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DREAM JOB

I walked into Helen’s office thisto fire me It isn’t really my boss’s job to fire e, the raduated fro by a thread

Three steps inside the cluttered rooazines, ours and our coars, and strawberry jam on whole-wheat toast—turns into a stone inside my stomach

Without even looking up fronals to the chair across hers

“Rachel, sit down”

I sit silently, a thousand things leaping to ue: I can do better; I can do more; let me do more, two articles a week rather than one Even: I ork for free until we can find our feet

I can’t afford to work for free I have rent, I’e loan, and I have a mother I love with a health condition and no insurance But I also love o I have never wanted to be anything else other than what I am now, at this moment, as my fate rests in her hands

So it’s with dread and an i sense of loss that I sit here and wait for Helen to finally lower that folder and look at me And I wonder, as our eyes meet, if the next story I have to tell inme

I am in love with stories How they shape our lives How they mark people who don’t even know us How they can impact us even when an event didn’t exactly occur in our own lives

The first things I ever fell in love ere the words randot what I didn’t have in real life—a dad I would collect theroups, memorize the stories they formed Where he’d taken my mother on their first date (a Japanese restaurant), if his laugh was funny (it was), what his favorite beverage was (Dr Pepper) I grew up in love with stories and with all the facts and details that enabled me to shape, in my mind, memories of my father that have been with me for life

My aunts said I was drea when I said I wanted words to be a career, butPicasso’s ot into the areneral If he became a monk, he’d be the pope Instead he was a painter and became Picasso That’s exactly how I feel about you So do, Rachel, what you love”

“I would do itwhat you love too,” I always replied, miserable for her

“What I love is taking care of you,” she always came back with She’s a lovely painter but nobody else thinks so but allery that went bankrupt months after its inception So my mother has a normal job, and the Picasso in her has quieted

But she’s sacrificed so ive me an education and ers, I didn’t have encouragement from a lot of my teachers None of the, so I ran with the only thing I could: the sole motivation of my mother and her belief in me