You ready for a big shock? Hold onto your computer chair. Your children will not be miniature versions of you. Yeah, you think you already know that. Until you’re looking at them, and you see the differences. Until they like things you don’t like – like mashed potatoes and swimming. Or they don’t like things you do like — like french fries. Or they can do things you can’t — like draw REALLY, REALLY well. They really are separate little people. I was looking at my older daughter today and thinking about our differences. Then I thought about how different I am from my mom. Mom and I talked on the phone — I guess it was yesterday now. Thirty years ago on this date, I was due. What I mean is that September 11 was the due date my mom was given when she was pregnant. She was naive. She sat around all day waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Finally, she asked my grandmother if she should go to the hospital (she was living with my grandparents as my dad was in Vietnam). My grandmother said why, are you having contractions? Mom said no. Well, why do you need to go to the hospital? Well, the baby’s due today. To which my grandmother replied: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Another thing I was musing about? This beautiful villanelle that my husband wrote for a lost love. The words are touching, beautiful, romantic. I can’t find it on the computer. I guess he deleted it. But my favorite part goes “All the parts of me you touched are gone.” It is based on the fact that you shed your skin cells. And he was sitting there thinking about this girl and realizing that he had shed the entire layer of skin cells she had touched. I think it was a moment of finality. His feelings for her obviously hadn’t died, but all the parts of him she’d touched were gone. *Sigh*
He doesn’t sound the same when he reads his poetry as he does when he is just speaking. There is a different quality to his voice — a different cadence. He is performing.
You know, I feel lucky because I know him. The thought occurred to me tonight that the girl my husband wrote that villanelle about may never even have read it. Not to have heard those words – how sad. Her loss is my gain. And I think I know the beauty, the pain, the balled fury that he is. He is a thunderstorm — flashing grandeur, spinning tornadoes, rumbling thunder. He’s also a quiet summer rain — cleansing, pure, tranquil. I don’t feel like I am finding the right words.
Whatever he requires, whatever he wants, I want to give it to him. I want him to be happy, and I need him to love me always. I wrote about dreaming that we fought. It was horrible because when I awoke, I had that feeling that we really had fought. I had to shake myself out of that feeling. Until I did, nothing was right in the world. I need him. So simple. So overused to the point of triteness. But there really isn’t any other way to say it. I just wish he was home right now.