Art and Life

There was a time when things were different. She'd look at her navel and see lint and immediately start writing about it. Tapping away a noise in the background kept entering her consciousness. Absorbed with the words and flow of language, art would come.

Reading the words, her mug of tea was gone. It was 11:30 am. Time for real life to begin. Racing to the bathroom she showered, dressed, fed the cat, grabbed her purse and stopped at the door. It had snowed. No one told her it had snowed. There was no more snow on her car, the little boys down the road had used it all for an ongoing snowball fight. The road was clear.

Reaching for her car door, a cold smack of snow hit her on her right cheek. Maniacal laughter came from behind her own overgrown shrubbery. Livid, she packed a huge handful of snow and turned quickly to retaliate and slid on ice.

She sat up, her lip was bleeding. The little devil was no more than 5 years old. But he was so concerned. She grabbed another handful to put on her lip and then playfully threw a wad at him. The fight was on. His older brothers came to his rescue.

They helped her up.

“We're building snowmen.”

“You better hurry. Those snowmen will be marching into oblivion with the snow melting.”

They ran across the road deliberately skidding on a patch of ice to finish their work.

She dusted the snow off her clothes, sat down in her car, combed her hair and watched their image in her rear view mirror as they hurriedly rolled grass encrusted snowballs. 

photo courtesy of Donna Bennett