Nothing to Say, but What a Day, How's your Boy Been?

It's a blank day, a blank morning, even though I'm thinking of things that happened thirty or so years ago. Time is funny like that. You can be there in the moment one second, and right smack in the middle of events from long ago the next. And what's the real difference? You can live the past in your head, any time, although the events seem a little hard to change.

And therein lies the rub. Take a moment, a gesture, a slip of the tongue from twenty years ago and change it and your universe is different. Your job, your family, your life all rested on something as innocent as running back to the house to answer a phone call. Stooping over to tie a shoelace. Stopping off at the store for a loaf of bread.

We concentrate on the big things: education, appearance, specific skills. But do these really make the difference in the end, or is it that one tiny thing we did or didn't do?

She drove up to the mailbox outside the house and stopped, turning things over in her head as her car idled. The fresh flowers were beside her on the seat, ready to go. She loved him, that she knew, and she'd done a terrible thing, but she wanted him back. But would he take her back? He could say no, and break her heart all over again. And did she even deserve him? That was a terrible thing indeed. No, there was no forgiveness here, none deserved, and probably none forthcoming. And he was probably happy now, probably had a new girlfriend and a new life. Who was she to barge in there and ruin all of this? She put the car back into gear and drove off.

And we can never know how differently things might have turned out. The equation is too big, the variables too many. And the French lessons, in the end, wasted.