Daydreaming…

I posted this over at Glow in the Woods and then thought that many of  you might like to read it as well…

This afternoon, I sat at Fosters having a bowl of soup and daydreaming.  I love Fosters.  It’s bright and airy and reminds me of a coffee place I used to go to when I was in college.  I can smell espresso and pastries and pizzas being made in the oven.  There are large open tables with mis-matched chairs and college students, studying history or math or something.  Probably chemistry.  I hated chemistry.  They have their futures in front of them, I think, bright shiny futures – futures full of promise, hope, good times and hopefully, nothing bad will ever happen to these people.  Just as they are sitting here at these tables with the mis-matched chairs, wallowing in clean, pure, happy youth, I sat at tables with mis-matched chairs many years ago.  Years and years ago it feels like.  So long ago that I feel like that wasn’t even me – I’m not the same person I was back then.  I dreamed of working as an environmental attorney, I struggled with my math homework, I dated someone who didn’t appreciate me for me, and I made bad choices (that ended up having benign consequences looking back).  I dreamed of getting married to a wonderful man and having babies, living in a house, not struggling to pay my bills.

Some of what I dreamed has happened – the amazing husband, the cute house that’s all mine.  Some of what I hoped for hasn’t.  Actually, I guess it did but not in the way I thought it would.  I look in the mirror and I’m not that girl in a coffee house in San Diego wondering what I’m going to wear to our next formal because I can’t really afford a new dress.  I’ve gained weight, gone is my cute little size 6 self that ran the beach in a bikini without thought.  I’ve got gray hairs that refuse to stay hidden under an expensive dye-job.  I’ve got pain in my eyes.  It’s the eyes that are the most different, I think.  I don’t have wrinkles like you might think.  Instead, I have a hollowness – an emptiness – that looks back at me from the other side of the mirror.  It’s all my pain and grief and anger and loss and it’s manifested in my eyes.  I smile at people and that smile doesn’t reach my eyes like it used to.

I look around amongst all of these young, bright faces and see another woman sitting alone.  She’s clearly older than I am as evidenced by the fact that she’s lost her battle with gray hair and surrendered to a lovely silver running through her brown curls.  She’s reading (or maybe, like me, pretending to read).  I catch her eye and smile.  She smiles back but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes either.  I wonder, “what happened to you?  Why do you have pain?  Did your babies die too?”

It all comes back to them.  My boys and the fact that they died.

No amount of daydreaming in a coffee house can change that fact or the pain in my eyes.