For Everything There is a Season

Today marks the end of an era for me. It was my last day working at the Big Corporation.

Late last year, the Big Corporation had announced it was selling the division I work for to another company.

But between the legal logistics and the tax implications, it took a long time for the sale to go through. And because our division's functions were so intertwined with the Big Corporation's, the act of separating our businesses was like a brain surgeon trying to remove the intricately entwined tentacles of a brain tumor from a brain. But today the surgery was complete.

Tomorrow is moving day, and starting Monday the whole group of us will be working in another building about 5 miles away, for another company that I'll just call the Rather Big Corporation.

This was the last day that I went to the office I have been working at for nearly 30 years.

When I started working in this location, it was actually for a Somewhat Smaller Corporation. During the 30 years I was there, the company went through several mergers and buyouts, and finally was swallowed up by the Big Corporation. But the whole time, I was still in the same office building, with many of the same people.

I was only 25 when I started working here. It was my first - and only - job at a "real" company. When I graduated from college with my degree in Communications I was still immature for my age, and not very confident. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. After a couple of low-paying jobs at local businesses, I finally realized that if I ever wanted to move out of my parents' house and live on my own that I needed a job that paid more.

The one thing I was really confident about was my typing ability - and when I saw a job listed in the paper for a typist at the Somewhat Smaller Corporation, I applied, and got the job. I became a typist in the company's typing pool.

Yes, back then they had actual typing pools - a whole group of women in one room, typing away. It was like something out of Mad Men. People would come down from Upstairs and drop off handwritten documents to be typed and the supervisors would give them out to us one piece at a time. Each job would come with a time written on it - 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 60 minutes. I prided myself on being able to beat the time estimate.

Back then we didn't have a Xerox machine. If someone had to "cc" six or seven people, we used that special thin paper called onionskin, with carbon paper in between each sheet. It is hard to imagine that it was that primitive back then, but it was.

The "typing pool" was actually called the "Word Processing Center," because there were two - yes, two - word processing machines, which were used for form letters. But gradually all the old electric typewriters and IBM Selectrics were replaced with word processors. And of course the company did get copy machines, and the onionskins and carbon paper went the way of the dinosaurs.

I actually enjoyed this job immensely. I came in each day, was given work, finished the work, and left. There was nothing left on my desk waiting for me the next day, nothing hanging over my head, no guilt that I hadn't finished something.

However, after a few years of this, I did feel it was time to move on. By then I had met DH and he encouraged me to apply for an entry-level market research job that had been posted internally. I'd never had any training in this field but by then had more confidence and figured I could do the job. I got the job, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Thanks to the Big Corporation, I've had an actual career, and I have to say, to paraphrase what Garret Morris used to say about baseball on Saturday Night Live, the Big Corporation has been very, very good to me.

In the nearly 30 years I worked at this company, I made many great friends, learned skills I didn't even know existed - or which didn't exist yet - when I was in college, and let's face it, made a better living than I had ever expected to, based on my first two jobs! I was promoted several times, and had six or seven (I've lost track) immediate bosses. I've seen CEOs, presidents, vice presidents and directors come and go. I bowled on the company bowling league for 14 years. I joined Toastmasters and learned to actually enjoy speaking in public.

Thirty years is a long time. During that time, I met and married DH, we traveled to various countries, bought our house, made new friends, and joined a neighborhood association. I earned a certificate in Historic Preservation at a nearby college, and became a board member on the town historic district review board.

On a sadder note, during this time my grandmother died, DH's grandmothers both died, my father died, and we also lost several friends.

Many of the people I worked with are no longer at the Big Corporation. Some were laid off during the years I worked there, others left of their own accord; some retired, and a few, whose faces haunt me still, died too young.

For awhile after the sale of our division was announced, the enormity of the change did not really affect me. We were still in the same building, after all. Nothing had changed yet. We were busy getting acquainted with the new company and working on the transition.

But today, it was time. All the files were packed and my cubicle was empty. I turned in my badge and my parking tag to the security desk, and walked out for the last time as an employee. On Monday, life will go on at the Big Corporation, but one corner of the building will be empty.

Sure, I may be back sometimes to have lunch with friends. But it won't be the same. An era has ended and it has to be acknowledged. I started working in this building as a young woman of 25, and am leaving as a middle-aged woman of 55. A lot of water has passed under the bridge.

The End of an Era

Photo: Kjetil Ree (Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0)

Tonight is the last game being played in the old Yankee Stadium.

The brand new, flashy ballpark rising next door will be ready in time for opening day 2009. Since the Yankees won't be making the playoffs this year, that made tonight the last home game of 2008 and the last ever in this fabled stadium.

We happened to turn on the Yankees' cable station, the Yes Network, tonight just in time to see the opening ceremony before the game.

