What happens when you go back to work....

Weekends have become weekends again.  That combination of delight that there’s no work, and frenzy to get to the library before it closes.  The languid desire to stay in pyjamas all day, and the grim realization that there’s no food and you have to go to Costco. Now.  Because your week days are shot.   That’s what work does to a person.  Mind you, I’ve only been working for two weeks, and barring disasters I‘ll soon back to my indolent pink fluffy bathrobe life style.  But I dropped some papers off at the office on Friday and I confess I didn’t like the way the paymaster, who was standing desperately next to a pile of disheveled paperwork as tall as a sturdy three year old, looked up and said, “You.  Thank God!”

If I’m honest, I went back for a little stint of work to be helpful, of course, but mainly because, like Everest, it is there.  Like hanging over the edge of the Grand Canyon, to get a thrill of horror; it  reminds me  that I’m not like these people.  I look around me at the office and calculate how long they have to go before retirement.  ‘poor bastards…’ I murmur to myself.

But then, as it will, it got out of hand.  When my little six day office job was finished, a vice principal in a local high school broke her ankle.  “Would you, Iona? Only the poor principal is there by himself…” and suddenly I find myself at a little six day job at a school.

I’m horrified by how I have been swept back in.  That’s the truth.  Especially at school.  There are kids who need things, there’s staff who aren’t sure how to proceed…there’s things I know, and I can do.  It makes me realize that I walked out of my job absolutely chock full of knowledge and experience, and I honestly thought I could just put it in a cardboard box and throw it in storage until ten years from now when we would open the door and say, “this old stuff…I haven’t used it for years, let’s chuck it.”

Yesterday was my last day.  The Vice Principal is back with a boot on and stumps around like the queen of spades…enough to scare anyone into good behavior, so I’m no longer needed, but as I’m going out the door with a song in my heart, the Principal catches me, “say, you wouldn’t…?”  “No”, I say, “I wouldn’t.”

It’s hard to let go of the notion that you need to pull your weight.  I only had to go in for a couple of hours yesterday. By 1 in the afternoon  I was contemplating a glass of pino grigio on a sun-filled greenhouse patio of a local restaurant and feeling a little furtive. It’s no good telling myself that I pulled my weight for 46 years.  I feel like I ought to be doing something now, when I’m smarter.  “You write blogs,” says my husband, “heck, you write books.  And someone has to sustain the Italian wine industry with these 12 dollar glasses of wine.  They don’t pay for themselves, you know.”  A rather pointed remark, I thought, that, as it was accompanied by his pointing to the 3 dollar price tag on his glass of ale on the bill. 

“You’re right, of course,” I say sweetly, “as always.”  I take off my jacket and sit back down, signaling the waitress. “Another glass of pino grigio, please, and whatever swill he’s having.”  I’m going to fight this desire to work I think.  I can beat it.