Bank Of America And Nature's Imponderables

 

Bald eagle, adult perched on snow. European Starlings, Great Black-backed and Herring gull in flight, Maine, February 2009

Bald eagle impassively perched on snow while European starlings fly by. There is a Great Black-backed gull in flight. If you look under its left wing, a starling can be seen flying right under it! I wish I possessed such great manuevering skills.

     I enjoy studying the behaviors of living things. The whys of behaviors fascinate me. The study of living things is what got me into writing, photography and birding. Why do small birds attack big birds that could kill them? Where do butterflies spend their winters? How do they get there? Why do humans dream what they do? Do birds dream? 

     The questions and subjects seem endless. Photography gives me the chance to study things more closely than I might be able to in the wild, on the fly. Writing allows me to investigate and think about the questions. I am quickly sucked into the life of others’ and their relatedness. The imponderables are usually magic for me, but not always.

     For over a decade, I have served as court appointed conservator to my grandmother’s financial affairs. Prior to my involvement, her progressive blindness, dementia and paranoia had spun her life into a hot mess. Too impaired to operate her microwave, she stuffed it with mail and used it as a file cabinet. Bills went unpaid or were paid sometimes three times over. She had accounts in fourteen different banks. One of the first things I did was to consolidate them into one account in the bank she had been with the longest, Bank of America. It would prove to be a big mistake.

     Every month, I must deposit a bundle of assorted checks to my grandmother’s account. Monthly, she receives about a dozen checks from her health insurance company as refunds in varying amounts. I also receive rent checks from the tenant who lives in her house. 

     Bank of America , though the tellers do recognize me, insists that I present to them photo identification, my social security number and deposit slips, though I am putting money in, never withdrawing money. On occasion over the years I have forgotten to take a deposit slip. When this happens, I have to go home, fifteen miles away, and then return to try again. They make no exceptions. 

    The tenant who rents my grandmother's house writes the rent checks to me. Bank of America won't take these checks from me because I don't have an account with them, nor does the tenant. There is more than enough money at all times in my grandmother’s account to cover it should it bounce. Nonetheless, they will not take the checks.

   I am forced to take the rent checks to my bank, The Bank Across The Street. They give me twelve hundred dollars in cash, which I take back to Bank of America and deposit. Cash they will accept. Then, I deposit the insurance checks.

     To complicate things, the tenant got very behind on the rent. I threatened him with eviction, where upon, he coughed up a check for six thousand dollars (yes, he was very behind). When I took that check to The Bank Across The Street, they had no problem cashing it, but they did ask if I'd take a bank check. They wanted to avoid draining the cash drawers. I said “Certainly.”

     While the teller cut the check, I groused about their competitor. She looked up from her desk. "Wait, did I hear you right? All you’re trying to do over there is put money in? Deposit it?" I said yes. "Here at The Bank Across the Street, we don't care who you are if you're trying to put money in," she giggled. I laughed and took my check. Though they cash my checks without question, I still have to make two trips to two banks and stand in line each month just to get my grandmother's business done.

   And, though I was bearing a bank check, Bank of America still gave me a hard time when I tried to deposit it because the check was made out to me, rather than to my grandmother. Though I had a deposit slip, I still had to provide identification and my social security number. I glanced up at the security cameras. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I felt like they thought I was which made me feel like I looked guilty.

   Months went by. I dutifully took a deposit slip with me each month. Knowing they would demand it, I had my driver's license ready, no fishing in my handbag keeping the officious tellers waiting. That's the worst part of it, the looks they give me. They are cold as stone, not a smile in the lot. Oddly there isn't a bit of noise. It's silent. No phones ring, no doors close, even customers don't speak in the curious, infectious cold. Each teller window has a jar with wrapped, hard candy, presumably for customers. I have never seen anyone reach for one, nor would I dare.

     Eventually, the tenant again fell behind on the rent. I again threatened eviction. This time, he produced a seven thousand dollar check. I also had nine insurance checks. At The Bank Across The Street I didn't wait for the teller to ask if a bank check was okay; I suggested it. "Certainly, who would you like this made out to," she asked. Remembering that the last time, Bank of America had hassled me about the check written to me, I gave her my grandmother's name. “Edith P. Bailey, B-A-I-L-E-Y, I told her. Behind me, two customers chatted about daffodils breaking ground and other signs of early spring. A woman laughed from an office. Smiling, I said thanks and took my check.

     At Bank of America, I stood in line in the tomb of a bank. While waiting, I had a creeping feeling that I had forgotten a deposit slip. I'd have to hope for the best. At the teller's window, I put the stack of checks onto the counter. The insurance checks were on the top and the bank check on the bottom, neatly piled. Pointing to my grandmother's name on the first insurance check, I said "I'd like to deposit these into her account, please." Looking at the check without touching it, as if it were a dog pile, the teller asked "Is this you?" I said, no. "It's my grandmother's account. I just want to deposit these checks for her. I'm her conservator. You have all the documents on file."

     I'm of the school of thought that more bees are lured with honey than vinegar. I'm very nice to service people. After all, they are people just like me who are trying to make a buck to pay their bills. They don't make the rules. To get things done, I can be as sugary as necessary. I smiled sweetly at the teller. The young man, who stood ram rod straight wearing a shirt so starched his mother must have done it, said, "I need photo ID please." With the tip of his finger, he slid a piece of paper to me, "And your social security number." I thought “thank God, he hasn't insisted on a deposit slip, how nice." He stared at the computer screen, his hands moving silently across the keyboard. He stopped. "There is no record of an account here." His eyes looked dead.

     At first I thought he was speaking to someone else. I looked over my shoulder; no one was behind me. Then, it dawned on me. "Oh! No, I'm sorry, you looked up my information, but it's my grandmother's account, not mine,” I smiled. He looked at me with reptilian loathing. "Yes. I realize that. Are you on this account?" Somehow, it wasn't a question, it was an accusation. "No, I'm not. I'm the conservator. You have the information in the computer." I couldn't help it, but I think I winced. "You need a deposit slip," he stated flatly. I wanted to say "No, you need a deposit slip, I don't!" Instead, I sighed deeply and left.

     Out of sheer despair, I looked around in my car on the off chance that I had stashed some deposit slips for just such an emergency and voila! I found two! I nearly trotted back into the bank. After waiting in line again, I handed the stack of checks and the deposit slips to the young man. "You only need one," he said, sliding one back at me without looking. I took it, jamming it into my handbag. One by one, he processed the nine insurance checks. When he got to the bank check at tthe bottom of the stack, he stopped moving. "This check is made out to someone else's account."  Like a dunderhead I said "What?"

     "This check is made out to Edith P. Daily.” In one, smooth motion, he slid the check across the counter and spun it around toward me without seeming to actually touch it. Blinking, I took it. "Oh my God! I just had this written at The Bank Across The Street! The teller must have misheard me or just mistyped it." My voice trailed off. I could feel the hives rise on my neck. For an instant, I thought he was going to press the hot button for the police.

   I prayed that The Bank Across The Street would own the mistake and rewrite the check. I had cashed the tenant's check and had no proof of anything, only a bad bank check. Seven thousand dollars could be going up in he said she said smoke!

     Thankfully, there weren't any problems. After a few minutes of trying to figure out how to reverse a bank check, and then rewrite it, I was given a new check. Back to Bank of America I went.

     When I got there, there weren’t any customers. “Great, I won’t have to wait in line,” I thought.  Seeing the young man, I went eagerly to his window. Brandishing my new check, I said "Look! It’s straightened out!" I declared cheerfully "We can try this again!" Just as I started to hand it to him, he said "I'm with another customer." I looked around, terribly embarrassed; I flushed. I regard line jumping as the ultimate in rudeness. "Oh, sorry, sorry," I said scurrying behind the velevet rope. Suddenly, I realized there wasn't another soul in there besides him and another teller. Nor was he on the phone. After what felt like eternity, the other teller, whom I knew to be a manager, said icily, "I'll take the next customer."

     I handed her the stack of checks. The young man shuffled papers, never looked up, nor spoke. No one came in to the bank. The manager teller said “I’ll need a deposit slip.” I’ll admit that right at that moment, some of my sugar had begun to burn.

     “I just gave a deposit slip to that young man minutes ago. He has one right on his desk.”

     She repeated dryly “I’ll need a deposit slip.”

     Pointing to the young man’s work area, I said “I just gave him one! He hasn’t even had time to put it in his drawer yet!” I thought I might actually blow my stack. “He has one!” I snarled.

    The starched young man who was playing with his invisible customer, so could not wait on me, stopped what he wasn’t doing and said to me “You have another deposit slip.”

