Two years of work culminated yesterday. Two years of fear and stretching and learning and giving up and getting back up and despair and fierce hope. After two years of work, I helped our local food co-op open its doors in a new space that is more than twice as big and is day to the night of our old church basement space. I am gently proding myself in the aftermath this morning, being very still yet exploratory, looking to find how I feel under all of constant thoughts of the next thing to be done on the long list of things still not done.

We had a private opening for our members Friday night. The entire staff and a big team of volunteering members were running around until the literal last minute until we opened our doors, putting things away, getting price tags up, straightening produce and everything else. It was all far from done, but it was good enough. And the members streamed in to see the store that they had built with their dedication, donations, loans, sweat-equity, and devotion.

It was pretty clear they were in love with it. The board showed up in lovey skirts and slick button up shirts and greeted all the members at the door as they came in. Our produce manager changed into a pretty outfit and wandered around the store greeting her friends and tearing up with happiness. The register rattled and hummed constantly. I tried to enjoy myself but I was still in the dirty clothes I had worn as I hustled around since 4:30 am trying to get the store ready in time for the 5pm opening, I was sweaty, unshowered, and still running, trying to keep up with all the the things that were found wrong and fix them fast so that the evening seemed seamless.

More than once in the evening I ran into something we needed help with and asked a board member for assistance and got a cold response or I was approached by board members to share member concerns and just felt crushed. Obviously I was exhausted and stressed and that makes anyone emotionally touchy, but there they were, turned out pretty and basking in the accolades and congratulations of their community at the table by the door or lounging with them on the porch, and here I was, toiling away with sweat on my brow to keep fixing and addressing and making right. I went into the utility closet at the back of my office at one point and just sobbed. Its not that they had never thanked me profusely for my work or given me my portion of the credit for getting us to that day, but the chill of acting like I was being a child when I asked for help or heaping piles of things members want changed on me while I was giving everything I had since 4:30 in the morning to make this night a success - I need the safe warmth of a hidden closet to cry in until I felt I could hold it together again and get back out there to keep working well into the night.

I worked until 9:30 and then I went home to make lists of all the things I needed to do between 6 am and 8 am the next day, when we would open to the general public for the first time. Walking to work at 5:30 the next morning, I was despondent, I felt bruised everywhere. After all this work, after how hard I tried, I felt kicked and I wasn't entirely sure why. But walking to work with the crows yelling at me from the trees in the early morning light, I felt spiritless. There was no moment at which I stopped last night and let myself think, "this is it, we did it, its beautiful." Some said I should, but how could I? There was still so much work and the constant needs of my staff and of our members coming to me which it is my job to meet?

How like me, to pick a Cinderella job. A job where even if you are the one who did a ton of the work to build the ballroom and make it sparkle, you are still the one who can't dance at the ball. I suppose some might have had it in them to have seen all that work that night as dancing, but all I heard in it was that my work was not enough and would never be done. Thing is, that is the nature of retail, which is why I need the hell out of it.

I did get to sit with my beautiful husband and son for 15 minutes on the co-op's porch near the end of the night - but what more could that be than catching my breath and taking a quick desperate drink of the people I love most in the world. Even when I love my work the most, I hate how it takes me from them. I can't be committed to work that is never going to let my life blend with theirs except on the weekends.

Many members did speak to me about their love of the store and gratitude for my work, how piss-poor I am at drinking that in. But I do know the members truly appreciate me, I always feel very supported and esteemed by them, despite my deficiency in ability to take it all in and drink it.

But there was one moment of the night that saturated me despite what a desert I can be. One of the board members came up to me at the end of the night with this smile of sheer happiness and gratitude and saying not a word, hugged me. And hugged me. It was a all-encompassing hug, strong and long, despite my prickly edges that make me afraid to really open to and enjoy such things, it took this in about me and accepted it and embraced me anyway. Then he leaned back with his hands still on my shoulders, and beamed such joy at me. No words could have said what that hug did, its gratitude, pride in our joint accomplishment, heart-felt fullness at what we had created for our community. And I think that hug is still working its way into me.

