An Old Adjuster's Thanksgiving Tale
Dateline: Mobile, Alabama, November 24, 2011
Sunshine and storms are beyond our control. We must properly respond to each to build the life we want.
By the time November 2011 rolled around, I had been away from home for eight months. In March 2011, I accepted a deployment to work Allstate claims in Mobile, Alabama. Before then, I had only worked as a field adjuster, which I had done since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
I accepted the gig because I needed to better round out myself as an adjuster. I had never peeked behind the curtain to witness desk operations. I was not wrong to do so. I can tell you this: any field adjuster is better for having seen claims from behind the desk. Conversely, field experience benefits any desk adjuster.
In a far-away land...
My wife and family were at home in Texas. Since she works for American Airlines, she was able to use her flight benefit to visit me in Mobile on a regular enough basis, which is to say once a month or so. With a couple of other deployed adjusters, I rented a house down on Dog River, just 100 yards from Mobile Bay. We had a little dock and a great view. That made being away from home for so long a little more palatable, especially when Donya (my wife) would come to town and cook the boys and me some fine grub to tide us over a few days.
A few weeks into the deployment both of my roommates checked out of the storm and went home. I stayed. A new friend, a local Mobilian, was going through a divorce and looking for a place to temporarily land. I took him on as a roommate. We worked together so we understood the grind of 12-hour days and seven-day work weeks.
I bought a ping-pong table and friends from work came over for regular late-night games. The competition was fierce but I was happy to oblige in handing out lessons on messing with an old Baptist champion, and a lefty to boot. Cigars were smoked. Feelings were hurt. Great times were had by all. These were little distractions to numb the pain of being so long gone from where I belonged.
(I was just on the phone with a man who was a coworker then and became one of me best friends. We still work together. I asked him how he remembered those ping pong games and whether he agreed with my evaluation of the way they went down. He said he could only remember recently in his garage when I was unable to beat any of the guys playing that night. I reminded him that we didn't know at the time that I had cataracts and a 99% clogged Widow-Maker, and if you couldn't beat me then, when could you? I said, "You never played me in my prime, but you played me close enough to it to know to stay away from my forehand." He answered, "That's the truth." Precious memories are made of sweet fellowship, even if it is clothed in playful banter.)
The holiday season found me still jammed up seven days per week, chained to a desk, and bound to an oath to serve those who suffered loss due to storm activity with the expected level of "care and concern." After long months of working 12 hours every day of the week, every week of the month, days melted together. One day was indistinguishable from another.
"What day is it?" becomes a common refrain among desk adjusters.
While the sun shines...
This is the life of the catastrophe adjuster. You work hard while the work is there and you don't know how long you will be at it or when you will be at it again.
Old farmers used to say, "Make hay while the sun shines."
Old adjusters make money while the storm lasts. So do young ones, if they are properly prepared to do so.
Sunshine and storms are beyond our control. We must properly respond to each to build the life we want.
Halloween happened, I suppose. I do not recall. It made no impression on me.
Thanksgiving was another story.
Thanksgiving for an American son
Many of my best childhood memories are situated around this most American holiday. For years, it was a gathering time for my Mom's family at her parents' (my grandparents') house. Her sisters came into town with their families from places like San Antonio and Stamford (Texas, but way out west, north of my birthplace, Abilene). Uncles and cousins engaged in fierce ping-pong battles and backyard football brawls. Big Granddad wore his ever-present dress shirt and tie with an apron over it to keep the food from spoiling the attire. He used his pocket knife to shell pecans. Often, he had one of the smaller grandkids perched on the homemade ice cream machine. Granky (my maternal grandmother) baked the homemade bread she was famous for. Mom made chocolate pies and her sisters, all extraordinary cooks, contributed their best dishes to a feast worthy of Thanksgiving. Give thanks, we did. Then, we broke for football because our team - America's Team - always plays on Thanksgiving.
After Donya and I married, the faces changed but the feelings did not. Most Thanksgivings were spent with her extended family. The games we played were no longer in the church fellowship hall or backyard but at the dinner table. Mortal combat occurred over playing cards among the bloodthirsty blood-related brood.
The food was delicious and abundant.
And, of course, there were the Cowboys games.
To me, nothing says "family" better than Thanksgiving Day.
Turkey, Solo
Thanksgiving Day 2011 was sure to be a difficult one. I was far from home and only got one day off for the holiday, so getting home and back would be too difficult. While the family gathered at our Fort Worth Texas home to celebrate God's goodness, I prepared to spend the first Thanksgiving of my life alone. Sure, Mobile friends invited me to join their families for Thanksgiving dinner and football but I was disinclined to insert myself into their celebrations and mess with a delicate family dynamic that takes years and care to cultivate.
At lunchtime, I grabbed my hat and joined a few other lonely celebrants and some families who elected not to cook for themselves for a Cracker Barrel Thanksgiving. It was weird and wonderful. It was weird for obvious reasons. But it was also wonderful. I was alone with my heart, my thoughts, and my memories from a long time past and those not so long ago. Memories flooded my soul and tears flooded my cheeks. I guess that is why the empathetic waitress gave me a slice of pumpkin pie "on the house," and patted my shoulder.
Be thankful, Pilgrim!
I think about that first American Thanksgiving dinner in 1621, 150 years before America was a nation, and long before an abundant life had been gloriously carved out of the foreboding landscape of the New World.
Those gathered around the table did so with empty chairs. Friends and family members who succumbed to disease, hunger, or the harshness of life were dead. The winter had been brutal. But harvest time came and so did friendly American natives with food, friendship, and fellowship. They did not celebrate the absence of hardship. They celebrated the faithfulness of God and the goodness of grace. They celebrated endurance. They celebrated determination. They celebrated life in the raw reality of an ambivalent environment. Rather than lick their wounds and complain about hardships, they celebrated life, love, and liberty.
The more thanks you give, the more strength you gather.
Life will grind an ingrate to a pulp. Enough will never be enough. But nothing can conquer a grateful heart. The more thanks you give, the more strength you gather. Thanksgiving is as good for the one offering it as for the one receiving it.
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough. ~Oprah Winfrey
I look back on Thanksgiving 2011 as the day the holiday became a holy day for me. The people I was unable to celebrate with were the same people I made that sacrifice for.
1 Thessalonians 5:18:?"Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you"
Philippians 4:6:?"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."
Colossians 3:12-15: Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.
Work that storm, whatever it is. Ride it for all you are worth. Give your all to make the impact that only comes from sacrifice and selflessness...
and be thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving!