What About It?

The warm weather made our cold blood flow easier and made everyone living in my mother's home more productive and alive than we have been in the last couple of cold October weeks. I walked my dog for an hour, all the way to the old fort that sits as a reminder of one of the first settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains. But this settlement is one of very few that didn't turn into anything. It's still surrounded by the forests that have always been there and some large, well-tended fields that are newer to the region.
Maybe it was the Native Americans who burned the fort to nothing that scared new settlers away, or maybe it was the long, cold winters and distance of fresh water sources. Whatever the cause, they left the area to be slowly settled until now, when only about 25 houses can be seen from the higher points in the hills around the fort. The thing that brought the most people to the area was a black deposit found underground around here: the coal that still comes up from the ground and sits in chunks among the rocks and soil in my yard.
That black stuff brought my family here, to live in the house that I grew up in and work 12 hours or more a day in the mines at the bottom of the hill and die of emphysema before the age of 60. And my mother wears a hard hat and steel-toed boots for 8 hours a day. My father played with fire in the steel mills for thirty years.
Every generation gets better: my brother is a teacher and my sister is being trained for management at a finance company. And I get to write about all of this.
After I walked home from the fort, having pissed off enough drivers for the day (who doesn't hate having to swerve for pedestrians on a rural road?), I retreated to my room and heard the sounds of my mother and sister taking advantage of the warmth to prepare our home for the winter we know is coming. They repotted plants to move inside, swept up leaves, and did whatever else I wasn't willing to help them with.
So they put me to work inside, where my mother told me to make dinner for everyone.
"Use that chicken before it goes bad."
So in this old house, I cooked chicken that was raised who knows where, stuffed with a French cheese and baked until delicious (and only slightly pink). And my sister, Josh and I sat at the kitchen table and talked money and work.
I've worked a few different jobs and certainly put my time in doing schoolwork and housework, hell I've even read Philip Levine's What Work Is, but I don't know if I'll ever understand the relationship between how I feel about work and the reality of it. I'm familiar with the cliche "Work to live; don't live to work," and I am tempted to say I can sum up my thoughts with it.
Meanwhile, I know that my ancestors and the early settlers of Hannastown alike would be asking me, "What is there to think about? You don't feel anything about work. You just need to eat."