Déjà Vu, 21st Century Living - Visitor's Story

by Donna Hildrew
(United Kindom)

Here I am again. I have been here before. I am sitting in the side office with my boss and his secretary. I know exactly what this meeting is about: there are cryptic signs all around, the secretary does not make eye contact, she was just sat there with her head slightly bowed, pen and paper poised at the ready, ready to take notes so that every spoken word is recorded.

Then there's my boss with his long-lasting eye contact so to get my undivided attention. As I try to emulate this, my eyes dry up forcing me to blink uncontrollably.

"Okay Christine," he starts.

How he actually begins his sentence on my imminent redundancy is a blur. It's like my ears refuse to listen to his words but I know what he is telling me, "contract", "lost", "let you go" are all I hear. "Do you have anything to say Christine?" he asks. My heart just sank; it hung there like a tired old pendulum in a grandfather clock. I was having déjà vu; I was sure I had already gone through this once before, only three months back to be exact, at the company's other branch where I worked, which too in the end closed.

I was not going to show any bad feelings however, and did what I always did. I smiled, accepted what was to be my fate with this company and thanked my boss for telling me as early as he could and concluded by saying that I enjoyed my time there. Having been applauded on my response I was quickly relieved and resumed my duties in the front office.

Back at my desk all that I could think of was "twice", "twice" this has happened to me, and with the same company! How was I going to tell my new husband, we had only got married the previous week. My husband and I were just getting financially stable, as he had secured a higher paid job and I thought I was free from redundancy, "as it never happens to you twice, yeah right!" A lot had happened to us in the last twelve months; we had our first child, bought our first home together and got married, which is a lot to cram in. Everyone who knew us thought we were crazy, but it all happened as I planned. I knew we would marry eventually; it was just a matter of when. We had been together five years when our first child was born and we got married the following year. The wedding was three months after the purchase of our first home, so to say we had a budget wedding was an understatement. But we didn't care about material things such as posh venues and five course meals. After all we had the most precious thing to take to our wedding, our baby girl. My wedding dress was even off the rack and in my circle of friends that was an absolute no-no. But it fitted like a glove. The dress fitter at the Bridal Store said that in all her years she had never seen a dress fit like mine without any alterations. That's when I realised this is right, this is for keeps, Andrew is for keeps.

After some deliberating over my news and concluding to "oh well, these things happen", I started to feel rather proud of myself for getting a pat on the back and being recognised as mature and handling the situation well. After all, I was only 22 years old, and a married mother of one. This filled me with great satisfaction and complacency in the midst of my newly found job-hunting pass time.

However, this was short lived as I quickly learned that this attitude did me no favours as my fellow co-workers whom were also made redundant were sent home early that day. They were sent home because they were too upset to see out the remainder of their shifts and were granted early leave, and one by one a family member arrived at my office to collect them to take them home. "Are you not going home?" Tracey asked curiously.

"No," I replied.

But before I had even finished my one word answer, Tracey had linked her husband's arm and was being lead away, out of the office. They looked like they were heading off for afternoon tea not to console each other. Having sat there in disbelief at what I was witnessing, and kicking myself under the desk I quickly went from "why didn't I think of that," to again, "these things happen." I always tried not to dwell on things too much. I never rang my husband, I didn't want to bother him at work, there was no point in the both of us being miserable for the rest of the day, so I thought I would wait until I got home. Besides, if I did ring him he would think I was pulling his leg.

Still not being able to get away from that feeling of "my god I cannot believe they have just been able to go home, just like that, why wasn't I able to go as well?" I found myself thinking, I am the only one from the redundancies that is a parent, a parent of a nine month only baby girl, who I'd dropped off at day-care every day at 8:15 a.m. until 5:15 p.m., which left me feeling regretful every time for doing so, but equally I was proud of myself, and my husband for the life we were building for ourselves, but why couldn't I leave early that day? I could have picked my daughter up sooner and had some quality time with her by myself outside of my demanding routine; I could have even prepared tea and all before 6pm!

Travelling home that night, I was so apprehensive about telling Andrew my news and how I would tell him that my heart started to beat hard and fast with adrenalin. It was like the Grand Prix was using my veins as a racetrack and my heart was the pit stop. Once at home, I just blurted it out: "I've been made redundant again."

"Huh," my husband replied, as he always did when he wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. "You are joking, what does that mean now?" he continued.

I just shrugged my shoulders in response; I had no words to answer him.

After we had finished our tea and put our daughter to bed we had that conversation again, the one we had before, but this time a big black cloud coupled with anxiety was hanging over us. As before we were angry at the hand in which fate had dealt us, what was fate trying to tell us? Was I never meant to be a working mother? Following our conversation late into the night, we decided to go with what we were scared to do before. I was going to be a stay at home mum. "At least we won't have to fork out childcare fees anymore," Andrew chuckled. This was our only solace in our time of despair.

"Yeah," I replied, slightly relieved at his casual attitude.

So it was decided. We listened to fate and agreed that I would be a full time, stay at home mum.

For the time being anyway.