I work on Saturdays, around here a day for community and family events.
I have arrived late from work to a birthday party, abuzz with inspiration from a professional conference while children run off a frosting buzz at the park.
I have logged on to Zoom just in time for an out-of-state memorial service, attending on my laptop from the community garden shed after teaching a local class.
I have rolled into hosting friends at home, smelling minty and dusty from work, unloading any live plants or animals from the car but leaving other class materials to mess with after taking care of humans.
I have carted my kids along to work countless times, to plant nurseries, libraries, gardens where they play with grasshoppers or hunker down on mobile devices or use garden tools to reach wayward toys.
Or, because it’s Saturday, they have their own Boy Scout events or choose to stay home and do chores.
I have Saturday chores too, silly because really they fall on Friday and Sunday when I work on Saturdays.
I work on the road, logging professional drive time by radio shows and personal calls and snacks and scenery.
I remember hearing NPR news that made me cry joyful tears, on Tangerine Road near the old landfill.
I remember hearing a fictional story woven from two real broadcasts vying for my car antenna’s attention, on the hilly grasslands way home from Arivaca.
I remember hearing how to cook a steak (which I don’t eat) and how to build a business (all examples much bigger than mine) and new words and familiar voices, while sailing up and down I-10 through a sea of palo verdes then city.
I remember chatting with my mom because I could, keeping my husband in the loop with my ETAs, and catching that Kid 1 was back early from a hike and where am I?
Sometimes I let thoughts roll around in my head like the car’s steady wheels – practice conversations, writing that may or may not make it to paper or keyboard, future lessons, past reflections, making order from mess.
I am accompanied by the crunch of an apple, my fuel for the road, plus coffee of course.
I remember the journeys and keep going as a mobile service to grow gardeners.
I work from home, gardening plotted over e-mail or spilled on the carpet.
Just yesterday I vacuumed up wheat seeds, then put the remaining bags of wheat away in a drawer in my bedroom that doubles for storage.
Same day, my husband followed my voice to the front yard, and chuckled when he spotted me stuffing soil into pots.
Same week, I was deep into my laptop to remind students of Saturday’s class, review the roster, delete spam, schedule the next library program, glance at events I would enjoy attending if I wasn’t also leading events I enjoy.
But I am terrible about toggling, jumping from Outlook to Facebook to Yahoo to Class Dojo to text, clicking as much out of a scattered brain as out of the innate need for humans to use our hands.
So I cleaned the kitchen, filled the backyard pond, pet the dogs, packed the car with shovels and gloves, pondered planting seeds, set old garlic cloves in water on the kitchen counter to see if they will sprout.
I took Kid 2 to the library for the novel he had eagerly awaited, and nodded to the librarian who is sometimes my colleague and with whom we also volunteered to label bags of human food earlier this week.
I work from home, and it’s messy.
I work from home, and it’s a beautiful life.
Photo by Ethan Van Devender