Alter images in Lay me down

Ethan looked strikingly like his long-gone father,
terribly handsome,
all fine bones and fair skin,
though Ian’s light hair was never so long and attractively unkempt.
Those eyes, though, clear and blue, those eyes came straight from me.

Where the openness of his expression came from though,
that absence of self-doubt and second-guessing,
the natural manifestation of innate self-confidence,
where that came from I have no idea.
Neither his father nor I had that to give him,
and it, by far, was his most engaging feature.

As I popped open the hatch on my car, he reached in.
Handing me the bags with the bread and eggs,
he smiled an easy smile.
“You take these, Mom, and I’ll be in with the rest.”

It was the strange sound of my not quite name in his not quite Ian-toned voice,
that hit an off-key.
Something wrong here,
something off.

Oh.

I understand.
This isn’t real.
Ethan doesn’t exist.
Ian and I could never have produced a son like this.
We might have made a beautiful boy, if indeed Ian’s physical genes where dominant,
but given Ian’s psychiatric weaknesses and my own instability of character,
well, we could have produced an introvert with suicidal tendencies
or a drug-addicted paranoid
or a maladjusted genius who couldn’t hold a steady job.
We’d never have made a happy well-balanced open-hearted young man
who was genuinely content in his own skin.

Nope, this beautiful young man,
calling me Mom and cheerfully helping pull in the groceries,
he’s proof that this is a dream.

I have a choice now.
I can give in to reality,
embrace the bitterness that naturally comes with the remembering
that I have no sweet beautiful son,
that the family that I had planned on being a part of failed to happen,
that I am alone and will be alone,
that this is the true measure of how badly I have failed…

Or

Oh, oh,
Anything’s better than that.

So I choose otherwise and…

“Thanks, Ethe.
What do you think? Spaghetti?”
I ask already knowing he won’t say no to his favourite,
“And maybe some scrabble afterwards?”

A pleasant evening of doing nothing important with my make-believe son.
Not a bad dream to indulge in
until I’m forced to wake.

Last updated September 23, 2017