Destined (47 page)

We can be daunted, or we can be
challenged. We can be discouraged, or we can be inspired. I could fill myself
with the qualities I most admire and celebrate my life, and if I wanted to live
happily ever after, I could simply choose that reality and start living it
right now.

And so, I did. And the time passed
joyfully, with my glass more than half full. In fact, it overflowed with
thankfulness and appreciation for the wonderful days and nights we were given,
the great gift of this life together on our beautiful, verdant Earth.

Description:
 
A beautiful man/woman dances inside a
wreath of laurel leaves, the sign of triumph. Angels or animals symbolic of the
four elements of earth, air, fire and water surround her.

Meaning:
 
Fulfillment, victory, transformation.
The end of one complete cycle. The achievement of a progressed attitude and an
evolved spirit.

In the tender season, the very early spring when red buds
swell on the tips of branches and flocks of little birds chase clouds of little
flies across the sky, I began to sprout new ideas like the seedlings that
erupted from the newly thawed earth that quickened all around us.

It
was mud season and the floors were filthy all the time, no matter how often we
mopped. The girls agreed that it was best to dress in layers so we could shed
them as the day progressed, warming up to sixty-five most afternoons now. There
was still some snow around, though, in dirty black-speckled mounds near the
parking meters and around the edges of parking lots. The ground hog from
Pennsylvania did not see his shadow, and spring was due immediately. Siri was
swelling up like a beautiful, sexy balloon and the rest of us were expectant
vicariously through her.

Then St. Patrick’s Day brought a huge
Nor’easter, classic New England style, and we were buried under eighteen inches
of snow. I decided to warm things up by having Ladies’ Night at our house.
Despite the icy roads and piles of snow, both drifted and pushed into mountains
by snowplows, all of the girls actually came.

New Englanders are hardy souls,
whether we come from here originally or not. In fact, none of us came from here
originally except Bella, whose parents still lived in the nearby city of Springfield,
where she was born and raised. But now, like the native Yankees, we had all
come to calmly accept the winter weather, and in truth we really kind of
enjoyed it, the beauty and excitement of it. We forged out bravely on snowy
nights under white-out conditions in our four-wheel drive vehicles or stoically
on booted foot, and we went where we had to go. We were strong and invincible.
Once we got there, we partied our brains out.

Tony went out that night, on my
advice. He and Tom set out on foot to enjoy the St. Patty’s Day green beer
served at all the bars in the center of town. Gupta and Henry got to stay home
and babysit, falling asleep in their comfortable chairs soon after the children
went to bed. The girls took over the house by the park, and we were all wired
for a wild time.

Laurie put some CD’s on Tony’s pet
sound system, which by now had insinuated itself into nearly every room in the
house. We started with an energetic freeform dance to some music Alyssia had
brought, sort of a cross between synthetic computer music and some kind of
ethnic, tribal music. It was fabulous. We spread out all over the downstairs
and threw ourselves into it. Then we all gathered around the granite island in
the kitchen and drank Tony’s
Veuve Cliquot
. Siri drank ice water.

“Love it, love it, love it,” said
Laurie, pointing at the granite island, the six-burner stove and the stainless
steel SubZero refrigerator.

“Yes, this place is great, honey!”
said Alyssia. “Now, what did you have to do to deserve all this?” She pretended
to look at me suspiciously, one eyebrow raised.

“Just lucky, I guess,” I said
innocently.

“Are you kidding?” said Bella. “They’ve
probably done it in every room of this house, and all over Henry’s place too!”

“Well,” I said, “Not quite all over Henry’s
place. Only on two floors, in fact.”

“That’s good, honey,” Alyssia said,
patting my hand. “A little restraint is good for the soul.”

“So what’s new with you, anyhow?” I
asked her.

“My son is being recruited by the
military, or so they think.”

“Rashid? How old is he?” asked Siri.

“He’ll be eighteen this summer, and
they’re already trying to convince him to sign up for the Army!” Alyssia said
sadly, shaking her head in disbelief.

“But, won’t they send him to Iraq?”
Mindy asked.

“You bet your sweet bippy, they will,”
said Bella.

“They are wooing him with promises of
a free college education,” Alyssia said.

“But, at what real cost?” said Siri
quietly, unconsciously cradling her hugely swollen belly with one arm. She was
due in just a few weeks now.

