It's my birthday and I'll write long, rambly posts if I want to

This should have been published yesterday, but it got late and I was tired and full of wine.

It's my birthday and I'm sitting in my filthy minivan waiting for Kindergarten registration to open at our local elementary school.  Oh hell yes, I'm forty-five minutes early.  Don't you all know me by now? I have my extra-hot chai clutched in one hand and the heat on against the below-freezing chill.  I scrounge a purple pen from the wrappers and slimy chapsticks and tissues stuffed into the bottom of the dash console so that I can write, on the back of my daughter's immunization record, that my heart feels tight and my stomach flips in lazy anticipation of some slightly dreaded event.

But it's not Kindergarten.

For once, it's not the unstoppable aging of my first babies.  The school is a sweet little building with a red tile roof and white stucco walls.  I'll spend my next ten years - the better part of my forties - here in one manner or another. Picking up or dropping off. Volunteering. Meeting. Organizing. Fundraising.  I'm thirty-eight today and I'm not angsty about being a mother. 

I'm restless for all I left behind five years and five months ago.  I'm grieving buried dreams.

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The grass is high and deliberately unkempt beside the paths.   I wander here often, breaking stems and scuffing worn, well-trod routes.  Some of the markers are obviously visited more than others, the weeds pushed aside, the grime of months turned to years wiped from the stone.  On the fringes, where the meandering paths don't reach, there are headstones all but lost to heavily seeded stalks, fallen leaves and hardy stinging nettles.

It's a small cemetery enclosed by a low fence buried in the tangle.  I wander through the tombstones again today, tracing a word there, running my hand over smooth stone here. There are no stone angels, no pillars, no ornaments.  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the fresh hole that draws me.  The marker is in place, a single word carved on its surface.  "Seven."

I stand beside the hole and nudge the dirt with my foot, but I can't quite push it in.  I still have two years.  I have only Antarctica left.  It's a silly, frivolous thing, but it never occurred to me, overripe with Garrett at 41 weeks that along with a gorgeous, big, baby boy, I was about to push out any hope of standing on my seventh and final continent before I turned forty.


What dreams have you buried? Do you mourn them?

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It's a lovely day.  Matt takes the children away all morning and I have the silent, still, waiting house to myself.  I organize closets - oh hell yes, I do, surely you know me and how I revel in the orderliness, by now.  Each box stacked.  Outgrown clothes packed away. The 2T and 4T boxes pulled out, the clothes moved to newly emptied drawers.

The afternoon passes in lazy fun. My mom calls.  My sisters.  A treasured friend brings me flowers, the first hesitant daffodils. I am blown twitter and facebook kisses all day. Each peek at the computer brings a new smile. Matt indulges me in a trip to the mall where I arrange a special baby gift for my heart-sister while she surprises me to tears with her words.  (And a glimpse at the ghost of my hair past. May it rest in peace. Good. God.)

He lets me slip away before dinner - my sweet Matt - with only a little bit of a grumble and I sit in a coffee shop and breathe quiet, adult company in through my nose and out through my mouth like a prayer, my chakras strengthened by the act of stepping briefly back into this other world before I meet my girlfriends - my lifelines, my anchors in my upsidedown mommy world - for wine and treats.

I am spoiled with love and goodness.  I hiss powerful, talismanic words of protection against the roiling dragon in my chest.  I know Matt has an answering demon in him. If I push him, even the tiniest bit, if we feed each other's restlessness, we are gone. Packed suddenly. Houses sold, children herded. Another state. Another country. Another world. 

But no. Some dreams are meant to be buried. Temporarily, at least. My children will have this. Sweet red tile and white walls. Soccer and dance and swimming.

In the hall, half-lit by the bedside lamp, he hugs me tight. I can see the black and white photographs on our bedroom wall.  The children of my first lifetime recorded.  Bangkok. Haiti. Sydney. Hong Kong. Kathmandu.  Banished here to make room for other names in the family room.  

Did you have fun?  I did, but I'm old; I'm getting old. There's time, he whispers, because he knows me. 

There's a strange smell in the hall. I glance down and notice that the bottom of the laundry basket outside the Snow White room is filled with liquid.  Socks float, half sunk beside a soggy dryer sheet.  What is that? I ask him.  I don't know. Garrett.  He sleep-peed.  Damn him.  We laugh ourselves to sleep, spoiled and happy and restless, cuddled together, to dream about our dreams come true.

Comments are closed because I've already been sent more sweetness than I deserve and because my birthday is over and because I'm just thinking out loud and you shouldn't have to read it, let alone say anything.  I hope your buried dreams have fertilized rich, unexpected lives.