Okay, feeling a bit better today. I did what needed to be done and now we await the next step into the future. In the end I did it alone, like I knew I would have to do. But not without the support of a couple of goddesses. First, my cousin the goddess Jan, who offered to be with me when I made the calls I was so terrified to make and even go over and make inquiries herself. I did the call alone but she sat and talked to The Commander while I dialed in to a two-hour team meeting at my office. She even facilitated a little sewing prodject for The Comm by dredging a needle and thread out of her purse. And then we had lunch and after that, the goddess Alice the social worker caught up with me (I had asked to meet with a social worker today) and gave me the phone numbers I needed, even though I could’ve easily looked them up myself. (It’s all a long, complicated, ultimately anti-climactic story and I won’t bore you with the details.)

Go ask Alice… I think she’ll know… I asked Alice, “what do we do if there’s a wait list?” Well, we can do this or that or the other thing, in other words, there are options. She high-fived me, told me I was doing a good job (even though I don’t think I am and she probably doesn’t either…) and then I headed down to my “office” in the deserted solarium to make the dreaded call. It turned out that there *is* a wait list. I got us on it directly via a very friendly helpful person (why was I afraid to call?) who even knew my family name…

Once upon a time, I couldn’t get *away* from my family name as hard as I tried. My uncle (aka the Goddess Jan’s dad) was a well-known doctor and my dad and granddaddy were well-known bankers around this little city (old-skool small-town bankers, not those derned Wall Street robber-barons). During the baby boom years, the school district built a new school and named it after my grandfather. The Commander was always telling me something like, “remember who you are and act accordingly!” Well, who *was* I exactly? I don’t wanna get off on this tangent tonight except that I often felt saddled with a family name that I could not live up to. I wanted to run around like a wild Indian. These days The Commander is the only person in Siberia with my family name and she obtained it via marriage. Oftentimes nobody recognizes it at all. Which is okay with me! But then again, I get this warm feeling when someone does recognize our name and speaks warmly of those who now reside on the other side.

I have my fingers crossed that my call today will ultimately lead us to our next reality in the not-too-distant future. It won’t happen because the receptionist recognized my family name. In the rather distant past, occasionally things did happen because of that. Unfortunately, the opposite could also happen. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen any more. These days, the name means nothing. If it did, that horrible ER doc wouldn’t have bounced The Commander out even once. We are on a wait list and we will wait it out.

What I *am* getting a kick out of is that, whenever I leave my phone number with someone, I always add, “If you happen to get my voice mail, be aware that the message says, ‘This is Kayak Woman’s phone.’ Just so you aren’t wondering who in the heck’s phone you have reached.” It does make people at least stop and look at me in a different way, like I’m not just some old nonamoose’s obnoxious daughter from The Planet Ann Arbor, land of over-educated entitled people.

Finnelson? That’s not the family name. Not exactly. Just one of several inaccurate pronunciations we frequently encounter. When I was a little kid, we lived in a shabby little bungalow down on Superior Street. One day a kid from an even shabbier house up the street somewhere came to play with my little brother. When The Commander let him in the front door, he surveyed the tiny living room with the threadbare rug and the cat-scratched davenport and proclaimed, “Finnelsons is rich!” The Comm *still* tells that story! 🙂

Good night. Wish us luck,
Kayak Woman

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