She was kneading dough on the counter below the window, watching the snow melt. Her motions were deliberate, shifting between tender caresses and urgent shoves, punctuating her sentences. Generally good... a soft stroke... follow-through... she punched her fist into the dough. A jar on the counter rattled with the motion.
"I mean, you can have an idea, and it seems simple and easy, like it'll fit right in with everything else you're doing, and even if it's long-term, it's just a set of steps you have to follow, and you..."
Her hands interrupted her. The dough was sticky, and it clung between her fingers and in the creases of her palms. The gluten needed more working. She rubbed her hands together, showering the counter in shards of dough, and reached into the flour bin for a handful. Scraping the dough from the counter, she kneaded again.
"But then you start, and you realize the steps don't follow as easily as you thought they would. And if you skip one it sets you back further than you were when you started and you have to figure out how to get back on track. And sometimes you forget what you were doing in the first place, because you're stuck at some step that's so tedious you want to stop right there..." She trailed off, watching a squirrel in the yard contemplate a leap from one branch to another. Her hands kept moving the dough, turning it and stretching it and folding it in on itself with a steady determined rhythm. The squirrel jumped. She sighed, and picked up the dough. It was smooth, elastic, soft and warm like bare skin. "But you just do it, you know? You keep going, and eventually it's done, and maybe one day if you're lucky, you find out you did something good." She set the dough in a bowl and covered it with a towel, and she waited.
EC 3/2/09
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