Excerpt from the book Why Dream But to Make Your Dreams Come True

When I woke up I had the feeling I was just waking up from a nightmare: my husband is unemployed! This was the first sentence that came to my mind. So I did not have a nightmare! It is real and happening here and now. Oh, my God, what shall we do? – I asked myself while getting out of the bed.

At this moment, the intercom rang and I answered it:

– Hello?

– A gentlemen called Darci is here at the hall, he has something for Mr. Martins – the doorman told me.

– Ok, Can you please ask him to come upstairs? – I requested trying to imagine what it could be.

Darci was the driver of Hollywood. He did some things for the company and was the general manager’s driver. In other words, he was our driver.

However, that day, he was not there to take my kids to school as he usually did.

– Good morning Darci – I greeted him while opening the back door.

– Good morning madam. I came to deliver these boxes to Mr. Martins – he said pointing to some boxes that were at the service hall.

– Please Darci, come in and put the boxes over here in the service area.

– Iraci! – I called the maid who had already arrived. – Can you please help Darci put the boxes in the area?

I looked around and saw boxes full of books, office supplies, photos, pens, documents and manuals. Everything which resulted from eighteen years of work was now packed in some boxes.

I took a deep breath and made an effort to hold my tears. I quickly left the area back to the bedroom. My husband was still asleep. I sat at the edge of the bed and waited in silence. I still did not believe in what was going on and felt confused before such situation. I did not know what to do nor how to behave.

I could hear from the bedroom when Iraci offered Darci a coffee before he left. I had no courage to come back to the service area and say goodbye to the driver. I was too embarrassed and decided tostay in the bedroom in silence and wait for him to leave. The moment I realised he had left, I came back to the service area and kept looking at those boxes in disbelief. Iraci approached me, looked at the boxes and I asked with her customary curiosity:

– Mrs. Martins, what’s all that?

– Mr. Martins has been fired – I answered hesitantly while tears rolled down my face.

– Don’t be sad, ma’am. Mr. Martins will get another job – she spoke tenderly and with simplicity.

Iraci started working for us when the twins were very little. They might have been two years old and my eldest son three. Years had gone by and she had been a good friend. Therefore, we considered her a member of the family. She was always in a good mood and sometimes behaved like the fourth child in the house. She had even done prank phone calls with the kids when they were very little. She was curious and loved sneaking into everything but there was certain innocence in her behaviour. I could count the number of days she missed work in spite of the personal difficulties she went through, which caused, under a certain perspective, much more suffering than the situation I was going through at that moment. It was very difficult to see this woman complain about something even though she had many reasons to do so. It made me feel embarrassed especially because she was trying to comfort me.

Without knowing what to do, the first idea that came to mind was to take those boxes out of sight as I thought it was not a good moment for my husband to deal with those memories. If it was hard for me, I figured it would be much worse for him. With Iraci’s help, I put all the boxes on the top of a cabinet in the laundry.

Later, when my husband got up, I had no courage to tell him anything about the boxes. We talked again about his dismissal but I decided to talk about the boxes in another occasion.

I still could not believe that it was a definite situation with no coming back. I honestly imagined that, at any time, we would get a call from Hollywood asking him to come back as if suddenly they realised what big mistake they had made. Then, everything would have been just a scare! We wouldn’t need to think about the matter any longer and everything would be back to normal. Even if “normal” meant some kind of sacrifice, I still could not see him away from the company.

* * *

The first weeks went by and the “return to normality” I was longing for did not happen. Nobody contacted us, not even former co-workers. The silence of the phone was scary and, although I did not feed the illusion of getting a call from the company asking him to come back, I waited for calls from friends. Yes, at least our friends would get in touch. After all, some had been in the company for as long as my husband and we expected to have some support from them.

Each day seemed like eternity. One day turned into a week, a week into a month and so on. Why didn’t anyone get in touch? It was horrible to wait and though we could call and contact people to exchange some ideas, our low self-esteem and embarrassment made us passive and apathetic. We were alone, completely alone.

Rosanne Martins was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is biologist, holistic therapist, full-time writer and part of the Self-Healing Brazilian Association. Learn more at: www.rdreamscometrue.com