North to South. Back and forth. A deep humming resonates through the chilly morning. Another chore added to an endless to-do list. It is repetitive and boring, yet through the mundane I find a warm sense of tranquility.
Carrying Sunday coffees in both hands, I was welcomed warmly by the bright faces of our tireless scholarship mothers. Being known for emphasizing timeliness to such events, yet arriving a few minutes late, they made sure I realized that the time was in fact 7:02am. We danced with handshakes while discussing the weather – it was indeed a perfect day to cut the grass.
Brooms, rakes, wheelbarrows, machetes and jobs were divvied out and separate ways were ventured. My job for the day, the lawnmower.
The morning was quiet and our words held back in fear of interrupting the conversing birds. The sun, not quite ready to spread its reign over the Sula valley, seemed to be tapping the snooze button. The green fields surrounding the school were laid with a thin layer of mist that made you forget briefly the imminent midday’s heat.
I pushed the mower back and forth making satisfyingly successful lines in the grass. Following me, a few mothers raked the clippings and transported the excess outside our grounds. Hunched fathers were hacking away at hidden edges with swift machetes. No conversations were held, no voices heard. The work was mundane and boring, yet under our dirtying faces we all bore a soulful smile.
Our thoughts traveled through time and space. We were on the top of the Eiffel Tower while traversing the bottom of the Pacific. We imagined the future and bathed in the past. We were with our family and friends, our children and grandparents. Our thoughts unleashed in the freedom created by the humming of the motor. We were living in today, tomorrow and yesterday. Back and forth.
By 9:00am we had finished. Sweaty and proud we bid each other farewell. Passing through the school gate into the dusty street, we couldn’t help but look back at our masterpiece and sigh in profound gratitude. We were to go back to our daily lives, run our errands and solve our problems, but for that quiet Sunday morning we had all found some tranquility in the routine. A mundane moment to travel through all space and time.
