Day 3/ 30 Days of Gratitude in Action. I Occupy Wall Street….with gratitude?

Occupy Wall Street.  Snapshots in the album of our time, people sitting in cross-legged defiance, CEO’s blithely collecting their bonuses, police officers protecting and serving a political machine with pepper spray, a sense of dark and insidious judgement passed

between groups.  Distrust.  Greed.  Disconnection.  I’m no socialist but I lean towards a dream of redistributing wealth.  I would certainly benefit.

My secret:  I am financially challenged, for many reasons, half of which are my fault.  Banks have become a place of self-deprecating discomfort, a mirror showing me all that I should have been.  I drive through, depositing and withdrawing, just trying to keep the one more than the other.  Always wanting to explain my scrambled egg finances to bank tellers whose composed faces are plastered with a Mr. Potato Head smiles, calmly counting out my ever shrinking resources for me.  I project my thoughts of shame thinking they surely condemn me agains other patrons with fat bank accounts and carefree lives.

Recently I went to my banker to discuss my financial situation for the few weeks following.

Spend some time with her, explain my plans, talk through a few issues.  Dee breath honesty.  I predicted the situation, she would sit silently, knowing she could not offer me any help.  I would explain I didn’t want the rules twisted on my behalf or a credit line offering only temporary reprieve.  My banker became a person as I sat across from her in the cavernous arid bank air and talked to her, adult to adult, asking her to understand my situation, my desires, my priorities.  She nodded, listening.  She discussed and replied.  She offered me encouragement and reinforcement.  She imagined my dream with me.  She somehow communicated her desire to walk this walk with me.  She offered me respect.

There is a dream I float in often.  A moment I strive for when all things will come together and I am able to thank those who loved me and supported me.  It’s not just the support, it’s the reinforcement offered at a moment when most would back away with discomfort.  It’s the embrace to the proverbial leper that is me.  It’s the belief in me, not my circumstances.  I imagine dancing up to their offices with big checks. I dream of casting the spotlight on their kindness on the international stage.  I picture the recognition in their eyes as I say, it was good that you were kind to me.  It paid off.

I didn’t want to wait to thank them.  My bank that walked beside me in the last nine years, some of the toughest years of my life.  Through businesses that have grown and been dismantled.  Moments when we only had dollars to get through the weekend.  Exciting

days when all would go our way.  They have never told me they didn’t want my business.  They have always treated me with the respect shown to millionaires.  In the days of Occupy Wallstreet, I am thankful for my bank.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and all the kids are home.  I had already planned my thank you to the bank.  A simple tray of fruit and muffins and a sign with my thank-you’s written out in watercolor markers borrowed from the kids.

• Thank you for cashing my checks.
• Thank you for working with me, regardless of my situation.
• Thank you for supporting my dreams.
• Thank you for not judging me (or at least not looking like it).
• Thank you for being there.

I brought it in and gave it to them, and there was a now familiar discomfort at first.  What is this?  Why is she here?  I talk to the banker and then carried the fruit over to the tellers.  They didn’t understand, thinking I had something to deposit.  Eventually, they soaked it in; I explained my 30 day journey.  We chatted about how big the boys have gotten and who is going to cook over the Thanksgiving Holiday.  And as quickly as we began it was over.

I’m not sure they will ever understand what they have meant to me.  All the moments of stress and triumph, and the privilege of being supported as the greed and depravity of the banking world is revealed, one news story after another.  I did not experience that.  It wasn’t that they didn’t charge me fees or adhere to their requirements.  They just cared.

And for that, I thank them.