     I wanted to jump over the counter, slap him in the head and kill him. Granted, I did have another slip, which I had jammed into my handbag, but that was not the point. Clearly, Bank of America sent all of its employees to the Rush Limbaugh School of Customer Service! I was nearly driven to the point of madness by this outrageousness! I wondered if I had something in my handbag that I could use as a weapon. I was not turning over the deposit slip. Chapstick? Could I stab him to death with a chapstick? Could I suffocate him with wads of used Kleenex? Yes, I’d jam them down his throat and watch his face turn blue while he struggled. That seemed fair.

     I imagined the police storming through the doors. I imagined the two tellers on the floor, the manager slumped, dazed, the young man, dead. His face would be purple and he’d have tissue bulging from his mouth. His starched shirt would be a mangled, hot mess. I imagined being handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a cruiser. I imagined being in jail. It felt peaceful. I’d have a lot of time to spend on the imponderables of the behaviors of living things.

     In the end, I collected my composure and handed over the deposit slip. I had spent hours on this project, just trying to deposit my grandmother’s money into her account. I had stood in line repeatedly, made five trips between banks and been polite until it nearly killed me. I was tired.

     That night, my sleep was fitful. I dreamed dreams of birds and prisons. Checks with indecipherable names blew through the air like leaves. Great flocks of nameless black birds flew through the skies bearing deposit slips in their bills. They screamed and cried “Why, why, why?” 

This post was selected as Editor's Pick on the cover of Open Salon (http://open.salon.com/cover)

It is the fourteenth of my works to be chosen. 

My Grand Compulsion - Common, Red-breasted and Hooded Mergansers

Common merganser drakes on the Kennebec River, Bath Maine February 2012

Common mergansers, Kennebec River, Bath Maine, February 2012

Common merganser hens or juveniles on the Kennebec River, Bath Maine 2012

Common Merganser close up, Kennebec River Bath Maine

Common merganser, hen, Maine
Common mergansers are recognizable by their white chin strap

Hooded merganser trio, left to right, two drakes and hen, Bath, Maine February 2012

Hooded merganser drake eating a crab, Bath, Maine February 2012

Red-breasted merganer drake, Phippsburg Maine

      I’m going to be fifty seven in a month. Rumor has it that at this stage of life, people begin to slow down, but not me. On the contrary, I’ve decided on a new career path. I’m hoping to get a slot on the new cable show “My Strange Addiction.”

      The show is reality trash TV at its best and perfectly suited to me. It’s not for the faint of heart, I can tell you that. I just watched one featuring a woman addicted to her own breasts. She has triple G breasts on a size four frame, yet persists in having upgrades to her breast implants. She has fourteen pounds on each side, but they aren’t enough for her. Her surgeon told her it was killing her and that he wouldn’t put more in, so she’s off to Brazil to get what she wants. There was another one with a woman who drinks nail polish. She favors the kind with sparkles in it and says that the color does influence the flavor. It’s that willingness to endure pain, the persistence and the attention to detail which make me an excellent candidate for the show. “How can people do these things to themselves,” I shudder. I wonder if I can get a film crew to document my strange addiction. 

     I spend stupid amounts of time looking for birds and beasts and other photo opportunities. Every day, I take shots of one thing or another for practice. There is nothing worse than seeing something then being too slow with the camera settings to get the shot. I’ve been there, though it’s just not that complicated. All a photographer has to learn to do is capture light with the camera.

      It doesn’t matter whether the photographer shoots landscapes, weddings, birds, or cans of beans to sell; there is only one thing the photographer has to learn to do: capture how the light falls on the subject. To capture that light, there are only three things the photographer needs to decide: how big the hole or shutter needs to be, how fast it has to close and how sensitive the storage medium needs to be (film speed or ISO). Yet, as simple as that sounds, it takes years of practice to master capturing light. And, it takes millions of shots. I often find it frustrating that for the time I put in, I don’t get the photographs I’d like to, either the subjects I desire or the quality. But, I persist.

     In the name of being ready when Big Foot shows up, a Martian lands in Phippsburg or a Snowy owl finally flies through my living room, I have taken millions of photographs. Well, not quite millions - I have six external hard drives attached to my computer which house roughly 100,000 images a piece. This does pose problems. It costs money to buy the storage and takes time to manage the organization.

      In spite of my best efforts to organize my photographs, I often can’t find something when I want it. Like Bob Cratchit, I hunch at my computer desk for hours sifting through folders of images. I wear a ragged robe and fingerless gloves. I too, have a cruel employer. When I can’t find what I’m looking for, I berate myself for not having a consistent system for organizing my images. Then, I crab at myself for clicking the shutter so often in the first place. I can’t help it and I’m disgusted with myself. Just about the time I decide to quit, I’m pulled back in.

