The Hum

“I can’t believe,” said Jill last night, ”that in a month the kids will go off to school in the morning, and then-”

Yes? Raunchy day-long fun like we used to have?

“-I won’t have the house to myself,” she said.

At 11:44 a.m. last Wednesday, my phone rang and my boss asked me to a conference room. In there I found him in front of a yellow legal pad scribbled with numbers, and next to him a woman I did not know.

“Jeff,” he said, ”do you know ——? From HR?” The next 20 minutes constituted a scene staged across the country, in near-record numbers, every working day. Last day at my job, and my last day still working to receive insurance benefits, is 5/22. Benefits and several and such will continue for a while. Then unemployment and COBRA — with its attendant lessened pinch from the Stimulus plan — will continue.

Alex’s autism will continue longer. I actually dread being home for months alone with Jill during the day (ha ha — sort of) more than I dread the extra time I might have to spend caring for Alex. In fact, a few extra hours during the week with the boys would be welcome before they become teenagers and hate me.

“You’re very calm about this,” my former (also recently laid off) boss said to me on the phone this morning, “and that worries me.”

Me too. I’m usually jubilant when I leave a job. Now I just have this low humming dread. Alex has no immediate medical needs; we’re even trying to get him off Topomax. Years of freelance writing and marketing books have also conditioned me to stuff envelopes against the enormous odds, but the odds these days of getting a full-time job seem beyond enormous.

Why not jubilant? The last time I hit the employment silk, in January of 1998, there was no Alex. Now there is. This crisis has at last trickled down to me, a low-paid publishing professional, and I have no doubt it’ll continue through 2009 to trickle down to the agencies that provide Alex’s services. Not to mention that it’s good to have insurance and a steady income when your child is autistic. It just quiets the hum.

A Google search for “parents,” “laid off” and “autism” turned up little, but you can check into autism meet-up groups for your city at http://autism.meetup.com/cities/us/. I bet you won’t be in a group long before you run into another member who’s been canned.

Image: bestrecessionever.com