what work is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting for one foot to another…
-Philip Levine, from "What Work Is"

I suppose you could say am one of the lucky ones. For the moment, I am able to stay home with Isaac. However, usually, on about four of the five days I don’t feel lucky. I feel tired and pawed at, cut off from the real world, and sometimes hopeless. But with whatever part of me is sort of awake and has energy to think, I try my best to recognize my luck.

Outside of new motherhood, work is something to get away from, off from, out of. Suddenly, however, after you’ve had a baby, many people (many of them without babies) act like it is a life-giving Mecca to which one must return posthaste. If I complain –I know it’s hard to believe—to someone about the stresses of my day, I hear "So when are you going back to work?" In truth, I hear this when I don’t complain, too. Ah yes, the solution to my woes, the key to increasing the quality of my life – work.

You see, I don’t want to do what I did before, and this poses a problem. I can’t just slip into a role I know, resume banter around a water cooler, pick up where I left off. I need energy and space to think up a new next step and, well, yeah, um, energy and space?...

I just got the call. The call that comes about two weeks before every semester starts. The one where someone needs to staff a class "desperately." My former boss’ voice on my answering machine spills compliments, ("I thought of you right away…You are one of the best we’ve had…") and my ego begs for another chance, while my heart screams "NO!" Teaching – let’s see, handing young people lessons that they may not be ready to deal with, tending to their various learning styles and emotional needs, providing feedback on their progress, coaxing them always to the next level... and this is different from what I’m doing now, how?