a desk

The days speed by to a soundtrack of lawnmowers and prairie wind, traffic edging over the 30km speed limit outside my window because the sun tempts drivers to propel themselves faster into the summer.

Just think! Summer! After six months of snow! Warm breezes, luxuriously long days, watermelon!

My life right now is all piles of books, nap time focus, glasses of water, chocolate wrappers. It is beans and rice, chicken puree, sweeping the floor three times a day. It is cuddles, long walks, introducing tomato plants to the fresh air.

My maternity leave is ending. It could last longer--blessed Canada--but I have serious work to do prepping new courses for next year. The symbol of this shift in life seasons is a proper desk, set up in front of the bedroom window. This was Josh's desk in Chicago, and it spent nearly a year in storage, but now the aesthetics must bow to function: I must have a place to scrawl my annotations, stack my folders, plot my lectures.

I do these things with sweet potato smeared on my knuckles and chickpeas smashed and drying into the shoulder of my shirt. But still, I do them.

How do we discover ourselves in the interstices of Before and Now and Later? How do we craft identities, fashion lives, out of recollections of who we were, and are, and want to be?

Daily practice, probably. Mixing up the bread dough. Sitting down to the desk. Popping back up again when called for.