Yesterday morning, still in the thick of my sense of hopelessness, me and the produce manager went to the farmers' market, which is right across the parking lot from our co-op, at 6 am, before any of the customers are there and when the workers are still setting up their tents and putting out their wares. We took a giant cart and traipsed into the market aisles, stopping at one farmer's stand after another, picking up fresh plums, peaches, green beans, melons, eggs, meats, and apples. As our cart got fuller and fuller, my heart started to lift. We chatted with the farmers, each one a different character, and we pulled our rattling trolley full of bounty behind us, making people look up from almost every booth to see and smile. There was something we all seemed to feel, something that was pride in the bounty of our land wrapped up with pleasure at seeing a very human-scale economy at work that enriches us all. It was a little piece of something many of us yearn for.

And then I felt more myself. We opened to streaming crowds of customers and soon lines filled our little store's aisles until it was hard to shop at all. There were food samples being passed, conversations happening everywhere, carts being filled. And the whole staff and I were running every minute, trying to make it all work. By midday, it lost that desperateness it had the day before, though, and there was some point in the afternoon where, still bustling about every minute and working our asses off, we all realized it was going to work. A minute where we could see a future where we would not have to be complete slaves to our work and yet could work to make our store successful. There was a turning point, unmarked, where the work was still intense, but the level of its intensity became doable compared to the few days before. We started to be ourselves again, not the desperate deer in headlights we had been, and the feeling of staff unity returned too. The laughter became sincere again, not day before's laughter that tinged with edginess and ribbing that was a bit too hard, but laughter of relief and camaraderie.

I want out of this job, I haven't really made a secret of that. I love the people and I love doing something that enriches the community, but I am tired as hell of retail. (Margins, sales, and labor costs, oh my!) But I contain this paradox in me - I want to step away from things but I can't resist a challenge, even when I honestly don't want one! A general manager from a successful co-op south of us came to see our opening yesterday. He's been serving as a mentor to me through all of this, he's been managing food co-ops for over 20 years and is a font of knowledge on all things co-op, well connected to the larger food co-op industry.

He loved our location, was impressed with the execution of the project and was thrilled that we have an option on the space right next to our store. While taking, I mentioned that our expansion consultant said to not expect to be able to afford expanding for 4 to 5 years. A very calm and understated person, he said, "no, I think you better be ready for the fact that you're going to need to expand in 2 to 3 years. You are going to outgrow this space quick. Your sales projections are modest for this store, I think you are going to find you well exceed them."

Expand in 2 to 3 years? The expansion project was hell! And I plan to be waaaay gone by then. So why was I so energized by what he said? I had suspected the same but wanted to be cautious of saying anything out of my ignorance. I was proud, I felt that sparkle in my eye that I get when I am in pursuit of a goal. I really don't understand myself at all some times. But a exciting as that would be, I am not interested in *ever* doing work that takes me that far from my family ever again and I hope in 2 years to perhaps be the mother of another child - I couldn't possibly handle the stress of something like that again while pregnant of with an infant and I don't plan to ever try. If I am blessed with the ability to have another child, my family will fucking come first this time. Its a lingering, irrational bitterness with this job - that it almost always had to come before my family and my time to bond with my son. There is still even a bit of anger - if I had not quit my much less stressful job to come to the co-op and a job that was nothing like it had been billed when I was 6 months pregnant, would I have even had the complications? How much did I really sacrifice for this job? I know that Spirit moved through all of this, but sometimes my child mind still wonders and there are certainly parts of me that still grieve over the way Eli's birth happened. I see tiny newborns wrapped close to their mother's chests as they walk through the co-op doing their shopping, the child no more than a week old, and I can't trust myself to speak, I feel such longing and sadness. Maybe time will heal it.

While writing this, Mike left with Eli to get us fresh local eggs and muffins - from the co-op. I am proud, the pride comes out when I think of these simple things - a co-op that is now open early in the morning on Sundays, to provide folks with good eggs and handmade muffins.

I am doing my best to just turn the whole thing over to Spirit and to not need my moment, as I felt the board got theirs on Friday night. Let the work be enough and let the future take care of itself.