A Turning Point

I’ve dreamt of certain things my whole life. Of an old, rambling house surrounded by the leafy green of overgrown elms and oaks, with a garden out back and a birch grove for believing in fairies. I picture myself inside sitting at a too-large desk within a warm and extensive library, working on the most fulfilling of projects.

I watch as I, linen-clad, armed with a canvas bag and a mother-of-pearl revolver, race from adventure to adventure, meeting danger after danger on the way, exhilarated and fulfilled from a life of one in a million lives.

Sometimes late at night, I imagine my future child in my arms. The gentleness of the small limbs, the round belly, the wispy hair. My chest aches for the weight of that little body, for the love that I can’t wait to feel.

When I come back to reality, I wonder if any of these images will ever happen. The crest of my life approaches and I actually have to do something, either make it a reality, or settle for something else.

Once I had a dream that I was in love. He and I were sitting, just trying to decipher a puzzle in our bed after our wedding. I don’t know anything else, I can’t even remember what he looked like, but I remember how it felt. A sweet calm, full of health and joy. In times past I’ve collected moments when life has handed me the same emotion, certain summers, weekends, lunchtimes and evenings full of laughter and guitar music, glasses of wine or a cold beer. Long conversations and several groups of friends for understanding, has been all I’ve needed to feel perfectly happy, the same as I did in my dream.

But age strips those times away and grants in their place a series of trials. Trials uniquely my own and, if bested, rewards me with those images I so carefully guard and so rarely take out to pet and muse over, for fear of spoil. Contentment becomes a thing of nostalgia and fantasy, available only when asleep or in an unknown and far-off future.
Warm summer evenings and carefree young cruising must be traded for responsibilities and independence. Friends, the savior of the young and the family of years, instantly becomes (with a hint of surprise and a touch of indignation) ...not enough. Not enough for the daily cares, and wears, and tears, and trials of life, real, honest-to-god life.

It's time for something more.