Working The Line

There are four of us in this family and we are all in a line.  Not any line you could see but a line nonetheless.  Our paces are determined by age and gender and I am at its end, being the oldest and the male-est.  I rise early, hours before the rest, to write and reflect and feel the peace of silence and selfishness.

I write and comfort comes along with a sense of accomplishment.  I write and minutes, fractions of an hour are hacked off like cull wood from a roadside chainsaw sculpture.  The pen dances away ideas, bold and unexpected.  I stare into the written matrix that is my mind and wonder how!  How did I do this?  Where does this come from?  Can I truly trust creativity to return at Will?

Every morning and some evenings as as well?  I add pressure to my accomplishment as soon as it is written, a dash of doubt to make this my last guaranteed masterpiece.  But I am a clever creature.  I know well enough that this gift returns, not every time but often enough to be relied upon.  I am at least that clever, I congratulate myself!

That sound! I twist my head to see the clock.  All the wood has been cut.  The sculpture finished.  The others groan and shift at the threshold between sleep and waking.  I have used too much time.  The line is about to form and I as its anchor!  No time to panic.

I tip-toe in stealthy silence, recovering my book and assuring myself I have my glasses.  I glide by one door after another as the other three stretch and feel pressure that must be released.  Like the ghost of Christmas I spirit past their opening doors, invisible, undetected!  And in the last possible moment I rush as a specter past paintings, pushed cockeyed by the ghostly wind I create and I pass into my sanctuary, sleek, cold, shiny, clean, pulling the door silently closed behind me!  With the tiniest of clicks I secure the lock and breathe as free as any spirit who has evaded detection, fled from the exorcism, into that one place from which he can not be expelled.  Not by priest nor family, too late!  I am safe and I sit down, open my book and get lost in a chapter, written by some other spirit just for me.  It is lovely and I am suddenly in a different country.  Far away and barely aware of the pleas coming from behind the locked door.

"DAD!!!  I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!!!"