April 2012

I don’t feel like prefacing this with an explanation.  So I’m just going to get right to it: “Deferred Dreams in the Snowglobe” I prepare myself to pack away my dreams into the snowglobe of a lost memory. Our fingers intertwined, like beds of fallen leaves warming a frosty earth. The little laughs shared in stone courtyards, where too many feet have marched to the sound of war drums — our laughter replenishes the weary souls trapped in a moment of history. The way your eyes gleam when I kneel, even though I always said I wouldn’t because it’s too cliche and we should strive to be something more than that. But I couldn’t help myself, the dreary winter rain of England trapping moisture in my cargo pants as the words slip from my tongue and the oath slides into place. The tears we share together that night when your lips offer affirmations and our nervous smiles betray our joy to the voyeurs of the world. The single joyous moment when you cross the threshold on the arms of an angel; I stand there, sweaty palms, my crazy mother in the corner sobbing over a grin — we both know she’s lost her marbles in all the right ways — and words are exchanged under an arch of artificial flowers — because you’re allergic to the real deal and I made the day just for you so you’d always remember… The first moment when your worried face shows me the right colors/lines/truths in the third plastic stick you’ve tried. I hardly contain my excitement, like a child getting the right toy at Christmas, but always and forever, every day and thereafter, and then I’m running across the parking lot, screaming at anyone who will listen, even if their faces betray my absurdity. I sweep you up into my arms with a thousand kisses and thank yous. We were happy that day. The birth, the growth, and the sudden realization that there are so many things nobody ever told us about anything we should have learned about when we were younger. There are fights and bitter remarks, pain and tears and too much food in places it’s not supposed to end up… But at night we read little stories — I do all the voices, and you try not to laugh at how ridiculous I sound — and battle the wits of the young in the grand game of sleep politics. We soldier through, because the little troopers with unusual names we’ve concucted in the imagination of love need us as much as we need them. We remind ourselves that we can handle it. Our mothers remind us that they’ll gladly donate their services. The little hand of a raggedy boy squeezing the life out of too many imaginary demons in the woods out back. Somewhere his sister plays with her dolls, or maybe she’s squeezing imaginary demons too, perhaps in solidarity or because she’s too much like her monther when she was young. He’s a right pain in the ass — so much like his father (or mother, or both) — and she’s a royal princess who isn’t sure she wants to be a princess at all. But we make do, because there’s something about this journey that reminds us we’ve still got a long way to go before we reach whatever great epiphany awaits the end… The demon-smashing boy brings his own demon-smashers to the party, and before long the demon-smashers are followed by more. Whatever we think about the choices the original demon-smashers made, we’re too happy to have more demon-smashers in our little cottage in the country to care — or little house in the city, depending on how our dreams turned out. So our living room is filled with toys and our guest bedrooms turn out to be perfect havens for the new demon-smashers to rest off their demon-furies. We read them bedtime stories, too, and tell their parents that we’d happily donate our services. The former-demon-smashers smile at us, because they remember when they too were fodder for the services of the elderly. The first time you really realized that we have grown far too old, but that we’re still just as happy as we ever were, even with the wrinkles and dwindling health. We spend our days in the living room, reading books, watching TV we don’t understand, remarking on how when we were younger we never got into all that whatsamacallits and some such whatever majigs. The former-demon-smashers roll their eyes when they’re privvy to the conversation, but sooner or latter, they’ll get it too. Somewhere in all of this, you’ll own that little bookshop I told you about when I made up that ridiculous story. Tinkers and Pages Magical Emporium of Tinker Toys and Books: you’ll call it that because I came up with the name in a fit of imagination, and you can’t help yourself, after all. We’ll throw our life savings into it because it’s what we want to do with the rest of our long, beautiful lives. We’ll be giants in our own little world, so sure that the trees beneath our feet won’t prick us into submission. All these thoughts, like sunbursts of color spreading outward into a fan of possibilities, slip down from the tip of a wand into my own little pensieve, the wizard love song that was always ours dwindling away in the background where the shadows encroach — shadows of what used to be, of the demon-smashers and their adorable grins… In the snowglobe, I see the futures we might have had lying in wait, perhaps to be drawn out again, or deferred for another day. But whatever days are lost in the memory of you, I’ll hold the snowglobe in my pocket, a bookmark for one moment of wonder.