Paths not taken
No, nothing yet. It's very hot. I am ready to relocate this particular tenant to new lodgings.
It is always a bit odd to see someone wandering down the path that you yourself were to follow, were brought up to follow from the age of negative nine months, and realize that not only would you not have been happy, but that they don't seem happy, either. Often people look to paths not taken with regret but I cannot say that it is regret I feel. More a sense of relief. These things that would have seemed so important to me even as little as eighteen months ago-the gala reception, the extensive guest list from Who's Who in Wizarding Britain, the exotic honeymoon, the expensively beautiful dress, the parentally blessed (perhaps even parentally chosen) spouse, the piles of pretty-but-pointless presents artfully displayed in the sitting room-all of this would have been of great importance. I would have written about the tiny details at length in this journal, which likely would have been mostly about how much I was disapponting my Mother. (As you can see in other places, it is nearly impossible not to disappoint my Mother.)
Instead, my journal has been full of the unexpected, of discoveries about myself, and about my friends, and about who my friends really were, and what family really means. And as I lay here in my little cottage, smelling the grass in the breeze coming in the door, watching Ted mess about in the kitchen, and waiting for my child to arrive, I think, it is this that I was meant for, all along.
It is always a bit odd to see someone wandering down the path that you yourself were to follow, were brought up to follow from the age of negative nine months, and realize that not only would you not have been happy, but that they don't seem happy, either. Often people look to paths not taken with regret but I cannot say that it is regret I feel. More a sense of relief. These things that would have seemed so important to me even as little as eighteen months ago-the gala reception, the extensive guest list from Who's Who in Wizarding Britain, the exotic honeymoon, the expensively beautiful dress, the parentally blessed (perhaps even parentally chosen) spouse, the piles of pretty-but-pointless presents artfully displayed in the sitting room-all of this would have been of great importance. I would have written about the tiny details at length in this journal, which likely would have been mostly about how much I was disapponting my Mother. (As you can see in other places, it is nearly impossible not to disappoint my Mother.)
Instead, my journal has been full of the unexpected, of discoveries about myself, and about my friends, and about who my friends really were, and what family really means. And as I lay here in my little cottage, smelling the grass in the breeze coming in the door, watching Ted mess about in the kitchen, and waiting for my child to arrive, I think, it is this that I was meant for, all along.