BACK TO WORK

Posted on by michellethurman2344

I live in a small town where I went to school and graduated high school. You get to know people when you’ve been around them for a long time. Some people I know by face only…no name, but I have seen them out and about for decades. We stop and visit once in awhile…even though we don’t know each other’s names; but we have been to school functions together, little league, community events, at local stores and even once in awhile in nearby towns where we shop. Some people I have known by name since we were in school together and while we may not have ever been friends we have shared a lifetime of activities from schoolward on. It’s a comfortable and pleasant community feeling that has nothing to do with relationships.

For those I have attended church with over many decades, it is a little more personal. We have worshipped together, prayed together, held church related events together, raised our children in a common structure of faith. We know things about each other that many, if not most, of those in our community don’t know and never will. We are a family.

A workplace is like our church community; it becomes family. I have worked in the local library and those I worked with for over a decade are dear to me. They are family. And I worked at our local Walmart for more than two decades and many of those there have become like family as well. Maybe not so close in most cases, but distant family that I have shared many of my life’s, and their life’s, events with. It was good to return to shop and see those familiar faces, and now, returning to work there again, it is like going home. Seeing people I worked with for many years, having a common interest in the company we all work for; it is good and pleasant.

On my first few hours on the floor I ran into one of my customers that I knew from my days in the library as well as my days in Walmart. She came up and gave me a hug and we stopped for a few moments and caught up on the news of our respective families. Her husband used to service the computers at the library and she was there quite often with her children. It was so nice to see her again. I have often thought of her and wondered how she and her family were doing. But, she belongs to her own local farming community of Mennonites and we have never socialized with one another. Yet, we have always liked one another and have enjoyed our meetings as we traveled through our days within our larger community.

I know many people on this basis and it gives one a deep sense of belonging. This is my county (population 32,000), and my town (population 6000), and my workplace (population 200-300). My church is small….less than 100, but we have connections with several hundred who, either come and go, or are associated with us over a larger area of our part of our state, and some from other states.

Community is what it is all about and you have small communities even within large cities. We need community. We need other people. We need each other…as a community, as fellow coworker, as fellow church members, as neighbors……and as family. It is the way GOD made us.

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Published by michellethurman2344

I was born in California, but both my parents were born in different areas of rural Oklahoma. My father grew up on a small cattle ranch and my mother grew up in the hills of eastern Oklahoma near the Ozark Mts. Both were born in the 1920's when Oklahoma was still more a part of the 1800's than the twentieth century so I like to say I was born of parents who were the last generation born during the old west. Their old west roots had a huge impact on my childhood. I spent the first three years of my life on my Granny's chicken farm. She was my father's grandmother and she owned 60 acres of alfalfa which she rented out and lived on three acres of barnyard where she raised chickens. There was some electricity, but no indoor plumbing outside of a faucet in the kitchen. The toilet was down the boardwalk in a small shed...in other words...an outhouse. The shower was a room under the water tank in the pumphouse. Granny's little three room house was the only painted building on the property. Everything else was raw, unpainted wood including the two room house my parents lived in. And I loved living on that little farm where I pretty much had free run of the barnyard and sometimes even wandered into the fields surrounding it. The town where I was born is along the Colorado River in the middle of the California desert and across the river from the Arizona desert and while we did live there for the first 12 years of my life, we moved a lot due to my father's employment. He was a big equipment operator and we moved to where the work took him, but usually only six months of the year then we moved back to our hometown. We moved to Northern California in 1958 and I have lived here ever since. I am a mother, a grandmother, have one great-grandchild and recently retired. I am divorced and now live with my youngest sister. My sisters and I like to cruise and take road trips. I am enjoying my life.

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