I Wish

The following is inspired by Just Write at The Extraordinary Ordinary and a passage from the book The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison, which I had to go through today before returning it to the library so that I could un-fold all the corners I'd folded down.  


I don't wish for the old house back, not really, yet in a way, I wish for everything back that ever was, everything that once seemed like forever and yet has vanished.  I wish for my own childhood bedroom with its mauve-and-mint-green heart-patterned wallpaper, the white-painted furniture, the west-facing window out of which I watched the sunset through the open screen in the summer.  I wish for Sunday after-church coffees at my grandparents' house and summer sleepovers in their downstairs bedrooms, in a house with gold-flecked Formica and a tub with sticky rubber bath mats inside.  I wish for a chance to relive an afternoon with my brother, when we shot hoops in the driveway and rode our bikes right down the middle of the street until my mom yelled out the front door that dinner was ready.  I wish for a sleepover with my best friends, sneaking out to toilet-paper a neighbor's house and coming back to eat microwave popcorn and watch The Princess Bride in the basement, for the day we went to see Wayne's World in the theatre, for our Christmas gift exchanges and summer meetings in fields and before-school pancake breakfasts and track meets.  I wish for my college dorm room with its view of the cafeteria, the futon on which I fell asleep reading uncountable pages of literature and philosophy, the white board hanging on our door next to a Nike ad I ripped out of a magazine, the buzz in the hallway at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night, all hairspray and music and getting ready to go out.  I wish for my husband as he was the first time I saw him, the first time he asked me to dinner at my dorm room door, the feeling of falling in love outside of The Alpen Rose restaurant on a cool fall night.  I wish for the first apartment we ever shared, in a generic complex across from north campus, the kitchen where I taught myself how to cook, the tiny TV/VCR combination that sat on our bedroom dresser.  I wish for my two daughters at every age they've ever been, but especially on the days they were born, for the sleepy moments in the middle of the night, for their happy, squeaky little voices and their chubby little cheeks filling the house.  I wish for Christmas mornings and blowing out birthday candles and first soccer games and all the hundreds of ordinary mornings with breakfast dishes to clear and coats to zip up and half-finished mugs of coffee growing cold on the counter.