And the Holiday Parties Begin...

Even though I have not yet returned to work, I decided to make an appearance at my firm's holiday party. It was an opportunity to catch up with colleagues and watch the articling students perform their highly anticipated skits for the evening's entertainment, and it all seemed like a peachy idea until the day before the event, when butterflies began to take up permanent residence in my belly.

You see, unlike other work events that I had attended while on leave, the holiday party included more than just the lawyers. Pretty much everyone at the firm attends the event, from law clerks, to assistants, to kitchen staff. The holiday party is in fact more of an annual staff appreciation evening, where nine-to-fivers and overtime employees are thanked profusely for putting up with the demands of quirky, workaholic lawyers.

While I had already made numerous wigged appearances in front of my fellow lawyers, this would be my grand debut as a blond in front of the staff. Admittedly, this may sound a little self-centered - who really cares if I show up, and why does the colour of my hair even matter? The world does not revolve around me, whether or not I have been on a six-month cancer vacation. And why would the staff take particular interest in the arrival of a chronically absent mid-level associate?

When you work in a law firm, you quickly find out that it is the assistants who carefully cultivate and fuel a sophisticated system of gossip that rivals the London Underground in its vastness and complexity. If you want to know which lawyer is having marriage troubles, who is leaving the firm to work with a competitor, or who is expecting, you simply need to tap into the Network of Assistants who Gossip (NAG).

Lawyers would probably want to gossip as well, but they don't, mainly for lack of time. Plus they are isolated in their offices, working independently most of the day (and night) and often remaining at their desk during lunch. This frequent isolation and intense focus on work is why a number of lawyers at my firm actually have no idea that I am on leave (and this includes lawyers who work in my department), despite the fact that I have not stepped foot into the office for six months, and that a jet setting colleague from the New York office uses my Toronto office so often he practically has squatting rights.

Unlike lawyers, the assistants work in open-concept cubicles in the company of others, a veritable breeding ground for gossip, and every day at noon they meet in Ikea style lunchrooms where they can disseminate all the latest firm news. So perhaps now you can appreciate the anxiety that was building up inside of me during the hours preceding the holiday party, where I would make my entrance in a voluminous wig (to cover up my pathetic wispy hair) and in a high necked blazer (to hide my gross radiated skin), the Schadenfreude practically palpable among the assistants.

As luck would have it, on the day of the event, I was having an undisputed good wig day. You may initially assume that a wig will always pretty much look the same because, well, it's a wig. While synthetic hair isn't quite as unruly as natural hair, wigs still vary considerably in how they will look on a given day. Some days, they just have too much volume and you look like you are stuck in an episode of Dallas. Other days, they are a mess of static flyaways. But once in a while, they can actually look pretty decent. And on the day of the holiday party, I looked like I had just stepped out of a salon sporting real, actual, honest-to-good fake highlights and a great blow-out. In a world of bottled blonds, hair extensions and Jessica Simpson hairpieces, natural hair is a relative term and wiggies like me are just a little further down (okay, way down) on the spectrum, especially on a good wig day.

So the moment was finally upon me and I ventured into the Royal York hotel, past various other corporate parties until I found the right one. As planned, I arrived just as cocktails were winding down and dinner was about to begin, wearing my carefully selected BCBG Christian Jacket, which not only managed to have flair and remain professional, it also had the distinct advantage of having a collar high enough to cover up my peeling skin.

As soon as I entered the cocktail room, I bumped into colleagues and the conversation was neither stilted nor awkward. There are a cluster of lawyers who follow-up with me regularly to chart my progress, and it was good to see them.

I gradually made my way into the reception and to my pre-assigned table, which consisted of a semi-circle of assistants, facing a semi-circle of lawyers. It was clear that the hour-and-a-half of cocktails had gotten the party started. One assistant, sitting directly opposite me, shouted from across the table that it was good to see me, and when was I going to return from my leave. Well, anyone at the table who might not have been aware of my questionable status now certainly knew. I politely replied that the plan was to be back in January, and then attempted to divert the attention away by complementing her on how well her necklace matched her blouse, which seemed to do the trick.

The remainder of the evening went relatively smoothly. There was the odd employee or too who exclaimed, "Where have you been!" - to which my cheeky reply is always, "Where have YOU been?" One computer tech person, after asking how long I have been married and hearing my reply of four years, seemed absolutely flabbergasted and asked "And you don't have kids?" I chose not to promptly disintegrate into a spiral of depression and instead gritted my teeth and excused myself. To his credit, he is a nice guy and did try to recover by saying, "waiting to become partner, are you?"

By the end of the evening, it was clear that NAG was in full effect, since all the assistants who said good-bye added that they would see me in January when I was back at work. Which led to some puzzled looks from the lawyers who asked if I had been away. To which I replied that I was just hanging out for a bit and would be back soon.