    This time, the whiff of a nice bottle of fingernail polish, the jiggling joy of silicone came to me in the form of mergansers! Mergansers are common in Maine. In fact, we have three types. However, to photograph all three in a single day without even trying for them is unusual.

      Maine has three species of mergansers, Common, Red-breasted and Hooded. “Sawbills” are large, fish eating ducks with serrated edges on their long, thin bills for grabbing fish. They all have shaggy crests. Common mergansers (Mergus merganser) and Red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator) look similar, though the Hooded does not. Hooded mergansers are not in the genus Mergus, but are closely related. All three dive completely under water for food. Though they are all seaducks, only the Red-breasted is commonly found on the ocean. The other two hang out in riverine habitats. We have flocks of Red-breasted mergansers here on Totman Cove most of the winter, though never the other two Sawbill varieties. I travelled fifteen miles up the Kennebec River to Bath while doing mundane errands for the full complement.

     In Europe, the Common merganser is called a Goosander. Across continents, there are minor differences amongst Common mergansers leading to variables in appearance. Because the birds look very similar, here they are sometimes called ‘American’ mergansers, rather than ‘Common.’ Hooded mergansers are predictably called ‘Hoodies,’ because of their white hood, not because they rob convenience stores.

     Mergansers breed in the northern reaches of the planet. Of the three, Red-breasted ‘mergs’ breed the furthest north and winter the furthest south. The Red-breasted is the only one of the three that nests on the ground. The other two nest in tree cavities. None of the mergansers are endangered, though this could change if they start drinking fingernail polish. 

FLYday - American Black Ducks in snow

American Black Ducks in snow, Phippsburg Maine January 2012

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends do best, fly.

Old Fashioned Boiled Frosting - Scenic Sunday

SUNRISE

    Maine is the first place in the United States to see the morning sun. In the winter here in the "far east," the sunrise can be especially intense. Sometimes, as in this photo, the sun shines straight upward through the clouds making a tube. It looks like a pathway to another planet or a conduit to a spaceship. I'm not much of an early morning person, but birds and sunrises can get me out of bed. I took this photograph from my deck having leaped naked from bed; it was 2 degrees farhenheit. "Beam me up, Scotty! There's no intelligent life down here."

Scenic Sunday

View South of Newbury Point, Phippsburg, Maine

POWERLESS

On February 22, Sunday night at 12:40 am, the electricity went out. For days before, the weather forecast had been dire. "Armageddon," that's what they said it would be. "Lake effect snow from the North West pushing ahead of a cold front will converge with low pressure from seaward resulting in high precipitation amounts. Post pone all travel plans and ready your storm emergency packs. Prepare for damaging high winds and power outages." We had heard it all before a hundred times. Our local TV station has a weather man named Kevin Mannix, but we call him 'Kevin Panics.' The day had been sunny and clear, so how bad could it get? "Besides, it will be spring soon. If it snows, it won't last long," we told ourselves. We did nothing.
After we had gone to bed, I watched TV. I often have difficulty getting to sleep, so that's what I do to shut my brain off late at night, while my dear husband is snoring blissfully away beside me (I envy his ability to sleep, honestly I do). I watch shows such as 'Trauma - Life In The ER,' 'Mystery Medical Diagnosis' and Discovery- 'An Asteroid Coming to the Earth Near You.' You might think this would be the last thing a person should watch while trying to fall asleep. It sounds like pretty scary, gruesome, fear mongering stuff, which I suppose it is. But, for me, it has the opposite effect; it's mind numbing and puts me to sleep. No nightmares, either (at least, not from that). When I watch that stuff it desensitizes me. Part of my mind believes that if I see enough of it, it will never happen to me, nor anyone I love. While I was absorbed in the medical aftermath of a multiple car pile-up in Nashville, Tennessee, the power flickered on and off three times. Each time the satellite transmission had to reset itself. That meant that I had to start the show over again. So, I got to see the same people intubated, chest tubed, rushed to the OR, and fully coded, three times. Talk about mind numbing! I got up and turned on the lights to see what was going on out the window. It was a total white out, blinding snow pelting horizontally right into the windows. It was an amazing spectacle since it had been forty degrees and sunny that day. Thinking, "well this can't be good," I retrieved a five gallon bucket from our cellar. Then, setting it into the bathtub, I filled it with water. We have a well, so if we lose power, we don't have water. You can endure quite a while without heat, but believe me, when there is no way to flush a toilet, well, THAT will flush you right out of the house pretty quickly. Then, I went back to bed just as the power went out for keeps (my husband continued to snore). When we awoke, the power still hadn't come back on and it was still snowing. There was a foot of wet heavy snow. Trees were creaking and groaning under the weight. The utility lines from the house sagged down into the driveway. We had been hit with a classic Nor' Easter and so, we knew we would be in for a long haul.
We have storms like this every winter and every winter, we lose electricity. Sometimes it's only for a few hours; sometimes it lasts for days. At the very least, it flickers off and on. This requires that all things digital must be reset which is an annoyance. Sometimes this happens several times a day which steps it up from an annoyance to a full blown irritation. Each time the power quivers, it makes me nervous. Of course, everything that matters here is on a surge protector, but still, I fear for my computer and the TVs (think of the gore I'd miss if the TV quit! I'd never sleep again!). But, most of all, I fear days of no electricity. Each time one of these near miss shots whistles across the bow of our little ship called Home, I imagine the pile of dirty dishes in the sink ballooning out like a cartoon, mountains of laundry pulsing near the lifeless washer, and worst of all: the toilets. But, let's not go there.

