Growing

ग्रोविंग
Growing can be a highly personal time. It was for me....
I was intensely devoted to my work and rose each morning at 4 am in order to be prepared. My thick work Carharts were dusty and oily, my hands heavily calloused and tough. Each day I wore a toolbelt that was loaded with 30 pounds of tools and nails. I wore a harness and dangled off the side of things; fearless in the crisp air. I felt enormously powerful and physically fit, a leopard in a jungle of rebar and concrete forms. On the weekend I spent time with my boyfriend and cats; I had a close relationship with my mother. My few moments of idle time were spent in my garden and I had decided to grow sunflowers.
I became pregnant and it necessitated many changes. You cannot place yourself in a harness and dangle fearlessly, if you are afraid of the fall. My ability to work with out fear was now hampered and my my general effectiveness at work diminished. I couldn't touch solvents anymore; they cause terrible birth defects... at work I was riddled with concerns. The tomboy in me that enjoyed the rough and tumble of my work was becoming more hesitant. It was painful for me to have to surrender a job that I adored in order to have a baby. What did I know of infants and mothering? I knew welding and gang forms, spud wrenches and spline drives .. but diapers? During the summer I enjoyed the sunflowers I had planted, as I rested at home, twiddling my thumbs. Even now sometimes as I hold my most precious baby boy, I hear the ringing of the pile hammer exploding through bedrock, I hear the scrape of my chalkstone on metal plate, I smell the wet steel rusting in the rain, I see the puddles of water on the surface of a badly beaten barge deck...