Two reasons I got my promotion at Christmastime: The first person they had in mind for what became my new job turned them down. And another person they liked – already here in Louisville, somewhat by chance – seemed like a better fit for my old job: she had done lots of evaluation research and she had worked before with congregations (Jewish congregations – she’s a convert to reconstructionist Judaism). Also a New Yorker, it turns out we’d nearly crossed paths in the past – we’d both worked in research for the New York City Board of Education at one point or another.
Pictured above is my relatively new colleague and her adopted Mongolian son, on a good day, two weeks ago: his graduation from kindergarten. But it’s been a rough couple of months otherwise for them. My colleague brought both of her parents to Louisville, where her father has Alzheimer’s. They lived in different nursing homes, until her mother died two months ago(her mother’s ashes were eventually scattered somewhere in metro NYC). Then just a week and a half ago my colleague and her son woke up to find a man they didn’t know lying in their bed. They promptly fled and called the police, but my colleague fears that the police beat up the man – apparently zonked out on drugs – supposedly on her account. Monday she’s being pushed into court where she may face some difficult decisions about how to react to questions.
Then last week my colleague fed her son by mistake some of her own medication. When her son told her he was feeling weird, she figure out what had happened and – even though he turned out to be OK – she got the firefighters and poison control to come – and – after leaving the door unlocked which let the intruder in and making the medication mistake – half expected children’s services to show up.
Monday will be a stressful day for both of us. Not only may the court appearance put her in an awkward situation with the police but it may also make her late for an important meeting in which she and I are supposed to report on findings of a six-month evaluation research project in which we were helping evaluate the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a whole, including the six national agencies. The project was partly the work of the now PC(USA) stated clerk and me – since it follows the pattern of agency and committee review evaluation research that we’ve been helping lead for several years. My colleague ostensibly took over a couple of months ago. She’s done things differently from the way I would have, but – especially with everything that’s gone on – I’ve ended up being more involved in the end. We ended up deciding to tag team where I would cover the research strategy, she would cover the findings that we had already developed tables, and I would cover some additional tables I came up with late last week. Neither of us know this material as well as we might – since I quit focusing on this project after the “handoff” two months ago, and my colleague hasn’t entirely gotten her head around it. Even though my colleague is much more experienced with research than I am, I turns out familiarity with the PC(USA) isn’t easy to turn on overnight and is a non-trivial part of our job. My familiarity with PC(USA) even before I started the job five years and two weeks ago also helped a little. This is actually a relatively sweeping project – we’re helping people evaluate the denomination as a whole – we’ll see what happens – because now my colleague may get stuck in court and not make it. We’re going to try to start late. But I may have to go on without her. We’ll see if my colleague’s luck improves and how the meeting goes
P.S. My colleague is one of the few people I’ve met in Louisville who unambiguously wishes she were somewhere else. My colleague and her son just barely got out of town a week and a half ago as we were finishing most of the review materials to go back to New York City, where she’d liked to be, for a gay wedding of friends of hers. Probably another high point in the midst of this difficult period.
-- Perry
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