Exhilarated By the Time I Spent in the Dark
Perhaps resting isn't depressing, after all (and a whole lotta other maybes)
Cold, wet, and grey this early morning, with startstop showers and fluctuating temperatures that broaden the ruts in the long gravel driveway to my home. The same long, gravel driveway that a driver might curse and lament as her truck sways like a drunken boat crossing it, but loses interest in repairing once back inside by the warm wood stove, trying to dehydrate a little.
I heft the crates of full milk jugs inside, having picked them up from my local farmer. Now and again, I communicate with other women about their milk cows: space, time, cost, feed, and what to do with the excess gallons of milk they procure and yet don’t use every day. The story always unfolds like an insatiable mouse with a cookie, and ends up somewhere between milking at o’dark thirty twice a day and expanding my own drove of pigs to feed the surplus.
After reshuffling the entire refrigerator to fit the ten half gallon jars for the week, I put the kettle on and, standing there wi…