My Other Self

When I was a girl growing up in a small town I would watch the airplanes overhead with longing.  The streaking white contrails from the airplane cris-crossing the blue sky like a shooting star.  Where are they going?  I'd think to myself.  Then I'd imagine lavender fields in Provence, lonely moors in England, sunbathed beaches in Italy.  I'd imagine myself on the plane, setting out for adventure.  When I opened my eyes I'd still be in my backyard, alfalfa fields rippling in the wind behind my house.  The contrails blurring and dissipating from view.   I'm meant for more.  I will not choose this small town life.  I'd vow to myself. 

There are two lavender plants just outside our door.  I opened the door this morning, groggy and sleep-muddled and the scent of lavender rushed in on the breeze.  I thought of France.  I thought of my younger self.  Romantic and sure of the beauty of my life before me.  It pained me to realize that I view life with much more cynicism, with less faith in the beauty of what life can be. 

I do not live in the small town I grew up in.  I live in a city at the base of craggy mountains.  I look for dirt roads everywhere, but they are nowhere to be found.  It is all pavement and buildings.  People and cars.  Sidewalks and street lamps.  I still harbor a desire to see different parts of the world.  But most of all I think of the small town.  Think of how simple it was to live there.  How easy silence is.  How uncomplicated a walk on a dirt road is. 

When I go back I'm struck by how different it is, and yet how it remains the same.  I feel like a guest now, instead of a native.  Home is no longer defined by a zip code, but by three people surrounding me. 

Every day we choose.  That is our blessing and that is our curse.  We choose what shape our lives will take.  I daydream that I split myself long ago.  My other self finished college, didn't get married and had no children.  My other self traveled the world.  Had love affairs with exotic men.  My other self had great personal success in a career that suited her.  In my mind she is just now settling down, satisfied with her decade of freedom, marrying a man with an accent and a lot of vowels in his last name. 

I think of the girl that might have been, mostly when I've had a rough day.  When dishes sit in the sink like beacons of failure before me.  When I clean up a spill for the fifteenth time.  When the bonds of love feel more like obligation than unbridled joy.  Somewhere that girl is laughing.  Enjoying herself.  Slave to no one. 

But on the good days, the days when my Bree snuggles into my shoulder.  When the house is bustling with the energy of the people that I love.  When I watch Ava, ever ethereal and graceful spinning about on the grass.  When my husband and I share a laugh in the evening hours after the kids are sleeping.  When I watch him watching our girls, his eyes full of amusement and pride.  It all comes back to one day, one choice I made nearly ten years ago.  With one affirmation I cut ties with the girl I might have become.  One bridge crumbled and fell into the canyon below.  I held Brigham's hand and we stepped onto another bridge, one we have made together, patched together by the choices we make every day.  On those days my other self blurs and dissipates, like fading contrails in the sky, she slips from my mind unnoticed and unreal.