 3/22/2009

As the months began to pass, our world slipped deeper and deeper into a depression. Jobless rates skyrocketed. My husband, Ted, had to range farther and farther afield to find work. First he looked for work in our hometown. Well-networked after 30 years in the architecting business and well vested in community service, he found no work. After awhile he was forgotten by associates and connections as the economic conditions all over the area worsened and survival of businesses became Darwinian. Somehow Ted remained calm, but I became bitter. I took on a second job so that we could pay the bills. And life was stripped to the bare minimum.

After three months of nothing, we began to get worried about the lengthening dry spell. The television kept reporting the ups and downs of the Dow Jones Average, kept reporting the unemployment rates across the country, kept reporting local business closures. Infused in all this sad reporting was the glimmer of hope injected into the messages: Economic recovery was just around the corner. But we weren’t sure we could hold out. We were forced to make more cut backs in our already ‘bare minimum’ existence.

Facing the reality that work was not going to materialize in our home town, resumes went out to other cities within our home state, hoping that we could at least stay close to the only home we had ever known. But South Carolina has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, having reached double digits numbers. No interest was generated by Ted’s resume; jobs just weren’t available in the state.

This is always a disaster for any state as skilled workers and laborers – the hard-working, tax-paying middle class – leave the state. It causes a collapse in the diversity of population, creativity, and resources available to the state for its overall economic well-being and revenue. States could end up cutting necessary aid and programs, as tax revenues dry up. The potential that states will have to declare bankruptcy becomes a reality.

Ted joined the exodus away from South Carolina, sending resumes to firms in North Carolina and Georgia. Still nothing turned up: The architecting business collapsed everywhere – a direct result of the housing-market collapse. On top of that the whole world seemed to be moving as all scrambled for available jobs. Once lucrative wages became dismal wages as employers with jobs could find employees willing to work for next to nothing just so they could feed their children. The retired elderly watched as their retirement funds got eaten up by declining financial markets. They, too, reentered the work force adding to the competition for jobs.

My husband wasn’t able to find any work that first year. We collected unemployment benefits for four months then those state and federal funds dried up in a national belt-tightening event. If there was one income in the household then no benefits were allowed. This forced us to eliminate fruits and vegetables from our diet. More and more we lived on noodles. Coffee stopped the rumbling in our stomachs.

I lost my job in a cost-cutting event at the local college. The next four months saw us trying to live on a minimum wage cashier’s salary. We cashed out all our investments. These had already lost 70% of their value in the collapsing financial market. Ten thousand dollars worth of investments were cashed out at three thousand dollars. I secreted away a thousand in a little box in the back of the closet, hoping against hope we wouldn’t have to use it, then spent the rest of the money on a credit card debt that was accumulating at a 29% interest rate. We sold the truck and got rid of the car payment. We kept the Escort as it was paid off and cheap to operate. We could afford health insurance anymore, that was let go.

Our life as a couple deteriorated. We, at first, clung to each other. Then didn’t. Frustration set in. Then anger. Accusations of not trying hard enough flew. Depression. Then we quit being a couple as all our problems crept into bed with us. Depression was wearing us out.

In the second year my husband heard of work in Washington, DC, so he went looking. No more faxing or sending resumes. No more phone calls. The personal touch was needed. He wanted those people to see his face and resume together. He wanted them to see his face and hear his voice. He wanted them to put it all together in a real-world moment and come to the immediate conclusion that he was perfect for the job: Eager, hungry, eligible, qualified and ready.

DC called him two weeks later on a Wednesday. It wasn’t much money but it was better than a cashier’s salary. And it was in his field. He would be architecting again or rather he’d be assisting the architect on the new Center for Economic Development building there in DC. The Center was a pork barrel project designed to stimulate the economy with jobs. Ted would be managing deadlines and crews in the building’s completion. We packed two suitcases and put him on the train. He took a room in a boarding house, on the train line and began work on Monday.

I was left behind with the house, the remainder of our belongings, and a cashier’s job. I was to sell the house, then join Ted in DC.

But the house didn’t sell that first month, or the second. It was in the third month that Ted came home on the train. Just for the weekend. He talked to the realtor. We walked around the house in a daze with our new information. Our biggest investment had depreciated 50 % in value. Ted told the realtor to get the best possible price and then went back to DC. While Ted had been home we had tried to be a couple but couldn’t find the desire.

Another three months went by. Still no sale. Ted called me from DC, he didn’t have enough money to come home. I had taken a pay cut at the store just to keep my cashiering job. He had been mailing me three of his four paychecks every month. He had tried to save a little from his food allowance to purchase a train ticket home. But it was a no-go. He, only, had half a ticket. I, too, had been forgoing some food purchases. I suggested we meet half way: He to come down on the train, I to go up on the train and meet somewhere in the middle.

The next week I arranged for some one to take my shifts at the grocery store and bought a tix. So did my man. Friday evening we met on the platform, a little kiss of greeting, little carry-on bags slung over our shoulders. He took my hand ever so kindly and walked me through the railway station. Across the parking lot was a little dive of a hotel that advertised “Rooms” in neon. We took one.

Barely in the room, his little kiss became a big kiss. And one kiss became three which became lots of kisses. Mouth, neck, ears, shoulders. Clothes tumbled to the floor. A dizzying array of odors and sensations long forgotten in the turmoil of living returned and returned again. The night moved into day and we slept. And night came again. Warmth, safety, desire, and love, long forgotten feelings returned. We were young again.

I got back on the train Sunday, tired and happy. I thought of his touch. I loved it all, and the clandestine nature it had seemed. We agreed to meet again in one month’s time if the house didn’t sell. A shiver went up my spine and a grin across my face. After two years of stress and anger, he had managed to put the sparkle back in our love life with just a half of a train ticket. The woman across the aisle asked me if I was all right. I tried to stop grinning.

It took another year to sell the house, but in the end it sold and I was able to join Ted in DC. There had been seven more trips to that dive. Seven more weekends of sparkling romance.

By the way the house sold at thirty thousand dollars, one-tenth of its value the year before the depression started.