Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

On particularly difficult days I wear my grandmother's diamond ring.

I've had a lot of hard days lately. Fridays are the worst - that's the day I reserve for crying on my way home from work.

I wear her ring to remind me that my troubles aren't that big. She was here for 111 years and saw two World Wars. She lived through the Great Depression as a doctor's wife. When patients couldn't pay cash for care, they paid with live-stock and crops instead. She kept a pot of hot stew on the stove for the hungry people that routinely appeared at the back door. She watched her oldest daughter die of cancer leaving her two young granddaughters behind. She lost her husband of 50 years yet survived another 25 years with grace and good humor.

When I start to feel sorry for myself, I instead think of my granny.

When I wrote last year about coping with things out of our control - Home de Fence, we were waiting for my husband's job to be eliminated, and it was. He spent many subsequent months working really hard to find a new job, but middle aged white men who once had good salaries are no longer desirable in a dying industry. On the advice of a career coach, we started to looking into business ownership. We looked at many franchise opportunities, did our research, asked lots of questions and decided that kind of risk was not for us. Having to wait 6-18 months to turn a profit was too frightening to consider. We began to look at existing businesses and finally settled on one, and then another. That's right, we bought two business and felt that between us, we could run them both. We used our retirement funds, mortgaged our house, got an SBA loan and borrowed against my inheritance to make it happen. We were happy, but anxious. We were confident that we could face any setback and figure out a solution.

What I didn't figure was that that people will look you in the face and lie.

While I have given the impression in the past that I am about as cynical as they come, I also believe that

people are basically good. I understand that bad decisions are made out of desperation and fear. Sometimes you find yourself backed into a corner and you do things that you never dreamed. With that in mind, we once code named a software product BMO – short for Black Market Oranges. We lived near the orange groves and would often see people selling bags of oranges, freshly picked, in order to feed their families. While I disapproved of the illegal behavior, I declared that I would do it too, if it meant the difference between feeding my family or not.

I won't go into specifics but I am heartsick at how bad things are. Our financial stability, our employees lives, our children's future and two different business are at risk. If we fail, we lose our home.  My son says I look worried all the time. I can't deny it, I am. I've cut our food budget to the bone. I cancelled my gym membership (that was actually a relief). I cancelled my Ancestry.com membership (I was too busy to use it anyways.) I cut our car insurance down to the highest deductibles. I tried for cheaper health insurance, but no-one else will have us. No vacations or trips (not even my oldest friend's wedding). Our last meal out was on a credit card for our son's birthday. I stretch grocery shopping out to 8 or 9 days instead of weekly. No more dog grooming and car maintenance is being deferrred. I never fill the gas tank anymore, just $20 at a time. No dry cleaning, no nail appointments. I'm ready to drain the pool to save on water. I used my birthday check from the in-laws to pay for the car's smog check. (Are you tired of my whining yet? I am.)

I spend my evenings working on marketing materials, researching the industry(s), writing emails and updating websites. I work (we both work) 7 days a week. I knew it would be hard, but I naively thought it would be a joyous hard. I thought it would be satisfying hard. I never thought it would be a “I'm working as hard as I can” and still losing money kind of hard. It's scary hard.

I get little glimmers of hope. New contacts and contracts. Encouraging inquiries. Situations that demand patience and delicacy. When I think all hope is lost, something happy happens.

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Our oldest daughter and her husband are expecting a baby girl. I'm gonna be a grandmother. How wonderful is that? This gives me added motivation. I want to help out with their childcare, at least two to three days a week. I can't do that if I'm working 7 days a week. If I'm going to be available by January, then I need to work even harder to get things stable.

Our middle daughter, after 5 years of auditioning, finally got her dream job at Disneyland. How wonderful is that? She's been down a tough road but her perseverance has finally paid off. (Pick yourself up, dust yourself off . . .)  I learn things from watching her - how to work a crowd, how to charm people, how to keep trying when everyone else would have given up.  After five years of disappointments she is wearing the biggest smile.  

I have a wonderful husband that has managed not to blame me for poor sales, even though I blame myself. I am blessed to have him.

Our son is 15 now. He still hugs me. Sometimes.

Our challenges have me thinking about God a lot. On the surface, I seem like an atheist. Down further, I'm more agnostic – cause I'm not really sure if there is a god. Deep down, I wish I could take comfort in my Christian upbringing. But I don't.

It would be really tempting to throw my hands up and put it all in God's hands. I see people do it all the time and I'm jealous. But it wouldn't solve anything for me and it wouldn't be sincere. It wouldn't make phone calls, or write letters. It wouldn't finish a website or sign contracts.

I think of that old joke about the guy on the roof in the flood. He drowns despite God sending two boats and a helicopter. Maybe God will send me a big contract. But I honestly don't think God would help me ONLY if I went to church and believed. If god exists, then god knows how hard I'm trying and will help us despite my doubt.

I see other people trying hard - trying really hard. Good people who are deeply religious. And really awful things happen to them. Health problems, financial problems. I drive around and see other small businesses that have closed. People who had great ideas and big dreams. People who worked really hard. People who failed despite the best of intentions.

I'm afraid.

And I have no real confidence that God in the traditional sense will help us.

Yet . . . . I have my grandmother's ring. I wear that ring like someone wears a cross around their neck and I take confidence in that ring. 

 But it's not the ring and it's not the diamond. It's grandma. 

She survived so much and so can I. I imagine her up in “heaven” and looking down on me with love, and guiding my decisions. I think about what she would do, what she would advise. I think about her beautiful comforting smile and her gentle encouragement and her implicit belief in my abilities. With my belief in her, I can do anything.

If that's not God, I don't know what is.