Possibilities

27 September 2014

Saturday evening

Now that dinner is done, the Saturday afternoon football games have played across my neighbor's television, and there is some reflective time to spend. Amid the sounds of game shows leaking through my door, I think about the children I never had. How they would be adults now, living somewhere on their own. Probably far from here, so they wouldn't be visiting anyway. I've been in training for just such an occasion, lounging in a care facility for a very long time and no one comes to visit. I could pine away, saying that I miss them. But I have missed them for a great many years by now. They are never going to come. My missing them is bittersweet, both from a now sense and a long ago sense combined. There never was anyone to call me Dad. No birthday cakes with lots of frosting. No watching with great pride tinged with fear and hope, as they learned to ride that first time bicycle. No soothing of tears and skinned knees from the terrors of childhood learning experiences. No sharing the joys and wonders of being in nature on its own terms. The elements of slowly gaining adult skills, as marked by mastery and possession of that first jack knife or hatchet, checkbook, then car.

I wonder if those non-existent children would have gone to college? It certainly is different now than when I went. Would they have grown to be self directed by their heart and inner compass or like so many others seduced by money and ego satisfactions. Would they break my heart, more than it is now by their not being here? Possibilities lie behind us as well before us, in fact all around. It only matters which direction we are headed toward as to whether they are fore or aft.