Member-only story
Path: the Will to Get out of Bed
This morning, I swept the paving stones, the ones that lead from our driveway to the front door to the garden and on to the street. Please. Hold your applause.
It might not sound like much. Even though there are 130 of them. And maybe more, yet buried under the weight of windblown dirt, leaves, and needles. Who knows? I can’t recall the last time anyone swept them.
In any case, the stones are small, and the great deed occupied only twenty minutes of my day. But it meant all the world to me. It reminded me that there’s something I can do today that will make a difference. A difference in the appearance of the walk, in the surety of someone’s step, and….in how I feel about myself.
Because earlier, I’d been lying in bed doubting that I possessed the will to arise. To face another day of smoke-filled skies and acrid aromas wafting in from the nearest forest fire. Of despairing the nonstop tirade of bald-faced lies spewed by heartless politicians. Of deploring the senseless murder of another person of color. Of bemoaning that my college-age kids can’t go back to their respective campuses, those “perfect places” we’d worked so hard to identify for each of them.
The weight of all the ills of the world buried me deep into the mountain of bedding I’d amassed in the nightmares of my sleep. Only the lure of a pumpkin…
