This is my Dream, It Really Hurts

I want to be going gray haired at the temples and just too old to bother with contact lenses, with one too many light blue polos or silk ties. I will have great claves and a sleek, stainless steel coffee maker and kitchen knives that I hardly ever use or maybe use daily.
There will be bookcases, vases. CD's and pictures frames to dust, plants I will forget to water and that goddamned carpet I just couldn't talk him out of.

My daughter will cut her hair red hair off at age seventeen and never regret it. She will obsess over whether or not the resurgence of polka dots applies to her and where she ought to apply to college and for what. She will nurse a secret crush on the lanky boy next door who is growing taller, who plays the trumpet and who brings us our mail when we return from vacation in New York. Their fingers will brush when she answers the door and the envelopes pass hands. My daughter and I will exchange excited smiles later on over dinner. His name will be Terry or James and I will catch her doodling it all over the borders of her magazines as we sit at the DMV waiting for her to take her permit test. I will not know what will make me more nervous- her cautious driving or her driving away from me. Her name will be Jane.

My son will be sensative. A swimmer. He will smell like chrlorine and we will lap swim sometimes, never nearly often enough with my bad shoulder. He will boast my breastroke is better, but his butterfly will be graceful. He will move through water and crowds with confidence.I will yell, daily, for him to not leave his goggles in the bathroom sink. Dogs will follow him,lick his hands under tables. Girls will watch him from the corners of keggers and he will be kind enough, and complacent enough, to pretend not to hear his name whispered in huddles behind bathroom doors at parties. He will sleep with the same blanket, even when he returns home from college his first winter. He will take up smoking and join me on the damp back porch one morning and expertly toss his butt in the coffe can next to the door right after me. He will break my heart, make me proud, hold the door for me. I will let his father name him. He will name him Jonas,for my favorite novel and because the men in my life will be true Givers.

One night, before college comes and they will fall into the routine of videochats this night, phone calls to us this night, weekend stays and care packages on these dates and that- they will leave together for a party in a carpool. It will be early october,barely fall. She will ask for advice on how best to wear her new rouge. He will borrow his father's old denim jacket from the hall closet. Me and my husband, my wonderful man, will sit on the deck out back and smoke a sticky spliff. The house will be wonderfully warm and we will slowdance once back inside to "Namesake" by Anais Mitchell at full blast across the hardwood floors in the living room. He will still be in his work things- an oxford buttoned down to his navel, sleeves up, gray slacks and shiny black shoes. I will be wearing cargo shorts and a sleeveless tee shirt from our sons long ago basketball camp. No shoes, just socks,and I will barely wince when he steps on my toes. I will barely breathe when he dips me, suprisedly, and for no reason. The lamps on either side of the front window will glow golden and I will smell like earth and mums or grass and he will smell like midday cologne and my tobacco.

We will undress each other as we crawl up the stairs and not make it halfway up before we fuck, right there, suddenly and quickly, like we did while the kids were younger and only down for a quick nap. We will both remember this instance and familiarity and forget if we had done exactly this back then- because time has moved so oddly since then. He will grip my left shoulder- the bad one- from behind. I will place my hand on it. Downstairs, Anais will be singing "1984".

When the kids come home, at different hours, smelling like two different brands of lite beer, they will pause outside our half open bedroom door and see us half asleep in the blue lights of the tv screen. The sound will be off- Lucille Ball's Mame will havenever been better. Jane, then Jonas will pause, smile, say I love you Dad, goodnight, wake me in the morning?

I will say I love you too, goodnight and yes- bagels and shopping with Aunt Kate? They will head off to bed. I will nuzzle deeper against the clipped black hairs of his muscled chest. He will have fallen asleep, upright against the headboard we paid too much money for, his mouth half open, head to one side.

Tomorrow, we will look for antiques- I will already have all the pricelessness in the world.