Fall Equinox: Love Letters

 Happy Fall Equinox!
Time to rebalance.
                           Here we go...

 So...I gave two-weeks notice to the thrift store.

…Not in Frustration but in Completion!
Yay! A blessed release, and timely.

I've always loved fall best, but never looked into ancient traditions around equinox--Catholic practice doesn't incorporate it --but of course pagans do. 

I looked it up. *
Called Mabon, fall equinox invites us...

To Release What No Longer Serves

"Just as trees in autumn release leaves to conserve energy, 
we are allowed to release what drains us."

That'd be my draining workplace alright.

I'd started at the thrift store in February 2018, almost nine years ago.
After a honeymoon period, when I was caught in the spell of Big Boss's storytelling, I started seeing how management undercuts people, doesn't support us--not even with basic supplies (Scotch tape!) we need to do our work, 
much less with good guidance and leadership.

Most good workers leave, if they can, so we never can get a good crew who work well together.
Some of the people who stay--usually because they're trapped for some reason --get promoted to manager positions, given no training, and let loose upon us.

One suffers with such bad anxiety, he told me he can't tolerate change--not a quality you want in a manager. 
He doesn't want to be a manager, but he needs the money.
But now he is one--and, not surpringly, a bad one. 

However... UNTIL RECENTLY, 
there was always so much else good and interesting going on, 
for me, the Learning I was doing outweighed the frustration with poor management.

Then, last week, a young coworker quit. 
He'd gone through the same cycle I and many others had:
being smitten, charmed by Big Boss, thinking he (the worker) would learn and grow under BB's tutelage, and believing that he could help the store and the people there.

But instead, he was consistently undercut by management, dismissed, discouraged... even told by he was  making other workers feel bad by working too hard.
(What the actual fuck???)

Last week this young man came up to me and said, 
"I think management doesn't want the best for us."

I could only agree, and then encourage him to "find a shield, so you can do good work here for yourself."
I even showed him a picture of a kind of shield I envision myself--Bubble Soccer balls!

"I don't think this is working for me," he said.
And he quit the next day.

I congratulated him, and I told other people, 
"If I were thirty years younger, I'd quit too."

And then I thought, that's ridiculous! I don't have to stay where I'm unhappy just because I'm old. It's a big world, there'll be something else. The store only pays me minimum wage, I couldn't do worse.

To Create a Gratitude Altar

I am hugely, hugely grateful for my time at the thrift.
I've never worked somewhere that transformed me so much. 

Looking back, I feel stunned, awed at what a POWERFUL era this has been. In history, not just my personal life, of course--George Floyd, Covid, ICE--
and at the store, the rise of fentanyl, drug dealing and crimes outside our door, including an assassination in the parking lot.

And personally, I have changed--for the better. Which astonishes me.

A tiny example that's actually huge:

I've mentioned that until recently, I've always fretted and fumed about shoplifting. 
Another thing that drove me mad was parents leaving their little kids unattended in the TOYS.
Really little kids, like three years old.

Of course the kids tear the toys up--literally. They tear open the bags of toys I put together,  leave them all over, or take ones away.

Years ago, I yelled at some little kids for making a mess.
They looked shocked, of course, and I immediately regretted it, felt terrible, tried to take it back.
"No, no, it's okay, I'm sorry--let's pick these up..."

After that I tried to change my attitude.
I would remind myself to think:
Look at those cute kids having fun. Isn't that nice?

Because, you know, the kids were often the poor kids of immigrant parents from Latin America.
And these parents--I see this at the food shelf too--acted as if other people love children and will watch out for other people's children!

Insane!

THIS IS AMERICA, I want to tell them. 
We don't take care of one another.
(Under attack, like from a virus or a federal occupation, we might. Temporarily. But it's not our culture, it's really not.
Here are the rules in the US: 
You're on your own, and your kids are not my problem.)

My plan to look kindly on the kids in TOYS worked. 
I gradually started to relax and enjoy the kids playing.
I would sometimes  sigh at the mess but I’d clean up after them pretty happily.

A couple weeks ago, a little boy was sitting on the floor with a big bag holding parts of a Hot Wheels gas station. 
He couldn't open the bag’s zip, so I approached him to help.

He looked up at me, uncertain, and I said,
"Here, I'll open it for you."

[Small regret: I never have learned Spanish. But kids are usually bilingual, pretty quickly.]

I left the kid pulling the parts out. When I went by later, he had left the gas station all set up in a corner. 

I felt a pang of sweetness.

Only that night, as I was falling asleep, did I see what happened:
 I had spontaneously--without making myself--helped a kid make a happy mess:

I HAD BECOME A BETTER PERSON.

Hallelujah. I wasn't sure that was even possible.

My Work Here Is Done.
______________________

To Cook Harvest Foods

Tracy and Chris are in town, and tonight after dinner here--(including spaghetti sauce made with harvest veg from the farmers market)-- we're going to Maura's reception for her calligraphy show.

 I baked my Sicilian grandmother's Monreale biscotti [recipe] for the reception. This is a Harvest of Love and Abundance.

I don't know what I'm going to do in my life next, and that scares and excites me. I do need to earn some money.  I'm waiting to take social security at least a couple years, because I will get the minimum, and it's pretty scanty.  

I don't know. But something good will come along. 

________________
* More on Mabon: 
https://windmoonmagic.substack.com/p/mabon-2026 

As we pause between dark and light, Mabon invites us to...
Release what binds us
Prepare without panic
Create a gratitude altar
Cook harvest foods
And, to carry the light forward.