Another noon day drive out past the flock of turkeys, the osprey midflight clutching a dead branch in its claw, the ghost of a fox scampering across the road, the red barns and greening fields.  It’s May 3^rd in southern Wisconsin, and leaves are finally happening.  I’ve got my uniform on: a pair of comfy shoes, pony-tail up, and a denim vest, ready for Day 6 of the Mother’s Day Rush. I took a seasonal job with a small flower business in the Town of Stoughton, some short-term work to ease a lull between creative paying projects.

Since going solo in self-employment five years ago I hadn’t really considered part-time work (except for the early days of waitressing at a Neapolitan pizza joint ….and relearning what a terrible waitress I am). Out of curiosity I scrolled through the Craigslist Jobs section and found some interesting offerings hidden amongst a slew of ads for delivery drivers and shopkeepers.  Those that caught my eye included personally assisting someone’s mother-in-law and her dog, pruning a vineyard, and wrapping Mother’s Day bouquets.

It’s day six of the thirteen day rush and we are set up hip-to-garbage can-to-hip at our work stations, hands moving deftly and efficiently at the task of pinching off damaged rose petals, arranging shimmer and ruscus, and carefully sliding the floral assembly into its teddy bear clutched vase with a heart that says ‘I love mom’. We work one bouquet design a day until the quota is complete, the operation calculated to the minute, and our progress logged and monitored by the Team Leader.  We have 180,000 bouquets to complete by May 8^th and the pressure is on.

I thought I might be bored to tears by the monotony of the exercise, but find the work surprisingly meditative, and since it’s kind of brainless activity I can tune into podcasts and pass the time learning from other writers and entrepreneurs. There’s also something very gratifying and satisfying about working with your hands. Making things. Things that are specifically made to express love and gratitude, and hopefully make another woman feel appreciated and special. I think about the men who will be grabbing these flowers, some thoughtfully, some hastily, mostly Latino men in the Chicagoland area, a demographic of men who are “particularly good at taking care of their women”.

The flowers come all the way from Columbia, South America. I learn from my environmental economist friend, while sharing a beer at our local pub, that the flower industry in Columbia is hogging water resources that really should be used for growing food.  The rose, surrounded by lilies and ‘poms’ and ‘spiders’, wrapped in pink cellophane, and on display in neighborhood drugstores, was grown in Columbian soil, cut by the hands of Columbian workers, wrapped in cardboard and packaged on refrigerated containers, flown to Miami, and carried in refrigerated trucks all the way to a little business park surrounded by agricultural fields in rural southern Wisconsin, then assembled into neat and efficient bouquets ranging from the cheesy to the elegant by mostly working class mothers seeking part-time income in a brightly lit warehouse.

Many of them are housewives, some mothers and daughter duos, young mothers with toddlers at home. Most are adding this as a supplement to their other jobs as janitors at truck stops, hairdressers, and teachers. I feel a bit like Laverne and Shirley driving to work in my denim getup and was tickled to learn we actually have a Shirley, a Peppermint Patty type character who spends her ten-minute break out by the refrigerated trucks sucking on Pall Malls.  Barb and her husband Jesus are killing time and making extra cash as they figure out how to make their way home to Las Vegas.  I get a kick out of Natalia, an animated dark-haired Maldovan woman with a strong eastern European accent and park my butt on the box crates with my lunch near her station to be entertained by her colorful stories.  Tiffany is the youngest of the regular workers, aged 20 with a streak of blue in her corn bloom blonde hair.  She works another flower shop by day and is taking college courses online.  She doesn’t know what she wants to do or be, but when you ask what she’s really interested in, it’s refurbishing old cars.

For the most part, the women are middle-aged, late 40s, 50s and 60s, and I feel a great deal of respect for how sturdy and steadfast they are, standing on their feet for eight or more hours a day, uncomplaining, taking pride in their work, helping each other, being courteous, kind, sharing baked goods, stories and smiles. Day six of thirteen and not quite feeling like an insider yet, but not quite as much of an outsider either.  I didn’t know what to expect going in to the experience, and it’s funny to admit this but, I have a feeling I’ll quite miss it when it’s over.