What does a sixty-pound sack of cement feel like in the arms?...

What does a sixty-pound sack of cement feel like in the arms? Imagine carrying seven gallons of milk. Or four bowling balls. Or a sleeping six-year-old. It’s not an unreasonable weight. Not light, but pick-up-able if you’ve got some muscle. Today, for a floor we’re pouring, we loaded and unloaded 60 bags of cement, each weighing 60 pounds. That’s thirty-six hundred pounds, not too far off two tons. There were three of us – M.’s daughter is on school vacation and lent her time to lug – so that’s about twelve-hundred pounds each, sack by sack, up a dozen stairs and into a room that will eventually be a bathroom. Once unloaded, mix and pour, mix and pour, shovels, water, sand and rocks, dust to primordial ooze, a depthless soup. My body now, my biceps, a band across my lower back, feels the work. I woke up this morning looking forward to it, the simple physicality of it, the start and finish, the test of strength. I wanted to come home hungry, and I did.