The challenge words for this week's story are from sundays whirligig
feelings, dirt, metal, many, clock, stuck, turned, one, meal, forty, lint, let
My story is:
The clock on the mantel
How quickly the dust piles up, she thought. Seems like I am always chasing dirt.
the clock ticked loudly on the mantel, tick. tick. tick. Time ticking by, minutes turning into years, as if turning forty wasn't reminder enough.
She felt stuck at the same time she felt carried along the timeline against her will. Like a solid crowd of people so close, she can lift her feet and be carried along wherever they are going.
tick tick tick.
She wiped the metal table with her dust cloth and looked out the window at snow. Why did she feel like this? Like she was stuck between time stopping and rushing by?
Her feelings were often too strong and too many for her to understand, even if they came from her.
Chime!
The clock sent out a loud reminder that it was one o'clock. Fine she thought, fine. now what? It's one o'clock what does that matter now that the days felt long and lonely. Cleaning the house gave her a sense of control, but she couldn't control the movement of time, or the disconnect she felt, or how her only son had just left for university.
Seems like he had always been with her. She had her only child when she was just 19, and now she had to let him go into the big world with his own clock to tick tick tick.
She lifted the dry towels into a basket and cleaned out the lint tray of the dryer. Less clothes to wash, but she still had laundry. And dust, meals to fix, a dog to let out to play.
Nothing was different and everything changed, tick tick tick.
Can you relate to my words? To a fictional story that comes from my imagination and heart? I never had children but this is how I think one might feel. I am a woman who struggles with loneliness, and wants her time to matter, to create something larger than myself, to relate to others.
What do you think? I'd love to know...
LeeAnna
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2 comments:
Just thinking that writing and quilting (and all the steps needed to quilt) are all part of the human habit of taking chaos and attempting to organize into sensemaking in communicating with self and others.
you are very good at both.
I don't have children, so no idea what it would be like when they leave home. There have been times when I felt like the character, sad, listless, marking time, waiting for something. You showed all those emotions well, LeeAnn.
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