Important Work

 

 Capture the Moment

Johnny does the important work of closing the kitchen door.

When did we get so busy?  Nothing is more important than anything else.  Slow down you move too fast. . .

The first artist I ever met and who was an inspiration was Judith Koehne.  She said it takes a lot of time to be an artist.  I wanted to be a writer but I knew I didn’t have a lot of time so I set out to prove Judith wrong.  I decided I was going to write, even if I only had ten minutes, that I was going to capture short moments if that’s all there was time for.

On Johnny doing important work at eighteen months

What there is to do is to do nothing.  So I do nothing.  I walk around doing nothing and while I’m doing nothing I do whatever there is to do at the moment.

What is the need of the hour?

So I wash the kitchen floor.  I’m with Johnny and with Johnny is where I want to be and as I do nothing I want the nothing that I do to be something that Johnny can do with me.  So I wash the kitchen floor and get it clean and Johnny climbs up on a chair he has pushed up to the counter. He gets a dishrag and brings it to me. He wants to help. He has important work to do. He has his rag and he wants to do his important work of washing floors. I concentrate on washing the kitchen floor as he concentrates on washing the kitchen floor. Nothing is more important than anything else, and the floors are clean.

I begin to prepare the dinner. I take out the chicken, wash and dry it and Johnny pushes the chair up to the counter to do important work. He takes the dishes out of the dish drainer and I brown the chicken. He puts the dishes in the sink, and I brown the chicken. Johnny does the important work of putting clean dishes back into the sink.

I walk out the back door to put the dirty rags in the laundry and Johnny closes the dryer door for me. The towels are dry. I take them out of the dryer and Johnny closes the dryer door for me. I open the dryer door, put the wet towels in and Johnny closes the dryer door for me.

Johnny does the important work of closing the dryer door. I add spices to the chicken. Johnny sleeps as I write.

 (c)1986