The Way We Pictured It

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A set place for everything, meals that look like nouvelle cuisine, satiny bras with bottoms to match. When I daydreamed about my adult life, this is how I imagined it.

Instead, I sit here typing, holding a blue coffee mug that doesn't match any others in this house. I've got a box of noodles, jarred sauce, and thawed chicken breasts planned for dinner - and do you really want to know about my faded flowered underwear and once-upon-a-time-white bra? I'd answer no; if you read it, you'll picture it, and now I'm sorry for what your mind just showed you.

My gushy butt is on a mismatched chair that's not even shabby chic. Our crafty coffee table is unintentionally crafty via Hot Wheel cars scraped across its top not that many summers ago -- and not because it was seized by a knowing eye at a street fair.

I have papers at my feet because I can't decide on the best way to file and also keep everything I have going on in my life handy so that I can find it again. Easily. It's hard to remember what name I've given to what file on any given day.

I need a way to outsmart myself, and I have none.

Did I think I'd be a woman who'd enter middle age with a bottom so soft and flabby it hurt to sit on a church basement folding chair on donut Sunday? In my wildest dreams, did I envision triceps so loose they'd enter my field of vision when I'd angle cut carrots for dinner?

One promise I made to myself for my life as an adult was to never let myself, or my life, "go." Letting yourself go, you know, it means exactly that - letting things happen, no plan. Letting go is the reason the muumuu exists. Just - everything on my body, make a run for it, see how far you can get before someone tries to stop you.

Run, triceps! Run, glutteus maximus! before your owner says enough and returns you back to order.

Ha. They started running years ago and no one's yelled come back! since.

It's hard to say what's stronger; the desire for life as I dreamed it would be: bright white morning sunlight pouring in through billowy curtains dreamily parted open by a pair of yoga-strong arms. Or the reality -- one curtain panel yanked to the side by a still sleep-dizzy hunched over woman who just trenched her back by stepping on a dryer ball that fell out of last night's laundry, muttering to herself about it being 6:00 a.m. already. 

I had choices, but I never took the time to ponder. I could have planned; what things went in my home, how my days would go, the domestic table place settings and enchanting meals, everything - so much better.

My God it sounds so sad, doesn't it? Nothing in my house - especially me - is neat or thought out or perfectly matched.

Except for the first thing that I see when I open my bedroom door every morning. To my right, one precisely placed next to the other - displayed and arranged to the equally measured height and space in between them as the tape measure directed me to; in frames decided upon after comparing 15 other blacks from flat to gloss, on matting that was felt between thumb and middle finger for thickness and held up against color swatches for the white closest to the color of clouds - are portraits of my three boys, each one in a daffodil yellow shirt.

I spent forever deciding on the exact yellow of those shirts.

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Image via flicker cc