Between work, soccer, lacrosse and the eye doctor, I haven’t been doing much besides working, driving around and waiting. We do like our new eye doctor–but I can’t figure out what takes so long during our visits. There might be one other person in the waiting room, two women working behind the front desk . . . and yet, we were there for two hours.
Last week, Grace and I had back-to-back appointments and we were there for three hours. We practically needed to bring a snack and a change of clothes, we were there so long.
Summer is barreling past faster than the speed limit, and I’m spending all my time at the eye doctor or waiting for a child’s sports practice to begin and end.
* * *
A misguided part of my brain harbors a poisonous kernel of jealousy. I know it’s poison but it’s still there.
I thought I was jealous of the woman I know who is starting her life over or the one I know who has just had a baby or the one who is heading off to college.
But really, I am jealous of myself . . . of who I was when I was young and unencumbered and of who I will be when I am old and unencumbered. (That is a might big assumption there, that one day I will be unencumbered.) (Notice how I assume without pause that I will one day be old. How arrogant of me.)
I have some internal flaw that keeps me from resting. I’m the princess and the pea is buried in me. I wonder if someday I will rest in the moment and stop thinking that those other selves are lucky because they aren’t me, right here, right now.
I hope so because I know for a fact that one day I will look back at this moment and long for it. Misty water-colored memories and all that.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Yes, yes, and yes. No jealousy in me, tho…I don’t have a jealous cell in my body. But I do see all those perspectives you wrote about as bittersweet wistfulness for me. Just like yesterday, coming across my youngest grandson’s potty seat and sending a text to my daughter-in-law asking if I still need to hold on to it for when I begin taking care of the boys again. Nope, she said…Coop uses the toilet now like a big boy. Argghhhh. Another chapter closed on a babyhood that has zipped past at warp speed. What is so bittersweet for me at 58 is knowing this second time around with little ones is my last. Some days I long for that sweet weight of a sleeping baby in my arms, the fuzzy little head tucked under my neck in the rocking chair, and it makes me cry.
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just turned 66 in May. I wonder where all the years went…why I screwed up so many times. why i don’t have pictures of special times, why i still struggle with my weight…why do i care. i am not married so i don’t have to please anyone but me…but there is still the green eyed monster hanging around me…making me feel fat, ugly and not needed anymore. stupid!
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