The thought invades my consciousness before I’m even aware of being awake. They’ve chosen it to mess with my head, I’m positive of it. They know how much I hate cheese. I’m not even sure I want to do the challenge at all, and a cheese prompt on the very first day hasn’t done much to inspire me.
I sigh as I get out of bed and greet the day. Black thoughts lie heavy on my mind as I walk through the empty house. M’s away in Brussels or Paris or Rome or some other beautiful European city, and I’m talking to my cats again. Life has become complicated, and I feel it in my bones. I made plans, and they’re not working out. An endless series of anti-climaxes.
I am not writing about cheese.
I stare at the computer screen, see the cheese posts appear one after the other, and I know there’s no way I can do this challenge. The writing, the reading, the commenting, it will wear me out, bring me down. By the end of the month, there will be nothing left of me.
I close the laptop and go outside. Last night’s blizzard has gifted us with several inches of heavy snow, and as the plows came by this morning they left a knee-deep wall of snow five feet wide between my house and the world. It seems symbolic, and I contemplate leaving it as it is, but I know M won’t make it past the wall and into the driveway when he finally comes home.
I grab the big snow shovel and start working. Back and forth I push the thing.
I am not writing about cheese.
“You have a lot of snow.”
The little voice comes from behind me somewhere and I turn around. The little girl next door stands there, and she’s inspecting my driveway with an expert eye.
“I do, don’t I?”
“Yep,” she says, “we’re all done with ours.”
“Yeah, I saw that.”
She walks off, and I continue with my shoveling. Back and forth, back and forth.
“I’ll help you if you want.”
She’s back, and she’s carrying a child-sized red shovel.
“You know, that would be great. Thank you,” I say, and she gets started.
Together we work, side by side. She tells me she’s 4 years old and has an older brother who’s 6. She has little brother, too, but he’s just a few weeks old, so she’s not sure he counts yet. I tell her about my cats, and about my work.
She makes narrow paths in the snow. Happy and carefree, a swirling pattern in the snow next to my perfect straight lines. Lines executed with the military precision of someone who’s forgotten all about fun and is irrevocably stuck in the tangle of expectation and predictability.
She asks me if I’ll be her friend, and I tell her I would like that very much. She can’t stay very long; she has to go home for dinner. She yells a happy goodbye to me from her front porch, and I abandon my straight lines in favor of soft curves around the driveway. I dig out the car from under the snow and carry more firewood into the house.
When I sit down in front of my laptop again, I’m tired and hungry and my entire body aches from the hard work, but I feel rejuvenated. Maybe I’ll write a post after all.
But I’m still not writing about cheese.
This quickly thrown together post was, to my great surprise, written for Nicky and Mike's 30 Minus 2 Days of Writing III. To see the other posts, please visit We Work For Cheese. *
