PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
Close one door, open another
Alice pauses to look at the empty lab, empty fridge, clean surfaces, ready for Professor Sorenson to take over on Monday.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” her mentor once told her.
Assuming her study worked, this place, this process would be like scaffolding on a building.
Important. But, temporary. That was always the plan, and now….
For a second, she pauses to remember all the years she spent in this room discovering one small piece of a larger puzzle. Now, she and her team can check that box. Now it’s time to move on.
***
This is my entry for Friday Fictioneers. For more stories, click on the frog:
Stream of consciousness story behind this one (TLDR unless you want to):
Walking through Philadelphia between meetings during the World Meeting of Families in 2017, I believe, I felt caught between ultra-conservative (monogamous, one man, one woman only) and LGBT+ friends and acquaintance (who tend to be more “my kind of people.”) Looking for how to explain, how to phrase my stance on these important topics, I happened to be walk under some scaffolding and thought – look, it’s like this. If we can understand scaffolding, then we can understand issues like “irregular living situations” (meaning different from the usual) in all their beautiful colors. We can get dysfunctional families and homelessness and addiction as situations that might need more complex solutions than we can immediately grasp, especially if I have never experienced those things.
We can have our lives without needing to judge what other people might be doing – what they might need to do here and now. In fact, I believe as human beings there are a lot of times when we need to do this, to think deeper than clickbait, to be patient with ourselves and each other.
Anytime I see scaffolding my thoughts go there a little bit. I think … yes, it may not look pretty (to me) or make sense (to me) but that doesn’t mean it is not necessary to the overall structure of the world. And then, I wanted to express that in a cute little story.
Like last week’s post which someone asked about, I am thinking about a good many transitional opportunities right now. It’s been quite a year for me.
I like that you focussed on the scaffolding
Do you really believe every straight monogamous couple is ultra-conservative? Is that the defining characteristic?
No. Not what I meant in my aside at all. I meant that in ultra conservative circles those are the only kind of families that are accepted. It is a whole thing.
Double checked my phrasing and that is why I said “only”.
Also the context was World Meeting of Families where family issues were central. I also didn’t mean to imply those are the only issues at play. Just in that context it was. Hope this helps clarify.
very insightful, the framing of scaffolding being temporary is golden. When I was a teacher the language was that we were scaffolding the lessons or the skills for the children.
That was most interesting…
I love this most interesting take on the prompt, Anne. Excellent!
I guess Alice will find another lab, another set of scaffolding, and find another piece of the jigsaw of life. And so will you.
Lovely …. I love that you used the scaffolding
Anne, I like what you did with the image and appreciate your mini-essay on scaffolding.
Dear Anne,
A lot of feeling in the scaffolding of your story. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle