Sometimes, when I get really down about the menial tasks in my present life, wondering where I could be if I’d made different decisions, what might’ve been if the circumstances in my immediate reality were slightly different, God drops the veil between my present life and the Parallel Universe, showing me what my life would be like rightthissecond if I’d have stayed on track with my original plans, unchanged, doing the same thing with the same people in the same place with the same objectives. Suddenly, I am staring into the Looking Glass, peeking through a portal into my previous inevitabilities, like Ebenezer Scrooge during his visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future.

At first, I stand, stunned at the familiarity of a reality that is now so distant a memory to me. My eyes are wide at the horror of what I used to tolerate, what I used to consider healthy and productive, what I used to define as “love” and “trust”.  I cringe at the embarrassment of the conspicuous self-loathing I used to emote and look away from the arrogant foolishness in which I performed my shamelessly youthful convictions. My heart goes out to the dilapidated woman I see before me, bedraggled and exhausted from years of emotional turmoil and the tragic, unrewarded hope of a love requited.  The maternal part of me longs to reach through the Glass, wrap my arms around her and pull her through to where I stand but, in our powerlessness, we stand, staring at each other in the remembered grief of lost dreams.

Then, slowly,  I turn from the Glass to look at this stage that the tech crew of fate has set around me. My lips begin to spread as my eyes fall on the piles of dirty dishes and mounds of baby poo-laden clothes that surround me. I see assignments that I haven’t yet undertaken, pounds of pudge that I haven’t had time to be rid of, knots of filthy, greasy hair that I haven’t washed in days, scores of voicemails and emails I haven’t paid any attention to, let alone responded to and the smirk becomes very soft chuckles. I look at myself, a postcollegiate stay-at-home-mother with little to no intellectual stimulation, hardly any social life, and no daily productivity to speak of except amassing hoardes of rancid diapers into an overpriced vessel in the nursery and soon I am giggling hysterically. I see a devoted husband, a chatty toddler, a bitchy queen of a cat, piles of debt, excited Christmas mornings, years of financial stress, hurried school-morning breakfasts, uncertain living situations, drama with the inlaws, failed culinary ventures, the Tooth Fairy, second mortgages, career changes, white picket fences, unfinished photo albums, Stepford Wives running playdates, broken curfews, mid life crises, and more loads of laundry than I could possibly compute.

I am roaring with laughter, sitting on the floor, tears streaming down my face, slapping my thighs, gasping for breaths between outlandish guffaws. The woman on the other side of the Glass knows I am laughing at her, but I simply can’t help myself. I am delirious with glee and this sudden ambush of gratitude. Gratitude at being on this side of the Glass, gratitude at the changes that shaped my present Self when I wasn’t looking, gratitude at the precious, beautiful, perfect gifts that I wake up to submerge myself within every single morning. Gratitude at the realization that there are worries and troubles used to be a part of my daily lifestyle that are now so foreign to me that I had to peer through the Glass to remember their very existence.

If ever I needed a reminder, this is it. As the roads diverged into two separate sides to the veil, my path provided me with Love in every raw, tangible, organic form. Relief and gratitude consume my entire consciousness.

The walls shatter end the roof begins to sag as my home rumbles with rejoicing worship and the insane gales of grateful laughter.