It was a long and moving ceremony, hosted by the two voices of the Yankees, John Sterling, the radio announcer who has been calling their games for the past 19 years, and Michael Kay (who was Sterling's radio partner from 1992-2001), who is now the team's television announcer.

The ceremony began with the two men announcing the original lineup that played on the first opening day at the stadium, April 18, 1923, with men dressed in the old uniforms from that era running out onto the field as if they were the original team.

After all, the ghosts that have helped the Yankees win 26 world championships had to be represented.

Then the announcers began going through each position on the team - first base, second base, third base, right field, center field, left field, catcher and pitcher - while images from each era of the stadium were projected on the big screen...from old black-and-white scratchy films of the Babe hitting a home run, to faded films of Mickey Mantle; old videos of the teams of the 70's, and the more recent videos of the great Yankee teams of the 1990's.

After each highlight film, the still living players for that position were introduced one by one, and they ran out to take their place on the field where so many great players have played.

Players that took the field ranged from old-timers like Bobby Richardson, Don Larsen and Whitey Ford, to players from the great team of the 70's, such as Graig Nettles, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry, Goose Gossage and Willie Randolph, to the heroes of the Series-winning teams of the 90's - Scott Brosius, Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, David Wells and David Cone (both of whom, like Larsen, pitched perfect games in the Stadium) and Joe Girardi, who is now the club's manager.

In some cases, the widow or family of those who are no longer with us represented the missing players.

Mickey Mantle's son, Bobby Murcer's family, Roger Maris's son, Elston Howard's daughter, Catfish Hunter's widow, Thurmond Munson's son...all took the field dressed in Yankee pinstripes bearing the players' numbers.

By the time they got to Phil Rizzuto's widow Cora, I have to say there wasn't a dry eye in the house - at least not in our house.

And of course, Yogi Berra was there, and trotted out to take his place on this field where he played, coached and managed.

And at the very end, Jorge Posada, the current catcher who has been sidelined by an injury, came out to catch the ceremonial first pitch - thrown by none other than the daughter of Babe Ruth, Julia Ruth Stevens, who must now be about 90 years old.

I hadn't been to Yankee Stadium in person very much. My history with the Yankees is somewhat complex, since my mother, who hails from Massachusetts, brought me up as a Boston Red Sox fan. Throughout my childhood through the mid-1980's I generally rooted for the Red Sox. But of course, living in New Jersey, I was constantly exposed to the Yankees. I remember when I was very young, sitting at the breakfast table eating my cereal and seeing Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle on the Wheaties box in front of me.

In 1971, I went to Yankee Stadium for the first time, with a high-school friend whose father had access to box seats. This was the old Yankee Stadium, before the mid-1970's renovation that made the huge field smaller and ripped off the famous facade that encircled the inside of the stadium. Our seats were right above first base and I remember the Yankees lost to the Kansas City Royals, 11-7.

During the 1970's I had a boyfriend who was a huge Yankees fan, and I grew quite attached to the Yankees of that time. We spent a lot of time watching baseball, as we didn't have much money to go out!

This was the era of Reggie Jackson, when the Yankees won the World Series in 1977 and 1978. 1978 was the year of the famous comeback, when they chased the hapless Red Sox, who were up by 14-1/2 games on July 14, until it all came down to one last sudden-death playoff game on the last day of the season at Fenway Park. The Yankees' Bucky Dent hit a 3-run homer to put the Yankees ahead, and the rest, as they say, is history. Although I felt bad for the Red Sox, I had no problem rooting for the Yankees in the playoffs and the World Series - which they won against the Dodgers.

I went through a long dry spell where I didn't really pay that much attention to baseball, but kind of reverted to being a Red Sox fan - very cautiously. By then I had met DH and we were married in 1985, so we'd been too busy to pay much attention to the game.

However, DH had always been a Yankees fan, and when they started to do well again in the mid-1990's, we started watching the games faithfully, and I got to know a whole new team of Yankees.

In 1996 I'll never forget the tension in the 5th game of the World Series, when pitcher Andy Pettitte pitched the game of his young life, and was taken out in the 8th inning with the score still 1-0, Yankees vs. the Braves. Pettitte was sitting in the dugout with a towel over his head, afraid to watch, while John Wetteland closed out the game, preserving the win.

The second time I was in Yankees Stadium was with DH during that era, when we watched them lose a game (I am now forgetting who it was against) but did get to see some of our heroes in person, including Paul O'Neill, who was playing far beneath us in his usual outfield position. From where we were sitting, he looked like an ant.

I attended another game as part of a corporate outing a couple of years ago (our boss took our whole group there on a sunny summer afternoon), and as I recall they lost that time too.

This summer DH and I made sure to go to one last game at Yankee Stadium. We chose August 27, when they played the Red Sox - quite appropriate, since they played the Red Sox on that first opening day in April 1923. We saw Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera (who didn't pitch but was in the bullpen at one point) and all the rest of the current team. It was a night game, and yes - they lost again, 11-3. I guess I'm just a jinx.

