I Love Where I Work

Today is the Mother’s Day pot luck lunch at work. I’ll go, bring my dish, even though I neither am a mother nor have a mother--two facts which occasionally, intermittently and alternately gore me--because where I work, one thing we do well is celebrate each other.

We do this with such openness, such humanity it is astounding. Perhaps it is because we have to, we understand how precious, seeing every day what happens when you degrade, when you are caught under the wheels and dragged by illness, poverty, ignorance, cruel public policy.

And this is such a special place, with an esprit de corps like no place I have ever been. Not too long ago I was working on a project and feeling completely overwhelmed by horror, the horror our works are trying to ameliorate, and I was writing the phrase “generational poverty and pervasive despair” when someone came on the intercom system with “there are doughnuts in the dining room!” and the absurd juxtaposition had me grinning. And running to meet my colleagues for a doughnut.