Oh, the Possibilities

It’s 5:20am, 32 degrees outside and the top step of the front deck is coated in a thin crust of snow. With the heating pad’s setting on “2” and the closest soft throw tucked snugly ‘round my lap and legs, I’m ensconced in my place on the recliner couch as I look into the last inky blackness of the night framed by the living room windows. Xena is all smoothed and settled into her mousy dreams to my right and Tink, the newest addition to our clowder, makes a vertical leap from the footrest, ricochets off the blanket chest-turned-coffee table into the antique platform rocker near the entrance to the kitchen, connecting hard with the carved curved arm of the chair before sticking the landing. A six-week-old kitten has turned our home into her own private pinball machine. One more toppled lamp and its broken compact florescent light bulb scattered at our bare feet, and it’ll be Game Over.

When it’s just light enough to the east, I’ll layer up and walk the paths like I do, finish up the last of the fall planting (garlic, the rest of the heirloom tulip bulbs from my uncle and three Russian sage plants still showing some promise, even this late in the season) and tuck in again, this time sitting at the work table in my studio, stitching glass beads and chips of lapis lazuli semi-precious stone to a piece of soft wall art I started at the beginning of lockdown. Time will slow down or stop completely, and I’ll be lost in that sweet spot of untethered Imagination, letting my mind wander through the landscape of possibility. It begins with “What if…?”

What if…one day, on the morning walk, I just sat on the left side of the curb-gleaned dark pine green antique wicker loveseat that I hauled home in June, nestled just off the walking path into a thicket of blackberry stalks across from that bend in the creek, and stayed there for most of the day?

What if…I didn’t talk myself out of asking someone for help?

What if…that last hedgeapple hanging from the very top of the osage orange tree on the ridge didn’t fall, even in the strongest gale-force winds, all winter?

What if…the Black Strawberry tomato seeds I saved on a piece of paper towel in August actually sprouted and grew stems and leaves and bore fruit next July?

What if…the Downton Abbey series had never ended?

What if…I actually slept straight through the night?

What if…the gentleman who stopped by our booth at the market two weeks before the midterm elections and monologued for thirty minutes about his own stance had asked me how I felt about things…and then listened?

What if…Patrick had followed through on his bottle rocket desire to become a chimney sweep in the late 90’s?

What if…I knew how to operate a chainsaw?

What if…that laughing crow who is always hanging out in the meadow lands on my shoulder this morning with her satiny ebony wings and accompanies me on the rest of the walk, down to the coop to let the chickens out, back up the slope to the ridge to fill the suet feeders and out to the potting shed to gather up the garden tools I’ll need this afternoon?

What if…the leftovers from last night’s dinner of huckleberry barbecue-sauced chicken breasts just kept replenishing themselves in the darkness of the fridge while we slept?

What if…we could join our favorite film or television show as one of the characters but retain our own identity and selves throughout?

What if…our haircuts never grew out?

What if…we could tell our stories honestly and be given acknowledgement that they’re still being written?

What if…Tink just stayed little?

What if…snow fell thick and fast, as large flakes that filled our cupped hands and didn’t melt on contact?

What if…we really did put things back where we found them, closed what we opened, washed what we dirtied, finished what we started?

What if…mystery was simply allowed to be mystery, far from the prying and prodding fingers of “I must figure this out”?

What if…I let people into my life as it is, didn’t feel the need to tidy it all up first?

What if…I didn’t argue with myself about what “wasted time” really is?

What if…there were no clocks at all?

What if…uncertainty and imperfections were valued more than their opposites?

What if…Sting finally wrote back?

I’m going to need more beads, I think…