First steps

I've spent a lot of time as a mother noting my children's milestones. Oh, I think: he's climbing up that ladder unassisted. That never happened before! Or oh, how about that—she just listened to song lyrics, extrapolated their meaning, and ask a relevant question about them! (My children are four and six, so the milestones vary wildly.)

Then, tonight, I sat across from my husband in a restaurant. This past year has been very difficult for both of us, and has been its own sort of milestone, for many of the weighty and immense reasons that make adulthood complex. Differing expectations. Misunderstandings. So many feelings—some good, some bad—rushing in and taking up space and not always tended to in the ways they should be. Feelings that drift and pile like the laundry that will always, always be drifting in corners around the house.

A long time ago, in our younger days, things were more fluid and there were more choices to be made when life got difficult. There were options, maybe, things that could be easily discarded, horses to be changed midstream with few complicating factors.