Tag: worrying

An Aston Martin Dream

Young again, middle-aged, I was with my wife and others in this place with blue carpets. I don’t know why the others were present, but I was there to see a doctor. The doctor, young, White female, with, with short, dark hair, briefly saw me.

“You need surgery,” she said, indicating my neck. “We’ll do it today.”

That pleased me although I was surprised that my neck was to be operated on. I waited for the my scheduled time to arrive. I noticed the others began dressing up. My wife emerged wearing a dark suit with a white shirt. From overheard snippets, I realized that everyone else was waiting for surgery as well.

I was taken back; I’d not seen the doctor examine any of them. As people came out dressed up, the doctor began telling people when she would see them. Hastily I dressed like the rest, in a black suit with a white shirt and tie, but laughed at it as I did, thinking, this is silly.

Then – poof – the surgery was completed. I didn’t notice a thing but I knew it was done. It’d been so quick and simple, it was completed in an eyeblink.

I encountered my sister-in-law. She and I went off to await everyone else finishing off. I began helping some children drawing with crayons. I ended up with crayon on my white cuffs. While wondering how I was going to clean those off, my SIL showed up with a similar problem. I then took a paper towel and blotted the colors off. I shared what I was doing with her and she started doing the same.

We talked while we did that. I asked when she was going home and how long it would take her. Then I remembered that she lived in Florida. No, she answered with surprise. “I live just an hour and a half away. I’m taking my boyfriend’s train him.”

I hadn’t met her boyfriend but I knew of him. My wife arrived. She and I talked with my SIL and my wife and I announced that we would go get my SIL and her boyfriend some food for their trip home. We went out and bought very large sandwiches with French fries. We ate while we were there.

Then we rushed back to give them their food. They were already gone. We looked down the track to see a three-car train pulling away, which amused me and my wife.

We then needed to go deliver a package. I jumped into my car, a gorgeous and expensive Aston Martin roadster, green, with a white interior. I raced down the highway at very high speeds, overtaking many cars. Then, seeing a line of cars breaking, I slowed down and moved left.

Good thing I did, I told myself, as we overtook a long line of cars and trucks pulling travel trailers. They were stopped. I worried that we wouldn’t be able to mail my package.

Then I pulled up to a booth. Jumping out of the car with my package, I told him what I was doing. He was short, solemn, round Black guy. He listened and worked as I apologized for the state of my package and for not having it correctly prepared.

He shrugged that off, saying something like, “No problem.” I thought the packaging needed to be replaced. He consulted with a co-worker. They agree, it just needed a new clear plastic bag. He put that on, then grinned and told me, all down.

I laughed, surprised at how easy it went. Returning to my car, I prepared to drive away.

Dream end.

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Destiny

Brooding with leftover anger and resentment, he stared at the page, unable to read.

The book, by Lee Child (a Christmas present), was a thriller (which he usually enjoyed), but an argument was displacing his attention. It’d been a stupid argument, not worth even recounting, but it was another in a string of stupid, exhausting arguments. One a day? Hell, on a good day, it’d be one a day. Most days, there was one in the morning before they left for work and another in the evening. They were part of the routines.

He was tired of that routine. He decided that if he could, he would change his life so that he and his wife had never reconciled after they’d separated. That had happened less than nine months in (nine years ago). His life would be so much more pleasant, wouldn’t it? Her, and her attitude. It infuriated him.

Maybe, instead, it would be better they hadn’t had children. Much had changed when she’d become pregnant. The pressure to succeed, save money, and everything else, had ratcheted up, becoming relentless. Besides, they hadn’t been getting along well before that point.

He loved his children, though, although they worried and wearied him. A friend said that having children was all about the three Ws: worrying, wearying, and weaning. That sounded right.

Maybe, instead of not reconciling, he would not marry his wife. Then there would be no children. He tried imagining that life. He’d be like Grover, alone on holidays (and declaring that he liked it most times, but also decrying it on other days), but doing whatever he wanted, whenever. But he’d asked her to marry him because he loved her. Probably be better then, to have never met her. But if he’d never met her, would he have ever met anyone and fallen in love? (What an expression.) Yes, he had other girlfriends. He’d been popular.

Setting his book aside to watch football on television for a moment, he waited for some spirits to show up, someone to tell him how different his life would be if he’d never met his wife and married. That sort of tale had been written to death. Hadn’t there been movies with that theme? He waited for the television screen to change to a movie where he was the star and the plot was that he’d never met his wife and married. But that would’ve required many other changes, since he’d met her in high school as freshmen.

He had to consider all that would’ve all changed to keep them from meeting. One of them would not have been in that school (or maybe just not that year) (but both were good students), or their activities, likes and interests would’ve needed to change. He tried peering into the past to see what needed to shift to stop their meeting from happening. Maybe they met but didn’t fall in love. That’d seemed instant for both of them, like destiny.

Wiping her hands with a dish rag, she stepped into the room. “Kitchen’s clean.”

“Good.” He heard the dishwasher running.

“Are you hungry? Can I make you a sandwich?”

“Okay, sure, thanks.”

She smiled. “Want a beer?”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“No, thanks, that’d be good.”

She glanced at the screen. “Who’s winning?”

“Titans, third quarter.”

“That’s not who you wan to win is it?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s still time for it to change.” Smiling again, she turned and left the room.

One child hit the other. A scream erupted. He leaped up, refereeing, consoling, explaining, parenting. A few minutes later, detente achieved, he sat down with a slow exhale and looked at the television. The third quarter was almost over but the score hadn’t changed. He picked up his book. He couldn’t remember where he’d stopped reading, what was happening, or what he’d been thinking about.

Turning the page back, he began reading again.

 

 

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