Just a few thoughts on what has me in the frame of mind to withdraw from folks rather than to reach out and embrace them in this season of love and joy:
A lawyer who has taken a full month to answer two simple questions, regardless of the fact that this has already dragged on for two and a half years.
A customer who hasn’t been to the shop but once in eighteen years expecting me to offer credit when he tells me he has no money to have something framed.
Another customer who has had three pieces sitting here for three years–in fact denying that she did when I’ve called her–finally coming in with her husband to pickup and pay. Her excuse: "I don’t like to part with money."
Daily phone calls from some solicitor for web-building from India.
A telephone solicitor opening with: "I just want to doublecheck your listing here as correct for the Internet Yellow Pages before I send out the invoice." I told him what he got wrong was that I had incurred any charges.
An estate attorney who for the very first time asked me to approve a charge of $1750 for a septic inspection without telling me that they’d gotten an estimate to hook in a sewer line for $32,000 to a single house. The septic system, by the way, has never been proven to have failed, and it’s impossible to check it now because the water line’s been disconnected.
Finding out the stone in your high school ring is a fake. Finding out the aquamarine in a childhood ring your parents gave you is a fake (unbeknownst to them, I’m sure).
A jeweler telling me that to fix a broken prong on a ring, I’d have to buy a new emerald at a cost of anywhere from $100 to $300 because they’d likely break the stone when they remove it to fix the prong.
Now these are little things, I grant you. Especially in view of what I’ve lost the years before: three much-loved parents, two dear, dear friends, the relationship of my sister, the spouse being without a job for nine months. But as I lose the good things, it’s become very, very hard to fill the void they leave. I’m content with what I have and don’t need more; I’d just like to hang onto the peace to last me through a comfortable lifetime.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology