My own handprint mocked me. I was on my knees with a scrub brush in my hand when I noticed it (a random handprint) and felt myself slowly falling back onto my butt, disappointed in this hand apparition, this metaphor for the many other times I had fallen short by carelessness.
I’ve been working on my restoring my floors for what feels like far too long.
Time is my nemesis: having enough time in big enough blocks to get the job done. The enough time eludes me, too often, like for some of us the enough money – though I have been there in the recent past – eludes us. Or the not enough education or not enough bedrooms in our home and on and on we flounder in the “not enough world.”
Have you spent much time in that horrible “not enough world?”
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am the only “once-in-a-while” resident of such a place. It was definitely where I found myself well into the project when it entered my line of sight. I had left a print of my hand on a nearby section of freshly sanded eighty year old wood.
Last weekend I was the icky gunk from movie theater popcorn leaked through my purse onto the floor and left a huge stain on the freshly prepped wood. My only recourse was to scrub and scrub and scrub, experimenting with a variety of DIY fix-it possibilities.
By the way, DIY, if you don’t know, means “Do-It-Yourself” which is how I have been taking on this floor project along with the help of a couple friends.
So there I was, diligent after being careless trying this fix and that idea and the next possible eraser of my faux pas.
That particular handprint is gone. It is a week later, another day of sanding later, and I am waiting for help to arrive in the form of Megan, the woman who recently painted my living room and bedroom. She is going to learn the art of floor finishing from Cameron, who is overseeing this entire experience.
I have spent much more time on my hands and knees, scrub brush in hand.
I have perfected immediate wiping away of anything that might leave a print of any sort. I feel a satisfaction from figuring out how to negotiate small details that would have eluded me before we started this project, all because Katherine saw a photo and said, “This would be a great time to refinish the floors.”
She tossed the “wouldn’t it be wonderful if” gauntlet and my frustrations and victories have picked it back up, dusted the floors off for what feels like the seventeenth time, and we’re moving forward happily. Megan arrived so I may focus on my life work and she can focus on the floor in my bedroom, thankfully.
It will be wonderful when these floors are finished.
Time is plentiful, in a month when I’m lounging in my Virginia Woolf inspired bedroom I will barely remember the handprint incident except for the sharing of it here and the realization my fingerprints on my pencil and the the words left on the page will far outlast the faux pas I have etched here.
= = =
This writing was inspired by a prompt I created for members of my PeriWriters Facebook group. I also posted it on Instagram and now, here as well.
I pressed my hand into early morning sand in Morro Bay two autumns ago. I only noticed the wayward French fry after I took the photo.
It had been a season of heartbreak so there were moments I forgot I was anything except ephemera.
The depth of my print surprised me.
Now, tell me about an imprint you created.
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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in early Summer and beyond.
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