wish you were here

I've acquired quite a taste for a well made mistake - Fiona Apple

This morning, as I was driving to school, I had to confront the fact that one of my most tangible memories did not actually happen. I think of it periodically, always during a touch of heartbreak. I crossed the back of the fine art building of my college. You were walking from the street. I see exactly how baggy your clothes were fitting you at the time. You wore a blue hat. We ran to each other, I am not kidding. And it is not exaggeration to say my heart exploded.

This might not have happened. I think I stood there alone. Making you up.

The summer I got married, I re-read all the Little House books. Now, I'm pregnant and while I wait for my baby, I've been reading The Savage Detectives and last week I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. These suit a craving I have, a craving for angst. And a deep craving for the past. Reading about these young poets reminds me of reading On The Road when I was a teenager. Then, just as now, I had no nightlife. No freedom. I can't get over how brief the period of freedom is for a woman. It's such a short time where you have your adulthood, before you become a mother and it's gone. Does it return? Does it even matter when your youth is gone? Countless times in the last few years I've regretted the careful way I manicured my twenties. Accumulated degrees, remained mostly safe, stayed home.

So, I recall the things I read and the boys I loved. I crave these things, the same as I do hamburgers and olives. I admit I dream about old loves nearly constantly. Sometimes I just dream I am walking around my college, and wake up with my broken heart. Do not shake your head at a 31 year old woman mourning her youth. You know as well as I do it is gone.

I crave a mistake. A good mom gone bad. Don't worry, it's not real and it will pass. I was made to do right.