Dancing at 80.
While their kids were playing in another room they danced together in the kitchen. It was a slow song, they hung on each other and rocked awkwardly side to side. She felt his body, his warmth and wondered if he felt her bloated post-dinner belly.
“This is what we will be like when we are 80!” He muffled into her hair, both of them laughing at their already geriatric dance moves. For a few seconds it was a happy thought, them old and grey bumbling around still loving each other, until she realized what that would also mean. That their babies would no longer be living with them, it would just be them. For a moment she felt the house without the girls, felt the pain of their absence. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with her husband, that part, the idea of dancing at 80 with him, snuggled on each other's decrepit shoulders was beautiful. But right beside those old creaking bones lay a heavy melancholy, with the realization that by then their babies would no longer be living with them, moved out long before to start their own families. Taking for granted the endless days they now have with them, the gobbling greed of their constant presence, she knew one day would be a memory replaced with visits that had a beginning and an end.
A friend of hers from high school, who started a family a lot earlier, recently “lost” her eldest son to his future. Her friend had said the pain of knowing he would never be home for any guaranteed stretch of time again felt like grief.
She had known even before she had babies that their leaving would one day be crippling. A premature overreaction or a bone-deep understanding of love and loss? When she was younger she went to visit a college for a shoot and started to cry as she imagined the idea of waving goodbye to her then as yet un-conceived child! Two older, grayer, possibly embarrassing parents' arms wrapped around each other as they said their tearful goodbye to their baby.
She buried her head in her husband's neck grieving the unknown, unable to enjoy her warm present.