Ganas: Rebecca, Who Is My Neighbor, Part 2
“Oh, shit. This pandemic hurt. Big time!” says Rebecca, who is my neighbor. All of a sudden we are in second story I've asked her to tell: the story of life in her house in 2020 (and the pandemic). Her shift and her tears come with a rush that takes my breath away. With a clear voice she plunges into the telling. “Jacob wasn't working. Alcoholism hit hard—he's struggled with alcoholism. He's gone back and forth to rehab. And now you guys see he's not there anymore.”She’s going fast and I can’t quite keep up. “Who's not there anymore?” I ask. “Jacob,” she replies. I assure Rebecca that I hadn’t noticed. I missed any signs of someone moving out—but now she's mentioned it, I realize the pick-up truck is no longer in the driveway.
He was drinking
Rebecca’s voice drops to a whisper, “He was drinking a bottle of vodka a day. Then he had to go to the hospital.” I whisper, “Oh, wow” as her words tumble forth. “He went to the hospital once; he came back. Did it again. Like he couldn't stop. The alcohol was toxic. He was already at a point-four-oh [.40] or something. It's almost deadly. He was hallucinating.”“How scary for you!” I say swept along in the torrent of her words and all they convey. “Yeah, it was bad," Rebecca says. “It was bad. That's why it's hard because…” her voice trails off as she tries to hold back her tears she's. I assure her, “You don't have to go there if you don't want to.” Several times in our conversation I check in with Rebecca: Would she like to leave out this part of her story? Maybe redact Jacob’s name? Each time she declines.
Ganas
Rebecca is clear: she wants to tell her story. She tells me this is her ganas.
- ganas— Spanish for desire, urge, longing, wish, from the verb ganar: to win, to gain.
She owns it ALL. Everything that’s happened to her belongs to her, is part of her hard-won reality. Resolutely she continues. “I filed for divorce yesterday. He left March 1, because sometimes…” Her expression and silence imply volumes. With quiet determination she goes on. “It was the drinking, you know? Like, he's the nicest nicest person but once the alcohol hit he was a jerk.”“How long were you guys together?” I ask. “Four years,” she says. “That pandemic hit home. Big time. He was abusing alcohol to begin with. Sometimes he would drink throughout work during the day. I'm like, ‘Oh my god! You're gonna get a DUI. You're gonna get in trouble."
Able to function
“He was able to function but after this [job loss and the pandemic]—it would be two, three days he wouldn't take a shower. He'd sit in the backyard for hours. He just zoned out. It was tough. So this—this hit on the crazy level. “He went to MFI for a bit, for recovery.” She explains that MFI Recovery Center is in the Woodcrest neighborhood of Riverside.“He stayed for 60 days and he was good. They gave him medication and I thought, ‘Okay, he's gonna be okay,’ you know. And not 29 days later, he said he didn't like the way the medication felt and was right back at it.”We have no idea what people within a stone’s throw of our front door carry, what tally of setbacks and despair accrue in their hearts. The day after our conversation I read an article about alcohol use in the US in the Atlantic. Rebecca is not alone.
Workwise
“But for me workwise: Positive!” Abruptly she steers her story in another direction. “I stayed at work and stayed busy—I mean, I promote! And promote! So it was like, ‘Okay, I'm not gonna let this [home situation] bring me down.’ That's why I got the job at the warehouse.”I ask, “When did you get that job, do you remember?” With a slight “Mmm,” of consideration she says, “November, 2019.” Only months before the COVID stay-at-home orders, Rebecca began working at an Amazon warehouse.“I started in the Redlands one and then COVID hit. Overtime galore!” I wince a little thinking of the boom in online purchasing precipitated by the shutdown and the overtime hours this meant for hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers. She continues, “I was putting in applications for other parts in the warehouse. Then I got the recruitment and staffing job six months later. I got this position in February,” she says with pride.
Actually really cool
When I ask her to explain her current position, her once tearful face lights up. “OH! This is actually really cool. We’re called credentialing administrators. There's only seven air sites in the nation and only two credentialers per site, so it's pretty exciting. Basically, we're doing the security threat assessments on everybody that's going to work in that building.” She tells me the ins and outs of her responsibilities with that eagerness I recognized as pluck in her first story.“I'm really, I really,” she searches for the right words. “I'm one of those... I really love Amazon because they're so forward thinking. Like because this is the airport, not just this warehouse, let's go back and ask where the box is coming from. Let's get these people TSA cleared. Yeah, it's a constant clearance. They're constantly running their background checks.” I ask, “How many people does that mean you have to keep track of?” She says with a smile, “Last month we did 678. Just last month!” and she laughs at my amazement.
