My work, my oeuvre: in the peripheral shadows, too remote for distress, yet relentlessly haunting me. I remember small children wrapped in warmth and tucked away from the soft sounds of a mop I swished across the floor. I knew that I should sleep. The thought of a pristine surface for their bare feet to scuttle across was too hard to resist. My paid work day is done, yet I continued feverishly while my limbs ached with fatigue. These days too are like that. I wrestle each minute of each hour to give me more than it has to offer. I grab between care-giving and caring and wolf down the seconds with a phone call to a colleague, a note of thank you for a review of my book, and draft a response to a request for an article. With blessings duly given, I write a paragraph. A paragraph that is like slipping on an evening gown without undergarments, standing on bare toes, and swirling the hem once in front of the long mirror. Then hastily letting it drop around my ankles, stepping out, and hanging it with care before starting another load of laundry.

I am not begrudging or complaining or martyring my efforts. Rather, it is a battle of sorts – a war with the second-hand as it sashays around the clock’s surface, indifferent to the multiplicity of my love. I can’t stand the second-hand’s smugness. I nimbly waltz past as it releases one of its never-ending ticks. I turn on it. My piercing stare slices each second in three. Yes three. Then I coax my shadowy work-self out of the remote corners where she marauds beyond the reach of the second-hand. She needs to know that those she loves are cared for – out of danger, thriving. Then she will come on stage and dance until sweat glistens and streams in rivulets, more salt-laden and plentiful than tears. With quick, sure steps she does not wait for the music – every tired muscle, scar and softness of skin giving to you in her presence.

Sprout Question: What keeps your fingers to the keyboard, on the shutter button or picking up the paint brush?

© 2009 Terrill Welch, All rights reserved.

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.