To some, I'm sure the idea of no TV noise, no ringing phones (that's right: no phone), cozy fires and inventive meals seems like a charming and inviting idea. Believe, me, after about 4 hours the fun is all out of it. I like to read, too. But there's too much of a good thing.

We have a small generator, but it isn't good for much. It takes miles of extension cords to plug anything into it and if it is cold enough outside it is reluctant to start. We only use it to charge my camera battery and run the refrigerator, unless it's cold enough to put things outside. At ten degrees, it was plenty cold enough this time. I had filled laundry baskets (since I wasn't generating any clean laundry to put into them) with the refrigerator contents and set them on either side of the front steps. UPS made a delivery to us in the midst of the outage. Richard (we are on a first name basis with our UPS guy) left his cumbersome, brown truck and walked down our road to our house. While holding the package for me as I came to the front door, he glanced around. "Geez, I'm sorry for standing in the middle of your refrigerator," he apologized. Very funny. "Thanks for bringing the package, Richard. Look out for live wires on the ground when you walk back to the truck," I replied. After all, I wouldn't want to lose such a dedicated UPS guy.
People might ask, "Why don't you leave? Go some place with power, a hotel or something?" The simple answer is that we have two dogs. To take dogs somewhere other than home is just a different kind of struggle to my mind. But, that's the simple response, not the true answer. The real truth is that we don't want to abandon our house. We want to be here to struggle along with it, feel the cold corners of the rooms closing in, hear the ice on the roof, angst about trees that may fall onto it. Our home is a living thing. When it's without electricity it becomes a not quite dead, ailing being pleading for help. So, we can't abandon it to the elements. We want to be here with it, maybe in its final hours. We understand people in other parts of the country who we see on the news (oh, the news, how I miss the news when the power is out!) who stay on through hurricanes or forest fires after they've been advised to evacuate. We have empathy for the conviction they start out with, the sense of control that dissolves into chaos then terror.
Every year we tell ourselves that we'll never go through this again. We will have a proper (synonymous with expensive) generator installed, the kind that goes on automatically and runs everything as if nothing is amiss, invisible life support for the home in crisis.
Why haven't we done this long ago? It's not about money. Money is an excuse, not a reason. It's about our own mortality. We want to believe that we are hardy, invincible souls capable of weathering anything. We want bragging rights that we toughed it out, again, as if putting words to that makes it true. "Three days without electricity is no big deal to us Mainers," we tell people, while actually trying to convince ourselves. The words create an energy that resonates through us like the electricity in our house, intangible while running everything. To have a generator is akin to admitting that we are dependent and vulnerable to the vagaries of a being greater than ourselves. It feels like giving in to something, a weakly defensive posture. Deep in our brains, to ask for help is to expose ourselves to the idea that we need it, and thus, that help might not be forthcoming. Not everyone survives in those medical shows, regardless of the heroic efforts of the trauma team. When an asteroid collides with our earth, there will be no help coming.
Yet another cold night, we go to bed in the dark. The dogs sleep with us shoving their way into the warm spaces between us. Soon, soon the power has to come back on. Lights and order will be restored. We will be liberated! I can't go another day without e mail, I'm an addict and I admit it. "I'll have to take my laptop to someplace where there is electricity," is my thought as I drift off to sleep. In my dreams my laptop is wrapped in a red bandanna suspended on a stick over my shoulder like a hobo. This can't last for long. Spring, the greatest narcotic of all, is coming.