I like to walk barefoot, and feel the mud in between my toes. My favorite feeling is running through a barely field with my arms stretched out and my fingers twirling through the heavy heads of grain as the sun changes my pale checks to powder pink. I grew up on a diary farm, were the clicking of train wheels and blasting whistles kept time.
My summers were filled with snapping pliers clipping through barbwire fence, and the harvest was filled with the sloshing of water jugs as they bounced in the back of the truck while we drove across plowed fields. Winter meant the plop of muck boots, and the zip of overall coats. Then, life was not composed of time but rhythm; The rhythm of tire swing chains creak-clank-creak-clank, skipping rocks across the pond plump-plump-bop, and rolling bike tires woo. Sometimes I think that my heart beat is still timed by the beats of rolling gravel and rusted gates that filled my childhood.
Quickly, time became apart of my life as I danced across stages in tights and laced ribbons. My father’s praising words carried me and my mother’s whispered, “I love you,” lifted me above my expectations, but nothing compared to the chime of new words and thoughts as I learned to read. Someone could scrunch their noses and say that I walk to my own beat, but if only they could hear the music of life.
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