The sky is cloudless, the temperature is perfect and I am torn between being in the dirt planting vegetable seeds, tomato and jalapeno pepper plants – or writing. Since I seem to only be able to write in solitude, when R leaves to run an errand, I drop my spade and dash inside to write, and when his car pulls in the driveway, I head back to pull weeds and water plants. And in this way, I find a kind of rhythm.
Here I am inside now – garden gloves abandoned in the dirt. I have less than an hour before M is home from school. A room of my own? I imagine such a place for myself and maybe, one day we can transform the crawl space – not quite an attic. But if I could really disappear for hours on end to a cubby of my own, away from them and our shared life, would I? Certainly, if this was my ‘work’ but not now. All moments beyond the hours spent at my job are carefully mined and ultimately, it is the time I spend with these ones I love, that is most precious to me. But were I to win the lottery…