At the end of the day sometimes you look at the hours and wonder where they went. What you did. What you could have should have might have would have done instead, if the day was yours all over again. But it's all over, time for bed now, and back to real life in the morning. Real life. Yuck.
It ended slow. We watched tv, for the third night in a row. Saturday tv was fun, critiquing music videos for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, home alone and behaving. It passed in a flash and then it was 5pm and you had to go to work and I had to go home. I went shopping and bought applesauce and waited for you in my car for 45 minutes, listening to the radio and thinking. Wondering what it means that I have dreamt about my grandmother twice in the last week. Considering the idea that my friends are not just having a baby, they are becoming parents. I fed you at the picnic table and it was late, and it was brief, and I couldn't bring you home and clean you up and tuck you in but your smile was enough. Saturday was a good day.
Sunday we giggled at a silly movie that brought the smile to your face that wasn't there when I picked you up -- when I took you to Blockbuster because your mom accidentally dropped off the rental movie at the wrong place. I know you worry about her. But you shared a smile at Blast from the Past, and you relaxed back into yourself, and we laughed at funny home videos and little boys and baseball equipment and one-hit wonders on VH1. I chewed on your arm and your dad offered me some dessert. Sunday was a good day.
Today there was nothing on. The music videos just weren't the same as two days ago (actually they were all the same and that was the problem). The Simpsons was too quickly over and Jeopardy isn't your cup of tea and Friends was glorifying a lifestyle that I just can't agree with anymore. The good movies started and ended too late. Today the tv was just a way to pass the time, something to make the hours go by, so we technically were spending time together. A waste, and we both knew it. Separately we would have been doing different things but together there just didn't seem to be anything to do. Today is the kind of day I might have spent cleaning or toying with my scrapbook, you might have spent on homework or lesson planning or kung fu chess, we would have called out to each other when we had something interesting to share or just wanted to hear the voice calling back. We would have come together at the end of the night for a kiss and a cuddle, a conversation about our accomplishments. But situations don't allow for that, togetherness and apartness at the same time, we must be together OR apart and given the options we choose together every time. Even in front of the tv, in some ways waiting for the night to end, thinking about what else we might be doing. Or maybe that's just me.
I say today when I should say tonight, because the tv didn't come on until evening. In fact today and tonight are almost like separate days in some sense, because this morning you took me to the zoo. It was small and I know it makes you sad, in a way, because you like to see the animals but not cooped up the way they are, not caged for an audience with no shade, you'd rather see them roaming through a field or blocking traffic on a back road, knowing they belong and you're intruding. You'd rather see the real thing. But you took me to the zoo and we had fun marvelling at some of God's creations (the animals both inside and outside the exhibits) and walking around and being together and talking and seeing and sharing and doing. And then we went home for pizza and croquet, and I'm not sure whether you really didn't want to play or just sat out because of me, but it was funny to watch anyhow. You have a really great family. And I think it's cool that your cousin knows my name and your aunt is learning it and your grandpa smiled at me. And your brother greets me by making weird faces and calls me a harlot. I like to be a part of the people that are a part of you. And I like seeing your Star Wars toys and your GI Joe's and the demonstrations of how the base hooks together and the turrets blow up. You were (and are) all boy and I love that about you, it's so different and adorable and not what I grew up with. I was all girl and still am, even as an anti-girl with no makeup and basic hair and boring clothes (anti-modern-girl I suppose), but I grew up with doll daughters and stuffed animals with personalities and Barbie. My matchbox cars had names and talked and fell in love. I like to see you rummage through your childhood.
Today was a good day. Even with the wasted time, your frustration that I never seem to want to come up with something to do, that you always have to make the decisions right down to what we watch on tv, even if you thought I was boring or annoying and I thought about what else I could have been doing besides just sitting there, it was a good day.
Sometimes I think we both wonder what it might be like in the future. If only you didn't have to take me home, if we were married and we lived together, things would be so much different... we could do the zoo in the morning and go to your mom's for pizza and croquet and stay a little longer than maybe everybody else, talk to dad and brother and sister but when the lull comes and the day drags and there's no point really in going out and looking for anything else to do because we both have to get up early tomorrow, you could take me home and it would be our house, we wouldn't have to entertain each other, I could wash the dishes and make you dinner and you could do something else or even help if you wanted, we could both do our own stuff with little time-outs for kisses and shoulder massages. Eventually you get to that point in the relationship where you want to be together all the time but it's not the same kind of together, it's not the doing something every minute in your face kind of together that it was at the beginning, it's not the entertaining each other kind of together that it was before. It's a new feeling, it's a comfort, it's a wanting to be near you even if we're totally ignoring each other. It's a family kind of a feeling, the way you feel about parents and siblings growing up but growing up you don't notice it, how you like having them around and knowing they're there and bumping into them occasionally throughout the day. It's different of course, me and you, than me and my sister or you and yours. But similar I think. I think we notice it some nights more than others. I know I do.
I was in this situation before, sort of, of course not exactly the same. I handled it the wrong way the first time. I didn't know what it meant then. Now I do. I try not to treat us as though we're something we're not. I try not to dwell too much on what might be and instead keep my focus on what is. I have you now, maybe not in the way that I think I might like to have you in the future, but we don't live in the future. God gives us now and that's it. I think sometimes that has been hard for me to understand. I want everything but all I have is today. I wish some nights I had you in my arms but that's not our reality.
Have I mentioned that I love you?
The end of the night might sometimes be better spent. You were tired and it was beautiful outside, how about a walk or even just a seat on the steps, I don't know but it doesn't matter anyway. The day is done now and we both should be asleep. But I wanted to say I'm sorry for wishing I was somewhere else for an hour or maybe two, when it felt like we were just there to be there, and the tv was just on to be on, and there were better things to be done but we couldn't or didn't want to figure out what they might be. Because it wasn't a bad day, and even if it ended on a mellow note maybe that's just because you're tired and I don't want to go to work tomorrow, or maybe it's because we both want something we don't have. It doesn't matter, anyway.
I love you today, tonight, right now for who you are today, tonight, right now. And if God gives us tomorrow I'll love you even better.