What we do and who we are

There was the farmer in Kentucky.  A veteran of Omaha Beach in Memphis.  A radiator man in an outlying county.  A couple of retired preacher friends.  A foreman in Raleigh.  An attorney from Midtown.  These old men stand out among a bunch of others who shared their struggles with identity over the years.  In each instance, they were wrestling with the problem of who they were apart from their careers.  Once the domain of men, now a plague open to women, too, we define ourselves by what we do.  I've thought that it had to do with avoiding who we are, as much as anything.
The last couple of years I've wondered what I sounded like to them.  In a couple of those instances, I was in my mid-20s.  Young and stupid.  They must have known it.  All but one were far too gracious to say it.  The one who wasn't, well, I lied my way through his funeral for the sake of his family, which is more consideration than he ever gave them.
In my 50s now, after the last couple of years, I know some things about their struggle that I could only imagine before.  I ceased to be a contributing partner in my household two years ago.  The vultures who were then in control of my life cut my income almost in half.  A year later, they came back to do more and I walked.  Always the courage of my convictions here!  Anybody else notice there was an economic meltdown, with a jobless recovery behind it?  I guess I didn't. 
That, of course, isn't true.  I knew times were bad.  I just wasn't going to let the former employers make our times any worse.  Finding any kind of job was a challenge.  After several months, finally, one came along, but  I hadn't worked a minimum wage job since I was 15.  My parents helped out, but there are limits.  We hit them.
Then came summer.  Teachers aren't overpaid, by any non-Tea Party definition, but teachers' assistants don't look forward to summer the same way teachers do.  I thought last year was tough.  This summer has taught me about tough.
The toughest part of the whole thing has been our kids.  One has arthritis in her back, aggravated by her work waiting tables.  She has no insurance.  One decided that the job he trained for isn't at all what he wants to do.  That happens with young people.  The other is heading back to school this fall and living with my parents.  Those are all things I expected to be able to take care of by this stage of life.
Not so much.
A woman I was once married to caused a bit of a stir a while back when, after two marriages that produced children, she announced on Facebook that with the current boyfriend, she is "finally in love for the first time in [her] life."  Even if it is true, I don't think I'd have thrown that out there in public for my kids to read.  However, I believe it.  Because I know what it feels like to be loved now.  Grandmommie has held me, and our family, together through all of this time.  She was the first to insist that I was worth more than the way I was being treated in the previous job.  When I fall into guilty feelings, still, about not earning, not helping the kids, not making life a little easier for her, she is still the one who tells me to knock it off, as "We would never go back to those people!"  She rides with me to put in the next application, telling me that something is going to work, it is going to be alright.  I can't always see what she seems to be seeing, but she sounds like she knows what she's talking about.
I'm wrestling with these identity questions hour by hour.  I have had days like that one George Bailey had in It's A Wonderful Life.  The only difference is, I'm not worth more dead than alive, as I don't even have the life insurance policy.  I lectured all those old guys about how their worth wasn't in what they did, earned or produced, but rather in the love their family carried for them.  Turns out, I was right.
But it's still tough.