There was the swish of paintbrush against abrasive wood. An almost inaudible swish. It was a good contrasting sound, like how salty goes with sweet. Somehow the paint was giving life—new life—to an old surface. Like an ornery elderly person that didn’t like change, the wood ate the paint right up, sucking it in to force a quick dry. A quick dry makes a challenge for blending colors, but when I paint I am not to be thwarted. So the old privacy fence and I did our battle of wills. Slowly, the orange and yellow petals of a hugely over-sized Indian blanket flower began to take shape. And I think that ornery old fence liked it.
The fence and I continued this way for the next five hours. When you paint a mural, you really get to know your surface. There I was, kneeling on the grass, my feet smudged into zebra strips from dirt and bits of dry leaves clinging. The sun fell against me, turning my skin pink at the same time that I blended red and yellow into orange on the palette. That fence and I were intensely bonded when it was over. That fence and I were practically old friends—no, old lovers makes more sense. It was to do with the way I knew each crack and crevice, each knot and jagged edge of my partner.
But the five hours ended with the mural left to be completed another day, and I walked back toward the house. It was five hours of deep concentration, wherein the mind wonders to anywhere, maybe even to heaven, but the body remains hyper focused on autopilot. The mind escaping like that—it always makes for a confusing reunion upon its return. My feet felt each blade of grass bending beneath them. The air swimming around my head seemed odd. The blood pressure felt unregulated as my body managed to do something other than dipping a brush and smearing paint. I wondered back into the house, startled by the foreignness of the world.
I opened the door and bam—the extreme foreignness of the house hit me. It wasn’t exactly the house I left it.
The Moringa Powder Making Arm Workout
I have never quite decided what goes on inside my house, left in the hands of children unregulated, while I am away in the vegetable garden or tending a mural on some wall somewhere on the property—within grasp should an emergency occur, but well out-of-sight-out-of-mind. While my mind is drifting on the wings of a butterfly, from one lovely thought or deep contemplation to the next, other things take place indoors. A lot of other things.
Almost elegant, lace-like brown patterns were spread across the living room floor. They were spaced just so—one a little to the left, then another a little to the right, and so on, marking the direction my daughter had been walking in. If this were a piece of art, then the floor was her canvas and chicken poop was her paint.
I walked around it, into the kitchen. Someone decided to make muffins—excellent, someone knows how to bake. However, someone apparently does not know how to do dishes. Or rather, someone or multiple someones had constructed a statue inside the sink. A modern style, for certain. Bowls, cups, plates—all piled precariously and left untouched, because of course no one wants to defile a piece of art. Chocolate batter was smeared across the stove. The counter, not one to be out-done by a sink, was equally strew with flour dusted mixing bowls, discarded drinking glasses, a half-eaten pickle.
Art is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
I passed though the dining room and the smell of moringa hit me. The dining room table sat patiently, bearing the scent like a saint as it waited for the moringa leaves covering every square inch of its surface to dry into crispy little curled crescents. Until then, the table stood unusable. Hopelessly unusable, unable to allow somewhere to at least stack some of the currently unwashed artistic chaos from the kitchen counter, or somewhere to set dinner—should I discover a way to make it in the current state of affairs—to keep the dogs from sticking their big wet noses in it.
The dogs. Old Man Dog appeared at my side with accusing eyes. Those old eyes spent years being happy-go-lucky, but now, weathered by time—like that old fence—his eyes were impatient. Dinner? His eyes flashed. Where is my dinner? What kind of an owner are you, expecting an elderly hero such as myself to wait on my dinner? Where is the respect, where is the honor for having been your faithful bodyguard through all the vibrant days of my youth? All those days and nights, lying at your feet. All those growls and barks I shouted at the mailman. For what, to have my dinner forgotten in my old age? Where is it, woman? I repeat—where is my dinner!
“Soon.” I gave his head a pat. He stared on at me, eyes like laser beams.
Just a little more to go, as I feel my arms turning to jelly.
Outside the blue glow of dusk was gathering. Like little bits of confetti that is dropped faster and faster, heavier and heavier until it blacks out all else from sight, so dusk seems to slip in. Subtle at first, but then all of the sudden it comes in a flood. I slapped a frying pan onto the stove, avoiding the muffin batter. Crack, crack, crackedy crack—eggs into the pan. Toss in some ham. Sprinkle some of that almost dry moringa on top. Shove some carrots and a collard green into the juicer. Wham, bam, dinner was done, and a few dishes to add to the art in the sink, but where were the children?
“Look, we caught the bantam!” The girl rushed in. A nervous looking chicken was in her arms. Dirt was smeared across her forehead and a few grains might have fluttered down to the poop-prints on the floor as she flung her arms upright to put the skittish chicken further on display. And there she stood with food stain and other mysterious dark markings covering the better half of her party dress, formerly hanging neatly on a coat hanger in her closet for delicate indoor use only.
My eyes moved shiftily toward the door. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready for this—you know, maybe that Indian blanket flower needed a bit more yellow at the petal tips to really make them pop. It would be a shame to waste that extra yellow I poured out on the palette. Maybe I’d just had back outside.
Yes, just the elderly fence and I. And that's how we like it.