Taking Care 1 (i)

In early 2004, my life - which had then been flying on one engine for some time - finally came crashing to earth.  I was almost 45.  My marriage was breaking down, I was in a job I hated, and my father was dying.  To top it off, my only way of dealing with it all was to drink.  Never having drunk much at all in my life up until then, I was making up for lost time. 

       It was my father's death (just five days before my birthday) that was the final  part of the plunge.  I went sick from work on the night he died, and over the ensuing weekend my wife and I agreed to a divorce.  When I look back on it now, I find it difficult to imagine a bleaker time, or even how I got through it.  That peculiar conjunction of major life events, all coming at once.  So there I was, grieving, divorcing, drinking to cope... and now having to find somewhere else to live.  And, I decided, somewhere else to work.  I'd had enough of being a desk jockey, as I had been for five years in the local county court.  It was the most recent in a long line of such jobs, with little satisfaction and no future.

       One day, on a whim, I went into the local Job Centre to see what they had.  It was the usual collection of sales jobs, clerical jobs, care jobs.  Things I had already done, things I didn't want to do, things I wasn't qualified for.  I'd given up and was heading for the door when an ad on the Today's Vacancies' board caught my eye:

SKILLS TRAINER

Person required to work at a day centre for adults

with learning disabilities, teaching basic living skills,

arts and crafts, cookery, reading, computers, etc.

Must hold current, clean driving licence as

position involves driving a company vehicle.

Subject to enhanced CRB check.

No experience necessary as

full training given.

40 hours per week

9-5 Mon to Fri

       I stopped and read it a few times.  I certainly had no experience in care roles, and had never been interested because of what I thought they involved: long hours, alternating shift patterns, night work - all things that I knew I'd struggle with.  On the other side of it, I liked helping people - especially those less fortunate than myself: the homeless, drug addicts, refugees, the bullied, the outcast. I hated the way such people would often be judged and dismissed by society at large.  Everyone has a story to tell.  Everyone handles things in a different way.  Some succeed, whereas others - through any number of reasons, not just the personal - don't.  Some can overcome.  Others buckle under the weight.  I'd always believed it isn't all simply down to the binaries of strength or weakness, rectitude or turpitude, plain old 'good' and 'evil.  'Failure' in life (a subjective term in itself) was always about more that bad decision-making, squandering, yielding to temptations or addictions. There are huge numbers of variables in every case, just as each human being is different in countless ways. 

       I'd also had experiences at the hands of bullies, shysters and narcissists.  People who weren't prepared to listen, empathise, try to understand a point of view.  So I knew about that 'human' factor.  With that approach, I'd always liked being there for people, when I could and if I was able.  And far from wishing to paint myself as some paragon of humanity, I knew too that I was prone to making mistakes, doing things wrong, being judgmental in other ways.  I was human, in other words.

       So there was that.  And then there was the fact of working with people who were disadvantaged from the very first day they drew breath: the learning disabled.  The ones who wouldn't have the chance of the education that most of us took for granted, followed by things like a career, family life, learning to drive, travelling, going out whenever they liked, dating, making their mark in the world - even being able to feed themselves or go to the toilet without someone else to help.  That would all bring new challenges to me.  Was I up to those, given where I was in life at that time?  Perhaps, being at my own personal low point, it was a good place to start building my life back up again.

       Apart from anything else, I thought - what else did I have to lose?

       I went over to one of the young advisors, gave him the job code, then sat and waited while he looked it up on his computer.

       "Ah, yes," he said.  "It's a home just up the hill.  I see the people from there sometimes around the town with their carers."

       He then did what I suppose he thought was a funny impression of a learning-disabled person, twisting his face up and groaning like a drunk.  It reminded me of the kinds of things I'd had directed at me at school.  I didn't laugh, so he didn't carry on.  He read out what it said on his screen.

       "No experience necessary, as it says.  Applicants will be expected to train in all aspects of care work as part of the role.  Minimum wage only.  Two references required as well as the Criminal Records Bureau check, which the company will pay for."

       I did a quick figure up in my head.  Minimum wage, forty hours.  A lot less than I was getting now, for more hours - and I'd be back on a single income.  But I'd found a cheap studio flat in the town which included all bills in the rent, so that kept things simple.  It would be enough.  If nothing else, it would tide me over until everything was settled.  I took an application form, sat and filled it in, then took the address so that I could drop it off.  I didn't want to waste any time with it.

       That afternoon, I had a phone call from the manager at the home, inviting me for interview the following morning.

(continued)  https://www.abctales.com/story/harryc/taking-care-1-ii

Image credit: mine