Monday, December 26, 2011

Unbidden

‎"You hear in the person you’re destined to love the sound of those yet to be born." - Alyson Richman

1998. As the plane lands in Detroit, an image flashes across my mind of my boyfriend waiting for me at the gates, as it usually does when I land on the cross-country trip. This one is different: his arms encircle three children who are also waiting for me. I laugh at myself for the schoolgirl imagining. Then, I think, I wasn't imagining on purpose - this image came to me unbidden. I call it back and look more closely. There are two girls and a boy, somewhere between the ages of maybe 5 and 11. Two of them have light hair, but I can't see their faces. I laugh again; my boyfriend is dark-complected and I can't imagine him ever having a child with light hair. I pull my carry-on out from the overhead bins and walk off the plane quite amused with my subconscious. I am 19, and I have hardly considered life after college graduation. The image is gone before I reach the airport shuttle. The fantasy was so great, my boyfriend is not even able to meet me at the airport today.

Tonight, 2011. I read the lines above in Richman's book "The Lost Wife," and the image returns to me, equally unbidden. The father of my children with two daughters and a son. The dark-complected first born so like him in many ways, the younger two more like me, growing into people I never could have imagined yet somehow I've always known.

For a moment, time feels simultaneous.