P.S. She Got the Job

 Last week while sitting on my back deck soaking up the sun and reading about the World of Tomorrow (as envisioned in 1962), I got a call from the very same people who had -- somehow, foolishly -- passed on hiring me back in January. Thanks to Lexi's excellent interview coaching, I had written them a follow-up e-mail thanking them for meeting with me, wishing them well with the fabulous person they must have hired, and expressing the desire to work with them in some capacity in the future, should the opportunity arise. Lo and behold! Four months later, the fine folks at the Wing Luke Asian Museum were wondering if I'd be willing to come in and talk about another position on their exhibit team.

Would I? Is some kind of trick question?

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed the various contract projects I've been working on, or working on getting going -- a centennial history of Seward Park, a series of essays about activism in the Rainier Valley, hands-on history curriculum about the Seattle World's Fair,  a dockside display for the steamship Virginia V, a mosaic depicting the history of Rainier Vista. I've been able to make my own hours, for the most part -- which means I can drop everything to go skating in the middle of the day on those rare occasions when the sun is shining and the pavement's dry. And I've got myself on a nice regular rotation through the neighborhood's various laptop cafes.

And yet, despite the perks, the freelance life has begun to wear on me. Somehow all these little contracts don't seem to add up to as much money as I want them to, especially when you factor in the time it takes to line them up and push them along -- most of which happens before there's any guarantee I'll ever see a dime. I never feel like I'm off the clock, either: there's always something I should be doing. Unfinished projects hang over me constantly, with paychecks dangling out there on the horizon only when they're all wrapped up. This has made it hard to carve out chunks of focused time for writing, or art, or even mowing the lawn.

So when the call came, I didn't make much effort to play hard to get. "Sure!" I blurted out. "When's good?"

Thus it came to pass that yesterday morning I boarded the light rail and headed downtown once again, armed with good wishes, strong coffee, and the Cadillac of bras. (I was able to forgo the lipstick this time; they'd said this was "just a casual conversation to talk about the job and get to know each other better.")

I arrived five minutes early. After emerging triumphant from a rematch with the bathroom faucet, I wandered into the gift shop, where I noticed, high up on a back wall, a pink and blue butterfly kite. I took this as a good sign: I had bought a kite exactly like it in Beijing in the summer of 1987, right before I went to college. I remember taking it to Tiananmen Square for a test flight -- carefully unfolding the wings from the flat box and figuring out how they attached to the body, the way the wind made its round yellow eyes spin and whir, the tourists who kept stopping to snap my picture. The kite hung on our kitchen wall for years and years, until the day I took it down and tried to fly it, and the ancient painted paper just shredded in the wind. I tried to be philosophical about it, but I was devastated. Dear, thoughtful Aly bought me a similar kite when she went to China a couple years later -- it was still hanging in the kitchen at the other house.

This one was exactly like the one I'd lost. I hesitated briefly and then -- just as my interviewers came down the stairs to greet me -- told the woman behind the counter I wanted to buy it. "I've got a meeting here right now, though. Can you box it up for me, and I'll pay for it when I'm done?" She agreed.

The meeting went great. The job was remarkably close to the original Dream Job, with the added bonus of getting to manage a teen arts program. As before, the job description lined up neatly with my  education and experience, my interests and abilities and passions -- my calling, you might say. Strange, random skills, acquired over years of oddball jobs and wacky projects, suddenly made me a valuable commodity. "Do you really know how to make fake trees?!" Why, yes I do! (Thank you, Mark Gleason, for teaching me this.) "Would you be comfortable taking three high school students into a gallery and getting them to paint the walls?" Totally. "Can you help us catch up on oral history transcriptions for the Vietnamese refugee project?" No problem. Before long they were asking me what kind of food I would be most likely to bring to the staff potlucks -- and ooohing delightedly when I said, "Pie."

I arrived back at the museum gift shop with a huge smile on my face, and a June first start date. My butterfly kite was waiting for me -- but instead of disassembling it so it would fit in its nice flat box, the lady behind the counter had nestled it, intact, in an enormous box full packing paper. "I wasn't sure how to take it apart," she confessed. "Well," I said,  "I can help you there." I showed her how the bamboo wing struts slipped out of the hidden slots on the thorax frame, how the little metal rings slid off the delicate joints so the wings could fold in half. Delighted, she gave me a discount.

I put the boxed-up kite in my backpack, and floated home. A full-time job is going to be a huge challenge, I know -- starting with getting all those piddly little projects done by the end of the month. But I am so ready for this new adventure. And so grateful for the weird, winding road that got me here.