PW, unedited

Speaking of tantrums I nearly threw one myself on Tuesday. Nearly? Maybe it was fully thrown--what constitutes a tantrum in an adult? As previously mentioned, I am not much of a yeller or a express-your-anger-in-a-healthy-external-way-er. I get pissed and I go quiet. That's what happened on Tuesday when I was home all day with the kids.

I won't go into all the reasons as they're myriad and nothing special. Typical toddler stuff driving me nuts. It was when nap time was a bust and no one but one was sleeping and I ended up having to clean up shit from the floor for the hundredth time. Hundredth is an exaggeration. Fifteenth? Let me just say that cleaning human feces that has been deposited all throughout a room with deliberation and artistic concentration takes it's toll and adds up exponentially so that each time feels like ten times. I was pissed.

I've gotten pissed about it before and I've yelled. I've held the small child by the shoulders and looked said child in the face, sternly and grimly, telling my beloved young person that pooping on the floor is not.ok.

Ok, the child says.

And then it happens again. Not always but often enough. It happened on Tuesday and it was the last straw. I gave up on the naps and stomped my way back to my bedroom where I furiously folded clothes and cleaned up my perpetually-messy space, taking deep breaths and blowing them out. Stomping around. Trying not to think that I'm the cause of all the wild behavior and tantrums--that it's not because I went back to work that they're acting this way. Even though I think that's part of it.

A child came back. Not the pooper. Attempted to engage me. And I responded "I need you to leave me alone please. I am mad and I need some quiet time."

This was respected.

The pooper eventually came back and I said something similar. That child left as well.

It took me thirty minutes of angry clean-up before I felt decent enough to go back out. I felt shy and very exposed to have gotten so mad with Phyllis here. Phyllis being here was the only reason I could escape to my room to cool off, for which I was grateful, but which also made me feel so embarrassed. I try to hide the less than perfect parts of me. Of course no one who knows me thinks I'm perfect. . .but that doesn't stop me from trying. What is starting to stop me from trying is the slow, drip drip of acknowledgement that I am hurting myself with this behavior. With this fear of making mistakes, of getting mad, of not having it all together. I especially don't like to show this stuff to someone I admire so much. To Phyllis.

Who is Phyllis? I've thought about writing about her so many times, though never in the same essay as one that starts with poop on the floor. Ack. The incongruity of those two things is a good place to start in explaining this woman who means so much to me. To my family.

Phyllis was my boss. Not just my boss, my big boss. The biggest. The CEO of the company I recently started working for again. Not just the CEO but the one who started the organization and ran it for twenty years or so. Not just the one who started the organization but the one who made it into the leader in the industry for years and years. A legend. I do not say that lightly.

In the days when I was hired she did the second interview for anyone being considered for hire. Alone. I don't remember being scared, though I'd never had an interview with a CEO before. I was nervous because I had bombed my first interview and because I was sick as a dog, carrying a pint of orange juice with me into her office. Within minutes I was at ease, talking to a woman who was clearly smart as hell and who also clearly got me. She saw me, she knew I was someone to hire and so she hired me.

I was introduced to organ donation by an organization that she created in her own image. There was a deep respect for donors and donor families, a deep respect for how hard the work was and how much the people doing it matter. A love of learning and trying to be better. A commitment to community and team, to talking about all aspects of our process and working together. She bought people gifts for their anniversaries with the company. She threw a going-away party for a colleague going off to Irag. And a coming-back party many months later when he returned. She started each day walking through the office, saying good morning to everyone. It felt really good to work there.

As I took on roles requiring more skill and more responsibility, I saw behind the curtain bit by bit. Saw some of the difficult decisions being made and the challenges being dealt with. I traveled to national meetings and learned that we were among the best in the country at what we did. People wanted to be like us and that had a lot to do with Phyllis. There was instant respect, instant cred, that came with the name of our organization, that followed her throughout the room. I felt proud.

The main thing, the most precious thing, that she gave me in those years was a confidence in myself, in my ability to assess a situation and make a decision, in my ability to take a risk. There were fewer rules back then. From the beginning, I knew I could walk to her office and say to her "Here's the situation. This is what I think we should do and this is why." She didn't always say yes but she usually did. She had my back, had all of our backs, and that inspired me and most others to ask why not, to push beyond perceived boundaries, to do what we could imagine was possible. I will never stop being grateful to her for that because that is in me, deep in my heart and my bones, and it makes me the thinker and problem-solver I am today.

Was she perfect? Of course not but I don't know much about the parts of her that weren't. I'd sit in meetings with her and hold myself up against her, seeing her sitting sphinx-like in a room full of surgeons, keeping her emotions to herself. I want to be like that, I thought. I wore my reactions all over my face, in my voice. I felt too emotional, too reactive.  How did she do that? I still wonder

She retired several years ago and it was a blow.

To be continued....