pink hammers and slime covered snails

my sister said to me she saw a snail who was saying,

i want to go faster! i want to go faster!

it summed up my life. i want what i am incapable of having. i long for what cannot fill my aching need. i simply want. but it's not that simple, is it?

upon spying a friend's pink tool kit one night, i mentioned how i had always wanted a pink tool kit since i was young. more musing on the fact that i like anything pink. she produced said tool kit and handed it over. i was humbled and grateful.

i broke the head off that same pink hammer yesterday in my garden.

i've never decapitated a hammer before. i was quite surprised actually. i've been too genteel for that i guess. until now. i've learned a few things about pink hammers.

they don't get the hard work done. they are lighter and nice to look at but that is about it. i have friends like that and i don't waste too much time on them either.

i need something sturdy. something equal to the hard labor of these days of preparing the garden.

soon, twelve budding gardeners will be upon my lot looking to till, sweat and sow anything their little hands can find to sow. for them there are no tears with the sowing, right now it is all about the fun. getting out in the sunshine and digging. getting dirty and for good reason, digging and digging.

no, pink hammers will not do.

so i heave my husband's heavy, unattractive, manly hammer through the air. my muscles ache from the strain. but i press on.

lifting boards, many boards and denailing them, my once junkyard, is becoming presentable. the falcon which sat on my neighbor's fence, then my fence looked pleased. the crow kawing in the creek beyond resounds with delight.

the birds are pleased, i muse and press on.

i keep struggling against nails bent on nailing something. then my beloved hands me a pry bar. a heavier, uglier tool. i've learned to respect leverage. the heavy pry bar lifts four inch nails as if it were plucking mushrooms.

if only i were stronger and better able to handle the weight of the tools of my labor. again, the story of my life.

beneath the boards i am liberating from their resting place are many slugs and snails. i keep hearing,

i want to go faster! i want to go faster!

and it occured to me, if i were a snail i would leave a slime covered trail no matter how much i detested it. so as i creep slowly, miserably through my inexplicable life, i think of that snail and try to recapture the pace of my design.

i do want to go faster, but God is in the slowness of this season. He is in the difficult dark nights, the sowing with tears, the silence of it all. i have learned only this, i will go at today's pace and try to see some beauty in the iridescent trail of slime behind me.