For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
The words haunt her as she scribbles
them down on the small sign, resting it next to them now sitting on top of the
table with the box of clothes beside it, all meant for an infant. She looked
around at the last of the things to be sold before the house itself, then the
move… so much work ahead of her. People were quick to look over her things, and
soon enough a young couple ventured over, a man and his pregnant wife – maybe girlfriend
– and were eager to pick up the cheap set. Good
for them, she thought, though the smile on her face was painted.
The echoes of the shouting in her head
continued, she and her husband arguing back and forth for weeks about the most
trivial details, the most minute matters. Finally at their wits’ end, they make
love one last time before they can both finally admit that the love they once
shared is all gone, spent in that last blaze and now just ashes blowing out of
the hearth that at one point was their relationship. Over now, it was time for
the love that once lit every moment of the minutia in their lives to be
replaced with the business-as-usual, finally agreeing that divorce was the only
answer, the legal deconstruction serving to break their years together down
into dollars and cents, as if their love could have been given financial value,
minted in the United States…
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
She couldn’t tell if this was the most
painful of the memories or not, finally deciding to stop trying. They had
wanted a child for so long and tried so hard but it seemed impossible at this
point. After... it happened, they had
only seen the doctor once and tried a few more times. The wind was out of their
sails, cabin fever setting into their relationship under the pretense that they
would focus on their careers instead, work on themselves. After all, they were
still here, still together, why not further develop their own skills and
characters…
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
When it had happened, she was devastated
– they both were. One night she fell asleep pregnant, and woke up… just not somehow. She couldn’t believe it at
first, as if fate at flipped some cosmic on/off switch and there it goes,
spiraling down away from her with the explanations from the doctor and their
tears and the explanations to her family and friends… For a brief moment she
was numb with the loss, before reality came caving back in on her senses and
left her psyche reeling, unable to determine where to go from that point,
completely disoriented.
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
It doesn’t take long for her memories to
track back to one of the happiest moments in her life, finding out she was
pregnant. All their hard work, all their plans and dreams for their future,
finally confirmed to be happening. Looking back now, it holds a surreal image
of herself, as though she were a beam of light split through a prism, her pain
looking back at her joy and somehow recognizing itself…
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
The trying. Oh hell, how they tried.
First just sex at the right times, hormones in balance, trusting in biology –
then the time grew longer, and trips to the doctor, trying different methods,
even testing their sperm and eggs to make sure nature wasn’t against them from
the start. How hard those doctor’s visits were, the hardest in the waiting
rooms, holding hands as she fought more and more tears each time, him
reassuring her that everything was going to be okay each time.
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
What had come before then? What could
possibly have preceded the roller coaster of emotions before her highest and
lowest points in her life, so close together? Their wedding, perhaps. A very
happy day indeed, family and friends coming together for at least one day in
which they could all celebrate the love she and he had shared. Strange now to
think of how love exists between so different people in so many ways, family
and friends, lovers, and parents with their children.
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
Ah the first days of love, when ideas
for children are so far away. Whatever happens to the romance of the first
years? Is time destined to bring a shroud over everything, including that? But
she knew better, it was more than chance that determined life in such ways.
Some people simply aren’t compatible, and time merely shows their limits. They
had met their own with the loss of the child that might have been, the same as
some others. It was not a new story, but it was their own in their own way, and
for that it had it had its own unique beauty, in that it was their own story.
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
She thinks back to her own life before
that love, that solitary life filled with two lesser loves beforehand, and her
childhood so full and bright, and so unimportant now that she thinks of the
childhood and loves and life that might have been for her own child, had things
turned out differently, had one unseen factor gone differently. That is what
she thinks of now that it is all she has left, the story that never was.
For sale: baby shoes -- never worn.
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