Dust In The Wind

There are days you wake up feeling like you've got the world by the tail. This day didn't start out nearly that optimistic. No. I woke to a pounding on my front door at 7:45 AM. Okay, maybe it was really just a knocking - but at 7:45 in the morning, on a Saturday, it's pounding. Of course, the paint contractor I hired to repair ceiling damage in my family room arrived early. Who's ever heard of a contractor arriving EARLY?

His mission was to work a miracle and fix the 3ft long tear that resulted from my roof leaking several weeks ago. My brand new roof. So now I have another brand new roof and a brand new ceiling, courtesy of my Knight in white coveralls to boot! I just didn't expect him before I had a chance to down a pot of Folgers.

The contractor was here all day. I took my pot of coffee into my office and checked my e-mail, burned some new tunes onto disk, ate a Pop-Tart, poured more coffee, watched the news, and did everything but write.

Oh, yeah... that's right, did I mention I'm a writer? Actually I freelance full-time which means I can procrastinate in the morning if I feel like it. And that is exactly what I did.

Most weeks I try to get all of my work related writing penned before the weekend hits, that way I can feign a more normal schedule. Hey it gives me a reason to get excited about Fridays. Anyway, as I was hanging out in full sloth mode it occurred to me that my office was a wreck. Eh, I ignored it while I enjoyed another cup of coffee.

I don't know if I can begin to describe the amount of dust that was produced by the work being done on my ceiling. Let's just say that my Knight in white coveralls was surrounded by such a thick cloud of misty looking dust that he took on an almost ethereal quality. There ended my procrastinating, slothful morning. The biggest shock was just how much dust settle beneath the tarps my contractor painstakingly laid everywhere.

The contractor was finished by mid afternoon, but I did not stop cleaning until round about 8:30 PM. Of course the dust had one benefit. It forced me to address the mess in my office. But I didn't simply clean - I completely restructured my entire workspace. I went through all of my old papers, got rid of a ton of crap I no longer need. I even cleaned out my Grandmother's old sewing machine desk. She past away in 1991 and I became the familial custodian of her old, and I mean old, Singer sewing machine. It is kind of neat really. It is housed in this heavy wooden desk and the actual sewing machine is stored inside the desk. I never thought to use it as a writing desk before now. Heck, I never really wanted to go poking around in the drawers.

It is odd how even after so many years have past it still felt as if I were snooping as I pulled out old bits of paper, tons of thread, elastic binding, and a treasury of old sewing machine toolery. All kinds of bits and pieces that reminded me of my Grandmother, who we referred to simply as "Little Nana." She was a seamstress in the fashion district in New York for most of her adult life. As I rummaged around in her old Singer it dawned on me that this is the very machine she used to create dresses that were truly masterpieces. I found myself wishing that the darn thing could talk. What stories could it tell me about the crystal button I found or the pen from the funeral home that hosted my Grandfather's wake. Why did my Grandmother keep religious medals and a cross in the drawers of her sewing machine? Where in the world did she find the funny little red leather change purse with the silver buttons that folded like origami?

I spent hours in my dust filled office, in my dust filled house peeling layers of history from within the drawers of the Singer. All the little bits of the past stood as tiny nuances of a life that was in so many ways, woven in the thread of that machine. I thought about how many hours my Nana spent laboring over the Singer. How many buttons did she sew, or seams did she hem. And it occurred to me that for all our differences, many parallels can be drawn between her working life and mine. She worked hard to perfect her craft. She spent long days and probably nights at her work desk. She was never satisfied with less-than-perfect; I clearly recall her scraping fabric to start anew.

Sounds a great deal like the life of a writer to me. Now as I sit in my dust free office in my dust free house (for the moment it's dust free anyway) Little Nana's old Singer is my new writing desk. It's giving me a renewed sense of my own history and just having it so nearby is surprisingly comforting. Raiding it's drawers afforded me new insight on my Nana's life. I kept the old cross and the religious metals and the funny little red change purse in it, along with the spools of thread and toolery. Those items are supposed to remain there. Just like I was supposed to wade through a dust covered mess before I reconciled to snoop in Little Nana's drawers, revealing the remnants of her life.

The Singer feels like an old friend now. It shared it's secrets. It seems fitting that even though I'll never sew, I'll work and write on the same space where Little Nana spent so much of her time. So much for dust.