Everybody wants to rule the world...

Everyone it seems, is having babies. Its like once you have one, after they pull the kid out, they implant a homing device that makes you pick up the newly 'with child' within a statewide radius. Everybody excited and scared. I see them and though I am super stoked for their impending child, all the love that they'll suddenly face in a short nine months, love they've never fathomed, I get this weird feeling.

Some, I suppose, would call it melancholy, or a 'longing for days past'. I personally wouldn't call it either since I'm not quite sure what it is. I certainly don't wan't to 'go back'. I'm more content with who I am than I ever was, I have all these amazing people around me, I'm feeling fine.


But.


BUT.

There are times when I look at someone I knew in high school and read the expectant look on their face, and instead of wanting to extend my hand and pat their belly, feel their future, suddenly I think of being in high school again.

I think of what I wore, the feeling and textures of it all (lots of black and the texture of the canvas from the Converse on my feet), the weather and friends and the fair-weather friends. The smells and sounds (chips and the Pixies). The secrets and the thoughts (that could be a cool c.d. title). All these things I wish I had collected and put in a scrapbook to look at when the feeling struck. Just to laugh. Just to feel again.

I'd keep notes in the creases.

Sam,

So should we jump this bitch and go downtown?

Love,
Me

I'd keep the flowers we plucked when we explored washes after the inhilation of perfectly rolled joints.

I'd keep the pictures of our faces huddled together, smiling, thinking 'forever'.

Because forever, when you're young, is always possible.

Because you don't fight over finances with your high school boyfriend or sleep together every night. And you certainly don't have babies and in-laws with them (or maybe you do).

But you have the young love. The stealing of their boxers to wear when they can't be around. The songs serenaded or put on a mix. "This reminds me of you". Phone calls and waiting for buses together.

Ephereal.

I'd put the poems I wrote. Just to laugh.

I'd spray the pages with my perfume I wore daily (actually a mens cologne called 'Jack'....concidence?).

I'd put a picture of my family all together for the last time.

When you grow up everything changes. You forget when you take on new responsibilities. New roles in life. Divorce happens and babies happen. Debt happens and marriage happens. You get angry for real reasons. You cry and fight and sometimes you curse the day you entered the real world.

But its all beautiful. Everything.

Even when the sheets are stolen from under you in your sleep and you wake up with cold feet.

I love my life right now, as it is. With my boy and my man. Our dynamic trio. My family (the more you say it the less scary it sounds). But sometimes I can't help but hear a song or smell that smell and then that feeling in my stomach explodes all over again and I smile or laugh or think.

I don't live in the past, but sometimes it certainly finds a way to come back, cover your eyes when your not looking and say "guess who?!"

I feel this every time my son pulls my ponytail and laughs.