Preparing Vegetables - painting by Henry Tozer

Elsa is sitting by her hearth, wondering where her life has gone. She knows there's life out there. She knows her life - the one she was meant to have - is out there, but knowing this is no comfort. So she sits. And listens. And stares blankly ahead - half seeing things as they are, half seeing things as she wish they were. She sits in her chair, listening to her kids playing outside, to the mule team her husband is driving - wondering if this is all there is. Her world has been reduced to 4 walls and a dirt path leading to them.

Material things, she has. Maybe not everything she wants, but she has everything she needs. Seemingly. To the outside world. But more facets than the physical need to be nourished and that's all she's getting here. Her heart's not in it. Her mind's not in it. Her soul's not in it. Her spirit is grounded. Her body is on auto pilot. She goes through the motions of life or something like it, but she isn't living. She's just exisiting. She's never been so stuck in a place in all her life, but she's never been farther removed from one, either.

She loves her kids, but she resents them. She never loved her husband, but she tolerates him. She hates her house, but she tends it. She hates her life, but it must go on in some form or the other. So she'll sit in a chair until it's time to lay in a box. In the physical sense, that is. Because the rest of her died years ago.