That was it. Sometimes I could see how the rest of my life would play out by the way it was going day by day. We watched the sequel to Dune, that world’s lore, the large underground worms and the ritual to remove their blue liquid, how the protagonist and his mother drink it to gain power. They can see backward and forward. I get little glimpses too.

Twenty years ago at this time we were planning for our first child to come. If it was a girl we’d name her Elizabeth (Lily for short) and if it was a boy, maybe Liam. We had the nursery ready to go but most of the time she’d spend with us, strapped to Dawn or cradled in one of our laps.

That spring I took a month off from work in our little house in West Seattle, more like a cabin with warm wooden floors and craftsman-style, built-in shelves. Spring is less of an event on the calendar here and more just the time you start cracking the windows.

Five years later we were about to buy our next house, also spring, and I’d drive by it each day before commuting into Seattle for work. I couldn’t see it fully from the street but I’d slow down to peek and then see what I could see, how badly I longed for our future there. The house is where our kids would grow up, and everything we’d dreamed for. I couldn’t wait.

The balance of the past and future tips as you get older and the prospect of the future can lose its thrust. We shift now to imagining our lives once the kids have established theirs and moved away. Tonight I’ll pick Lily up at the airport and tomorrow we’ll celebrate her twentieth birthday. Charlotte isn’t far behind.

Next week it will be cool and wet, a bit of winter and spring, though most of the season’s progress happens underground. We’ll all be delighted to have Lily home and know she’s in the house, her coat on the hall tree.

I don’t know what to make of the future and never did. Now it’s more about helping our kids plan for theirs. That feels about right. The future is coming faster than ever and now I wish it would hold off.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, parenting, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Nostalgia, pacific northwest, parenting