invisible work
I found this poem today at 37 Days(a soul awakening, heart inspiring, spirit lifting place that you all should visit regularly).
Most of you know how I love poetry; am touched by it and moved by it on deep, vibrational level. Reading - or rather experiencing - a good poem is an intense, transcendent journey for me. My response is visceral, I feel more profoundly awake and aware after absorbing the words than I did before. Every now and then I come across a poem that hits me as much intellectually as it does emotionally. My body tingles and my brain hums with the truth contained within the lines. This poem hit me there, deep in my gut AND deep in my head at the same time.
Invisible Work
Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don’t mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, “It’s hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there’s no one
to say what a good job you’re doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a
headache.”
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the
world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.
There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world’s heart.
There is no other art.
Alison Luterman-
Invisible work. As mothers we do a hell of a lot of invisible work. Invisible, underappreciated, tedious, fulfilling, mindless, inspiring, unrecognized, beautiful, focused, back breaking, heart lifting, meaningless, life-altering invisible work.
Invisible work so often forms the fabric of our days and knits together our increasingly fragmented experiences. It’s the way I just stopped writing these words for the third time to fill up a yellow plastic watering can so that Julie could carry on her gardening without interruption. It’s the fourth load of laundry today waiting to be moved from washer to dryer so there will be clean towels for the weekend. It’s the dried up toast crusts that I scraped into the garbage can after breakfast so I could begin the day with a clean kitchen and calm mind, and the way I ruffle Bella’s hair and whisper in her ear that she’s the bestest kid ever when I pass her in the hall. It’s the way I put off all the important things I had to do to paint my toenails orange just now, just because I knew it would make me smile. It’s the way I’m writing this while I hold the phone against my shoulder - on hold with Dell for the eight hundredth time this month, trying to fix my laptop so that I can proof photos and be outside with my kids at the same time. It’s those constant unseen attempts to balance their needs with my own commitments and desires.
Sometimes it is the invisible parts of my work, not just as a mother - but as a doula, photographer, woman - that I find the most meaningful. The behind the scenes, the scut work, the down and dirty nobody-cares-but-it-has-to-be-done work. Sometimes that’s where the magic lies, where the Zen hides out, where our most honest contribution to life is found. Sometimes though, to be perfectly honest, it’s soul weary, back breaking, boredom inducing bullshit. But somebody’s gotta do it, and so I do – as we all do - every single day of our lives.
It’s making the millionth peanut butter and jelly sandwich, proofing images from a recent photo shoot (when you’d rather be drinking tequila), untangling hopelessly tangled jump ropes, composing (hopefully) insightful and witty blog entries in the school pick up line, pushing a toddler on a swing higher-higher-higher so they can feel the exhilaration of the freefall. It’s keeping track of doctor appointments and when the mortgage is due and what the heck you’re going to need at the grocery store so you can make dinner for friends on Tuesday night. It’s all the stuff that exists between mundanities of life and transcendence of art, and it’s the achingly simple beauty of the spaces in between.
We all do this stuff. We do it over, and over, and over again. People rarely notice us doing it, because they have their own invisible work to focus on. There are no Nobel Prizes for the invisible work of humanity, no Academy Awards, no kudos’ being shouted from mountaintops. All there is is the quiet satisfaction we get from living the results of our work. The sense of rightness you get from seeing the strong, vibrant and secure children you are raising, the maybe-not-sparkling-clean-but-at-least-not-embarrassingly-dirty house at the end of a crazy day. It’s the to-do list with more things crossed off than not. It’s putting your aching feet up and cracking open a cold beer in front of a movie you’ve been dying to watch. It’s knowing that you are far from perfect, and you probably fucked up a time or two, but you got through the day and at least nobody got seriously injured…
What is your invisible work? What work “stitches up your world day and night”? Remember, even though parts of your work are invisible, all of your work is invaluable. Tell me about the work of your heart…