shawn's heart

Today I was doing my daily meditation.  I usually do it in the morning when the kids are in school, but I had gotten a late start and therefore was in the middle of sitting in silence when Shawn came home from school at three o'clock.  He opened the door and came into my room quietly, slipped a single pear slice into my opened hand, patted me on the head, kissed my cheek, and tiptoed out of the room. He has never done this before.

Earlier today I found my old resume, or Curriculum Vitae (CV) as I was told to create (more intellectual). The CV was on paper -- creme colored, thicker than the typical piece, with a little texture.  Even back then I was recycling, because the CV was actually on the back of an old handwritten presentation I used to do about art and dissociative identity disorder, research I did in graduate school many years ago. I looked the CV over, pleased to have found it, as I have been thinking a lot about a question that used to be of utmost importance to me in my younger years and is only recently coming back to visit me...

What am I going to do when I grow up?

I thought today about my past professional work experience, how I left a prestigious full-time art therapy job in Washington DC behind to start a new life in California; I was young, energetic, full of hope at the age of twenty-six.  How I found odd jobs at that juncture in my life, and did many presentations for free in California, trying to get my foot in the door of something new.  How the best I came up with was a job as a part time art therapist/part time psych tech in a psychiatric hospital, after teaching one course at a small local university.  This and teaching gymnastics and art classes kept me busy until I welcomed my first child into the world.

I thought about how inspiring it was a few months ago for me to see my brother do a presentation of his work. This is the brother who is a physician that does research, teaches medical students, and runs an ICU all with finesse and class and heart.  This is the brother who due to his own conviction has been to Haiti several times to help save lives of people traumatized by the 2010 earthquake, because he was asked.  This is the brother who saved the life of a little girl with a lung infection when doctors in Haiti could not help her.  He found two doctors in Chicago willing to bring their own equipment to do the risky surgery after several Haitian doctors had failed, and a person in the community was so touched by the story that he paid for all of their flights.

As I thought about my CV, a bit yellowed with age and untouched for so long, I asked myself what can I add to this?  What work have I done in the last twenty years while raising my kids?  I did help edit a book for a couple of years.  It has yet to be published.  It awaits my attention, and will take time.  But this is time I do not have right now.  I volunteer as a treasurer for a local humanitarian group.  Can I put that on my CV?  And I did help Gary and the girls with music promotion, and still do.  Do I put this on my resume to fill up the space for the last twenty years, I wondered?

But when Shawn came to me and slipped that pear slice in my hand, that little quiet gesture, I realized that I have done work that doesn't go on a resume, or a CV, but nonetheless is incredibly valuable.  In that moment I realized I have been doing a good job at my job.  And the rest will unfold as it is meant to.