Wistful

Life is hard, but, then, tell you something you don't know.

And, yet, we still want it to go slower. We want to hold on to the good parts, savor them, make them stick in our minds. And, oh, how we cannot.

The first draft is just the beginning.
Today I made it through 40 pages that look like this. I had
hoped to make it through 100.

I spent the day in Barnes & Noble today, my mind a mishmash of manic thoughts. In a few months, my book will be there. Or, should be there, but may not be. I may need you to beg for it to be.

Still, on the B&N shelves or not, it will be out there in the world for sale. It took me a decade to get here - to being a published author. To having a book come out. And all I want to do is be grateful. But the publishing world has changed so much in the past five years, or maybe I just know too much now. What I understand now, is not only how bumpy the road to getting here is, but that getting here doesn't mean staying.

Still, ten years ago, I would have given almost anything to get here.

While I was sitting in B&N drinking my coffee and working on revisions for my hopefully-next book, a woman sat across from me with her small daughter. They read books, and chatted and shared cookies. Something I did weekly with my two boys, year after year, and it was one of my favorite things. And as I did those things with my sons, I tried to savor every moment, to not ever wish to be anywhere but right there with them as I was. Moreso, I tried to store images of them like snapshots in my brain, so I wouldn't forget a thing. But, still, it was elusive, and watching that woman with her young child, was suddenly almost too much to bear.

Even now, just typing this, eviscerates me.

I want those moments back. I want a hundred more years with my sons. I want to hold them, and play with them, and read to them, and have them look up at me with their big, brown intelligent eyes and promise me we have a lifetime still ahead of us together.

But we don't. They are 13 and 15, and they are almost gone.

So, here I am with my book coming out.
And I am grateful.
But ten years have flown by like a minute. Even though life is unbearably hard.

And I'd give almost anything to go back there.

-gae