Accidental Arrival

My brother, when we were kids, used to amuse himself by holding me at bay with a single palm on my forehead. Squalling and flailing, I could not reach far enough to swat him. I have the same sense of vulnerable impotence today.

Not long ago, I was on a mid-career path that I now see as a delusion. My focus was on some hazy moment in the mid-future, when I would be no longer young but compensated with creative and intellectual bounty. There would be clever gatherings held at a bookstore or bistro.

Never mind that my life was out of step with this daydream. That I had stopped reading outside of my work. That my commuter existence was anathema to creative reflection. That friends were slipping away unnoticed.

Nothing is going the way I expected. We live where we do because we bought a house more or less on a whim. People in our lives have shifted drastically — some died, some moved away, and others drifted. Then we had a child late in the game.

This, it seems, is my version of middle age. I feel as though a great hand has pressed me backwards into a wall. I thought the late forties would be replete with contentment and deeper knowledge. But the smooth face of midlife eludes me.

There are days when I must acknowledge loss as a driving force. I do hear time snapping at my heels. Yet so much remains beyond my fingertips.