Of late, life is delivered best when sitting still.
Hot and drenched with sweat from hard labor in 97 degrees with high humidity, I sought respite in a tattered kitchen chair set to catch a breeze from the doorway. The kitchen walls were stripped bare and with no diversions I just contemplated the floor. Long leaf pine boards, some cracked, some stained, some rotted to the point of being able to see through to the ground below.
How many steps across them in 120 years?
An answer was laid out for me in the doorway to the pantry. With the cabinets gone, I had a clearer view and saw the remains of the transition from kitchen to pantry. An inch thick pine board placed to cover the cuts in the flooring still in "one piece" yet worn so thin and smooth as to have a story of its own.
Whose steps traveled in and out to stock the shelves with new preserves or to peek at the freshly baked additions to the pie safe? How bountious was the larder at harvest? How important had those home made staples been through the Depression, through wars, through celebrations? How had the contents of the shelves changed over that time? And how many times had that threshold been crossed?
Like the floor, it had is own stories to tell, all measured one step after another.
Hot and drenched with sweat from hard labor in 97 degrees with high humidity, I sought respite in a tattered kitchen chair set to catch a breeze from the doorway. The kitchen walls were stripped bare and with no diversions I just contemplated the floor. Long leaf pine boards, some cracked, some stained, some rotted to the point of being able to see through to the ground below.
How many steps across them in 120 years?
An answer was laid out for me in the doorway to the pantry. With the cabinets gone, I had a clearer view and saw the remains of the transition from kitchen to pantry. An inch thick pine board placed to cover the cuts in the flooring still in "one piece" yet worn so thin and smooth as to have a story of its own.
Whose steps traveled in and out to stock the shelves with new preserves or to peek at the freshly baked additions to the pie safe? How bountious was the larder at harvest? How important had those home made staples been through the Depression, through wars, through celebrations? How had the contents of the shelves changed over that time? And how many times had that threshold been crossed?
Like the floor, it had is own stories to tell, all measured one step after another.