Fridays

It’s Friday- time to dust.

I look at the mantle and see particles floating by with wings of their own, propelled by an energetic ceiling fan.

The shelf is just out of reach but manageable with assistance from a step ladder.

Placement is crucial.

With each step taken, I am one rung closer to my destination of necessity.  And with every step, I experience increasing dread.  A sense of déjà-vu.

I’ve done this before.  I know what can happen.

Dusting, a seemingly harmless enough task.  Or is it?

Dust is stubborn- it clings to surfaces like memories cling to minds; tenacious memories that show no sign of loosening their grip, no matter how many Fridays pass.

Beyond the candlesticks, potted bamboo and A.A. Milnes’, The House at Pooh Corner, there awaits a layer of dust not privy to the naked eye.  All of this, situated against the backdrop of an earthy flagstone fireplace.

There should be a sense of family warmth, hearth and home; but the air up here is a bit chilled, stale and it makes me wonder… but no, the flue is closed.
 
As my rag parts the dust on the ceramic candlesticks, I see a reflection framing my daughter’s face as it smiles back to me from a bookcase across the room.

I reach out to dust off the Pooh books and am transported back in time; my daughter’s countenance an overlay on my mind’s eye, conjuring up snapshots of her childhood as they race through my head.  I relive my own childhood simultaneously, so aware of parallels and contradictions of chapters now written.

The bamboo begs for attention.  So green, so alive and thriving, its stalks reaching upward, not keen on marking time.

Lost in the moment, life feels ethereal; lines once definitive are blurred and boundaries have bowed.

It’s happened again:  My mind dares to go where my heart fears to feel.

Friday.  

Settled dust.  
Cobwebs model chains of events.

Leaning in to reach the back of the shelf, my rag stirs up more than dust.  From the inner recesses of a crack in the mortar, a spider appears ready to bite the hand that disturbs it.

I, too, am disturbed; perturbed really, at myself, at the unframed people I so carefully placed on the mantle- out of reach, out of sight but apparently never out of mind- at least not on Fridays.

They have voices of their own, stories they recite, secrets they wish to divulge; some from their graves, others from whispers barely audible since our last encounter.

Friday needs a fresh perspective, a new modus operandi.

Perhaps when I wash the dust rag, I will launder the lenses of my soul.  I will choose to make Fridays a priority, taking what I‘ve learned into every day of my life.  Remembering that what I don’t deal with today, I will have to face tomorrow.

I will focus more on the bamboo and less on things that minds conjure up when they are not growing and remain stationary, spinning like flywheels on the machine of time.

This I will do.  But for now, I’ll call it a day.