It's not an unusual thing. He's usually up by 5AM and comes in to kiss me goodbye before he leaves. Usually I'll wake up just enough to have a conversation with him I'll forget by the time my alarm goes off. Sometimes I'll say something insane and make him laugh before he leaves ("Why are you putting catheters in the cats?" was one of his favorites).
This morning somewhere between telling me about taking out the garbage and doing the laundry, my eyes drift open and I grab his hand.
"I was dreaming about magic," I tell him.
* * *
"I thought you always wanted, like, a billion kids."An old acquaintance from college likes to throw this in my face whenever she sees me reacting to a baby crying in public or a toddler having a meltdown on public transit.
I'm never reacting for the reason she thinks.
I've tried everything I can to get her to stop talking about it, to stop making the joke. There were lots of things I wanted in my early 20s and there were lots of things I thought I wanted in my early 20s. This is a small hurt, but an old one, and I've learned how to deal with it.
Sometimes it's easier to bear someone's unthinking cruelty than explain why it's cruel.
* * *
When I was a kid I used to fall asleep pretending that I could do magic.
I would imagine that I was living a giant treehouse and that I was a princess of the woods. On nights when I couldn't sleep I would imagine riding on my oversized wolf, followed by my size-shifting cat. We were adventuring out to find and destroy the Tomes of Black Magic, which were scattered throughout the mundane and magical worlds. I fought every kind of monster I could think of, but those confrontations were always physical or besting the monster using my intellect. Magic was always only used when I returned to the treehouse.
Magic was about creating.
* * *
"What are you thinking about?"
We're waiting for the number twenty-three on our way to a movie. I've been watching a little girl walking through the twilight with her father, puttering along next to him and singing to herself.
"I just feel a little wistful."
He sees where I'm looking. "Yeah?"
I nod. "It's hard, knowing that it's an experience I'm never going to have. I was once watching some friends, the ones you met last week? I remember watching them playing with their daughter and realizing that I'd never feel what they were feeling." I pause. "And I know, I know that I'm making the right decision, but sometimes I want it so badly it feels physical."
I stop, expecting some platitude about how sometimes correct decisions aren't easy, or that there's always time to change my mind, or any of a hundred other things a dozen different people have told me.
He just squeezes my hand. "I know."
* * *
"Here, take this," David whispers, handing me his handkerchief.
We're seeing a play by one of my favorite theatre companies in the area. Their stuff always destroys me. It's beautiful and moving and always makes me cry. This particular show is about magic and authenticity and love and has me sobbing, loudly, during the final five minutes.
It's also, I think, about illusions. The lies we tell ourselves to keep ourselves safe from reality.
That's really what's making me cry.
* * *
David and I can't have kids.
I suppose the more correct thing to say is that we can't have kids without a lot of expensive and invasive medical intervention that neither of us would want.
I got a little weepy just writing that.
Here's the thing. I don't know if I've ever seriously wanted a child. I agonized about it a lot in my late 20s. The logical decision, given my mental health history and income and a feelings about actually raising a child, is to not have one. It's a decision that I'm comfortable with about 90% of the time.
I'm sure I don't have to explain the difference between making a decision and having it made for you.
It's oddly devastating to know that we can't have something I was pretty sure I never wanted in the first place. David is the first person I would have ever considered having a baby with and it's a choice we'll never really be able to make.
Which makes things complicated.
* * *
So here's the part where I'll be comparing motherhood and pregnancy to my feelings on magic and creation. Or having one of those uplifting moments in memoir writing where I realize that I can channel my creative impulses to writing or my work or volunteering or something.
Yeah, no.
Because the thing is that if suddenly ohmygodmagicisreallyreal I wouldn't magic myself a baby (I've read folklore, I know how that one ends). I also wouldn't magic myself into complete serenity about my choices and become a renowned writer.
Well, maybe that last part.
Now, at thirty-five instead of five I realize that magic isn't about creation. It isn't even about choice. It's about the illusion, the ability to convince yourself that you ever had any fucking option.
It's another in a series of grim but true revelations I've had in my mid-30s. But even that realization doesn't really change things.
I still wake up dreaming of magic.