The last game in Yankee Stadium is still being played as I write this. They are playing the Baltimore Orioles, another old American League team. (I'm glad they're not playing one of those newfangled teams like the Diamondbacks or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.) The score is tied, 3 to 3, and Andy Pettitte is pitching. Somehow that seems appropriate.

In between plays the announcers are chatting with Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, who are in the broadcasting booth. And they're showing films of great moments in Yankee Stadium during breaks. There is truly the sense of history being made.

Next year the Yankees will still be playing in the Bronx. It's not that far from the old Yankee Stadium to the new one rising next door.

But will the ghosts travel that far? Only time will tell.

Let's Send Fruit Baskets

I haven't been around much this week as I took a few days off to spend time with one of my oldest friends, "L," and her 17-year-old daughter ("S"), who were visiting from Massachusetts.

L and I met in our freshman year of college in the chemistry lab. We were both biology majors at the time and of course chemistry was one of our required subjects. After a few days next to each other in the chem lab mixing up smelly chemicals and causing minor explosions and fires in our immediate area, we were fast friends, and have remained so ever since.
We both hung around with different crowds during college - L started out as a commuter, while I was in the dorm, so we had different groups of friends. Later she did move on campus but was never in the same dorm as I was. But in between all of the craziness we always met up - either in the dining hall, or the cafeteria at the school, or in one of our rooms - and talked about everything under the sun and commiserated about our various problems and traumas.

Thanks to L, I actually managed to get to one Boston Red Sox game, visited the Arnold Arboretum, and went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, none of which I would have gotten around to doing without her influence.
The other friends I hung around with at the time were more apt to drag me out to a bar than to a museum.

Funny thing is, I am not in touch with any of those friends, but L and I have remained close ever since.

Through the years we visited with each other's families, and had rendez-vous in various locations, ranging from Cape Cod to New Jersey. When I met DH and was deep in relationship angst, her mom was the one who said "hold on to him, he's a good one," and I listened.

When L met her husband, they visited us before they were even married and we all got along as if we'd known each other forever. And once they had their daughters, we were part of their lives as well.

Now we're still sharing the joys and commiserating over the hard parts of life - we both have aging parents and are facing the daily challenges that that entails. But through it all we have had each other and that is what is great about a friendship like this. No matter how long it's been between visits, the moment we are together it is as if no time has passed.

So it was great to spend a few days of quality time with L and her older daughter S, as so often our get-togethers have been too brief or full of activities without enough time to really talk.

S is a charming, witty girl who really is fun to be with. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging around with a 17-year-old and understanding her perspective on things. Do you realize she is so young she only barely remembers cassette tapes? And she's never known a world without cell phones? And did you know, if you're 17 and are still in school, you can actually explain how a simultaneous equation is solved in Algebra? (This is something I have never mastered). She also seems to have inherited both of her parents' sense of humor.

We even had time to sit out on our deck and talk about yours and my favorite topic, politics. L has way too many things on her plate to get that involved in the whole subject as a rule, but we did talk about the Iraq war.

Her view was that although we never should have gone there in the first place, she doesn't see how on earth we can extricate ourselves without leaving it in such a huge, dangerous mess that it can never be fixed.

I agreed, and then S chimed in with her opinion and it was great. Her solution to the mess? Send fruit baskets!

"You know how when you've done something, and you're really, really sorry about it? And you want to apologize? You send a fruit basket! Maybe we should just ship all of the Iraquis fruit baskets! Then they'd have something to eat and wouldn't hate us so much!"

Naturally she was kidding.

But you know what? There are probably worse ideas out there!

Speaking of ideas, I wonder whether it's a good or bad idea that Obama has settled on an agreement with Hillary Clinton to have her name placed in nomination at the Democratic convention? As a result, delegates will be declaring themselves for Hillary Clinton during the roll call. Of course, when Hillary herself votes she will then declare her support for Obama and ask her delegates to support him.

But this might backfire and make it look as if the party is divided. I am also more than a little concerned about having both Hillary AND Bill speaking at the convention, given Bill's lukewarm (or perhaps I should say, rather chilly) support for Obama.

I understand that Obama wanted to come to an agreement with Clinton's supporters before the convention to soothe their feelings and make them feel validated.

But maybe it would be better to just send them fruit baskets.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A friend sent me this link and I thought many of you would enjoy it, if you grew up in the Sixties, as I did. While we may not agree with all of the commentary (was it really better when professional women gave up careers to raise their kids? We may argue this one and a few other points), I think everyone will enjoy the music and the reminders of old TV shows, movies, actors and actresses, cars, and ads. Enjoy!
Take Me Back to the Sixties.