Futures

"I am patient," I wrote in my cover letter for an elementary teaching position some eleven years ago this week. My proofreader - my mom - laughed out loud when she reached that line.

"I mean, I think it's possible," I stammered in response. "I am sure being a teacher will make me more patient... Do you need a glass of water? No? Can you stop laughing, please?"

It's no surprise, then, that I am waiting (terribly) this cold January. Technically, I haven't been waiting long. It's just since December, just until February. Or March. Or the near end of March. Not that I'm counting.

At the same time, I've been waiting for nearly a decade. I was twenty-two, celebrating good news with a solo Thai dinner in Albuquerque. I unfolded my futures over crispy spring rolls and green chicken curry. In my hand I held the option I wanted most of all. I smoothed it out, flashed it like a sparkly new ring, and decided not yet.

I like the other futures that opened out after that night. One led me to a teaching certificate, a Master's degree, a professor who handed me Annie Dillard and told me I had a true voice as a writer. The next future took me to a tiny island off the coast of Maine, a one room schoolhouse, two years of loss and grief after my mother died. Another led me to Pennsylvania, then back home, then through the rabbit hole of friends and passions and a beautiful lilac-scented new life.

It's beautiful, this life I have now. Sun-struck and full of joy, even on days like today with too many meetings and too much grading and children who ate way, way, way too much sugar. (Whatever scientist said sugar doesn't affect children deserves to be locked in a classroom after a birthday party celebration.)

Beautiful. Joyful. Good.

And yet...

I'm waiting for the future I didn't take nine years ago. I'm waiting, impatiently, terribly, waiting, to see if this time it's mine.