Do you ever feel that you’re missing it? Your life. That you’re so busy with the hustle, with the commute and the 10 minute breaks, the pile of dishes and the never ending laundry, you’ve forgotten to dance around the porch on a summer evening. Or eat at a sidewalk cafe and watch the girl in the heels walk her Great Dane. What is all this for, anyway?
My son is in Florida this week, and I’m rootless, or grounded, or anyway, clipped, and I keep wondering what exactly I’ve built my life around. And is it enough?
Last evening, I walked through the neighborhood, the clinker brick and the bungalows and the maple trees. The dogs pulling at squirrels and cats and shadowy black plastic bags, and on the wind the smell of northern fires. I miss him. I miss the sound of his voice—the impossibly high, clear pitch of it—and his laugh, and the urgency of his every request.
It has been him, the adventure of my life, the spontaneous joy of these years in which we have nurtured one another. All this free time now weighs on me the way summers did in my own childhood. Waiting, always waiting, for something to happen.
Wait. Go back, to the sitting in the cafe, watching the woman and the Great Dane part. Okay, now I’ve caught up to the little boy with the high voice and immediate demands.
Yeah, I had to double-take her in real life too.
About the “adventure of your life,” I have to say that lately I keep hearing the phrase “Wherever you go, there you are.” The older I get, this sounds less stifling and more comforting to me.
But have I simply become too complacent? Maybe it’s not that we’ve forgotten to dance on the porch; maybe it’s that sometimes we forget that we want to.
(I actually saw a Great Dane the other day in Denmark. It amused me more than I should admit.)
When you ask my mother the time, she usually says, “It’s later than it has ever been before.”
My response to her statement, as I’ve gotten older, has begun to mirror the white rabbit’s.
I love that.