images4.jpgI don’t remember exactly how/where this came about, but my mom is now coming to work with me once or twice a week. She gets put to work stuffing envelopes in the room next door to mine, and at lunch time I take her out to lunch at one of the many eating establishments on our bustling street. She really looks forward to it. Usually on Wednesdays she’ll say, “Am I going to work today?” and there usually is something for her to do. There’s a big all-day event coming up this weekend, so today she put together all the participant packets.

She used to go and volunteer at my daughter’s school once a week, because that’s what she was used to, working as a school secretary for almost 30 years. But often she’d go in and they’d have nothing for her to do, and she’d be really bored. I’d pick her up and ask, “What’d you do today?” and she’d sigh. “Nuttin’.”

Now I only bring her in if there’s a day’s worth of work, and that’s usually once or twice a week. It’s worked out GREAT for our office receptionist, who takes twice as long to do these big mailings and things because she also has to answer the phone every five seconds, and greet people, and go to the post office and a hundred other tasks. Now my mom focuses on the envelopes, and D focused on HER job, and it all works out great.

But sometimes I think about what we’re all doing, and I just shake my head because I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m living with my mom because I just never thought this would happen. I never thought it would be possible, and that it would work out. Sometimes it gets bumpy but for the most part, it is all good. And then I can’t believe I take her to work with me. And that we work together in a progressive adoption organization. Sometimes I just have to shake my head and blink and pinch myself. It’s all like some extremely surreal dream. I can just imagine describing this dream to somebody ten years ago, and they would laugh and roll their eyes and say yeah, right.

Today, as she was preparing those folders, she snagged a typo in a document I’d made a month ago, that had been proofed about ten times by three different people, and nobody caught it. I have to say, I was partly embarrassed but mostly like, WHOA Mom, good catch!

At lunchtime, my husband Wednesday Wife stopped by because I’d left part of my computer’s powercord at home and he happened to be free and able to bring it down. He offered to take us out to lunch. She said she wanted sushi. We walked up to the sushi place, and lo and behold, our younger daughter was already in there, eating sushi with two of her friends (on Wednesdays her school lets the kids eat lunch in the neighborhood). She did not seem at all surprised or dismayed to see us. We sat at the table in back of them. She finished before we did and as she got up to go back to school she waved and said, “Bye Mom. Bye Dad. Bye Nana!” It was such a funny, great, serendipitous moment.

Meanwhile, we danced separately tonight, and our big girl is in the midst of her 2nd night in the desert.