Staying busy
“I can tell you're kind of jazzed about your job,” I say with a smile. “Yeah, I love it. I'm busy. I like staying busy. It's a pretty neat job. Pretty neat and exciting. Where I'm at right now, I basically set up the new hire events. We're clearing everybody that is newly hired.” Rebecca tells me she loves to tell a person, “You got the job!”She goes on. “It's a positive environment because everybody's always trying to teach each other, not hoarding information.” Her praise for Amazon includes starting wages, the leadership principles taught and practiced, AmCare (the on-site clinic), the company communication style, as well as the interview process and educational support for employees who wish to go back to school. Rebecca’s tenure with the Postal Service provides stark contrast. Working there she was burdened with union struggles and dues, hovering administrators, the fear of reprisals if one complained, and the anxiety of being fired if one was injured on the job.
The job saved you
Almost half of Rebecca’s story involves describing and enumerating the merits of Amazon. She extols the company virtues and is excited about long-range plans; her awe is palpable. “They're going on a seven day week schedule and 12 hour days [at my location]. We've been negotiating with them because there's only two of us. We can't work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, you know. We can't. As it is, we're working six days a week right now, 50 to 56 hours a week.”“Oh my gosh, thank you for fitting me in!” I gush as I realize what this means. “I feel honored. You have so many things going on! Thank you!” Rebecca makes light of this. “Oh, no, it's okay. Right now I go home and I'm like, ‘Meh.’”I say, “It sounds like work has sort of been your salvation. You have this focus. You're challenged. This is your third position, right? Is it accurate to say the job saved you?” Without hesitation Rebecca says, “It is!”
Other reflections
Then I ask, “Do you have any other pandemic reflections? We’re still in it, but were there any positives of COVID?”Rebecca says, “The positive of COVID is WE got to teach Emilio.” Emilio is her seven-year-old grandson. “They gave a bunch of online projects, or said ‘Watch this on YouTube. You do this and this.’ We had a lot of independent time. We got to do a lot of different projects with Emilio, work with him on how he learns. “He was really hyper, so we’d take breaks. Every fifteen minutes he’d take a quick break and either snack on a string cheese, or go outside and jump on the trampoline, or play with the dogs for five, ten minutes. Then he’d come back ready to learn more.“So the positive was that we got to learn HOW he learns. Now we’re back to school I don’t know how they’re gonna…” her sentence dangles.I pick up the thread. “Isn’t that interesting? School, going back for him might be harder than it was because you and—it wasn’t just you. You said it was…” She helps me, “Julie and David.” I repeat the names, “Julie and David—his aunt and uncle—” “were all helping him.” Rebecca finishes the sentence.
Learning how he learns
“We were learning how he learns specifically, and catering to that. So math concepts that were really hard for him—we brought things out so he can count, calculate. Not just the number on the sheet of paper, [how] to group ‘em in tens or whatever they were having us do, you know.” I nod with understanding.“We were going out of the box for that. Going to the teacher’s store for different things. It was like, ‘Let’s see what will attract him more to learn.’ So we got to learn how he learns.”Once an elementary teacher myself, I say, “Love it! You paid attention and took the time to figure that out.”“Yeah,” Rebecca says with a laugh. “But at the same time it’s almost like ‘Aaaaaaa…! How are we gonna tell the teachers ‘This is how this one kid learns out of your thirty?’” This time her laugh is the kind that follows a hard question. “Right,” I agree. “And thirty! Thirty kids in the classroom.”
Persistent ganas
“I think it’s really good,” begins Rebecca, who is my neighbor (and shares my first name), “because everybody learns differently…” I sense her persistent ganas—her desire, her longing—to wrestle something positive from the rubble. She struggles to grasp and hold a good thing and still speak honestly. “Some feel like they’re falling behind and they stay behind. And there’s ones that are far ahead and because they’re so far ahead their confidence boosts so they stay ahead.” Beyond children in school, her description fits a range of pandemic stories. “That’s the thing with the kids,” she says, ending with the wound of truth. “Once they’re behind, their confidence lowers, it drops and they can’t learn because they’re already feeling bad.” She pauses then says, “Well. YOU KNOW!” “I do, Rebecca. I do.”
Only a few more neighbors have stories to tell me as I wrap up this project. In the context of COVID, California (and so the street where I live) is officially open, and so pandemic stories may start to blur. My personal end-date for interviews is August 31, 2021. Something tells me that the last few conversations will be as rich and surprising as those already written here.Thank you so much for participating as a reader, a receiver of Who Is My Neighbor. The interwebs are noisy & crowded and I'm grateful for your company in this quiet, intimate work of socially engaged art. As ever, you're invited to share the writing (on social media or as an email) and use any of the practice you wish.I'm glad you're my online neighbor.
