welcome readers & writers... it's photog friday! every other day of the week the photos you see on this blog are mine, though periodically i'll use one taken by my husband or my eleven year old. but each friday we'll celebrate a photo contribution by a photographer* better than me (and that's not hard!). see last week's photog friday celebration here. this week our guest photographer is kelli west. kelli is a fellow blogger (you can see more of her wonderful photography there). many thanks, kelli, for your gorgeous photo!
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what written response (story, poem or creative non-fiction) does kelli's photo inspire in you? 250(ish) words or less. i'd love to read it - just click on comments below. here's my take on the photo:
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I stand at the kitchen window, elbow deep in sudsy water. I suppose I could stack the dishes in the dishwasher, but this way I get to watch him longer. Out there on his tractor he's a happy man, and how I love to see him happy. It took me years, you know, to understand that it was right for him to be happiest at his work. That work has quite literally put food on our table for fifty odd years. But when I married him (at seventeen years old, mind you) I thought that he should find his happiness in me. That first year especially. Land, I don't know how we got through. I dreamed he'd be so taken with me that he wouldn't want to leave the house. I'd imagined that he might linger in bed those first early mornings before starting his daily round of chores. But not Gardner. Gard set his alarm clock on our first night back from Niagara Falls, where we took two nights for our honeymoon, and the next morning he was out of bed like a shot feeding the chickens. I cried all through breakfast and, bless him, he couldn't muster two words to comfort me. Just devoured his scrambled eggs and toast, dropped an awkward kiss on the top of my head and went back out. But somewhere in our journey together, somewhere along about fifteen years, I'd say, I finally got it through my thick skull that Gardner loves by doing. He woos by providing. He adores me by being a man of character and a strong work ethic, the man I fell in love with. That's what makes him happy.
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come write with me!
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*readers & writers, if you know any photographers who might like to contribute photog friday, just have them email me: writeawayeveryday [at] gmail [dot] com.
I love this, what a scene you've set! I can feel my fingers getting pruny in dishwater and smell the country air... :-)
ReplyDeleteInteresting how the curve from the top of the back swooping down to become the right arm rest had always intrigued him. What was it about that curve that piqued his interest? He'd climbed up on the tractor several hundred times, maybe more than two thousand, even, over these years; mostly approaching it from the right side, and clambering up from the left. His imagination had also popped the curve and bulge of the corner of the seat back, right at the juncture where the arm rest left it, into different shapes and forms as he moved toward and around the machine. He saw things which weren't there and yet were because his eye put them there. The whole back plate turned into three different faces as he made that short journey; frowning, looking down at something, ogling him wantonly. It was an entertainment for him. He sighed, deeply as he settled himself for the last time into the seat and clicked the engine into life.
ReplyDeletePerhaps his son was right. Of course, even his great-great-great-grandfather had read for law, and each of the successors to the farm had practiced some additional profession. But none had studied business. Business was a personal activity. You felt and learned your way through it. Mostly it consisted of selling fine vegetable products to cognizant buyers, and both parties were left feeling good with comfort in their hearts. But this farm would be sold, for more money than he had realized existed, and he would pass his time at something less strenuous. Water colors, perhaps.