“Bush is trying to get approval for
the money to send a bunch more troops over there, did you hear that?” asked
Mei.

“Yeah, he said he didn’t need
permission from Congress to send them. Can you believe that? How arrogant!”
said Laurie.

“So, what do you think of Hillary?” I
asked.

“I LOVE Hillary!” said Bella. “That is
one smart woman! She didn’t just dump her husband and slink off when he screwed
around on her, she worked a deal with the Democrats that’s gonna land her right
back in the White House!”

We all agreed that we admired Hillary,
for various reasons. I said I wasn’t sure that she could get elected, though. A
lot of people seemed to be annoyed by her. In a way, she was too well known. It
would be harder to paint her as a noble, innocent crusader, which is what we
Americans love to elect. No shop-worn merchandise for us, we like our new
presidents bandbox fresh and spanking clean.

Alyssia said, “Who would you choose,
ladies? A menopausal white woman or a hot young black man? To run against a
middle-aged white man on the GOP side, no doubt?”

“That’s a hard decision,” said Mei. “But
I think maybe the black man would have a better chance.”

“Well, Tony’s parents think our
current president is a megalomaniac,” I said. “They said he is very unpopular
in Europe.”

“It’s too bad your buddy Al isn’t in
the White House,” Bella said sadly.

“Yes, things would be so different
now, wouldn’t they?” said Mindy.

“I doubt we would still be in Iraq,” I
said, “And we’d be doing a lot more about the climate crisis, that’s for sure.”

“Did you hear that in Australia,
regular incandescent light bulbs are illegal now?” Mindy asked.

Then we all burst forth and started
talking at approximately the same time:

“Yes! The whole country is going to
use those funny spiral-shaped ones now!”

“I don’t like those, do you?”

“They’re weird!”

“Yeah, they make a funny color light.”

“Yes, but they use much less energy,
so it’s worth it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“We can all make some sacrifices,
right?”

“It’s a small thing to do, when you
think about it.”

“You’re right.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna get some.”

“They’re really expensive, though.”

“You can get a deal on a big package
of them!”

“They have them at Costco!”

“So, Emily? What kind of light bulbs
do you use?”

“Are you kidding? Tony is obsessed
with alternative energy! You think he would allow an incandescent bulb inside
this house?”

“When are the solar panels coming?”

“They said in the spring, but I think
it needs to stop snowing before they’ll schedule it,” I said, squinting out the
foggy kitchen windows at the blizzard conditions. “Wow, it’s really coming down
now.”

We all gathered in the breakfast nook
and looked out at the snow, which was fine and icy. It was pale and
otherworldly outside. Across the street from our house in front of the park was
a lonely street lamp that barely glowed, a small dim pinkish oblate blur. All
the details of the landscape were obscured, disguised by white in the air and
white on the ground, flattened by a lack of gradation that erased form and
eliminated depth perception. Off in the park, I could almost see the
translucent outline of a swing set. Icy little grains of snow suddenly tapped
on the kitchen windows in a shower of crystals, swept up against the house by
the wind. It was bleak, but absolutely magnificent, and we were all safe and
warm inside together, with walls of glass to protect us from the weather.

“Tony says that in Beijing, the
Chinese are dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere every day that the
sky is always thick with soupy smog,” I said. “He said when you go inside at
night, your clothes are covered with black, greasy soot.”

“Yes, they are adding thirty thousand
new cars there every month,” said Mei. “People are so excited to finally get
this kind of technology, they are going a little crazy.”

We silently watched the white, white,
pristine snow falling for a moment. Everyone kept her thoughts private, but I
had a feeling we were all hoping, praying, each in her own way. Then
Latin
Lounge
came on the CD
player, and Bella shot me an inquiring look, and an impish grin. Within
seconds, we were all tangoing across the kitchen floor toward the long, open
corridor that ran from the front door to the rooms at the back of the house.
Siri had a little trouble until Alyssia partnered her from behind, so the baby
wasn’t between them. Bella and I were actually getting pretty good at this. We
had learned how to snap around and reverse at the end of the hallway. Then it
was over, and everyone headed back to the kitchen to devour the snacks.

When Tony came home a little later,
stamping his feet in the portico outside the kitchen door to shake off the snow
that coated his pants all the way up past the knee, the girls all gathered
their things and put on their gear to brave the blizzard. Laurie had driven
Siri and some of the others in her van, and Mindy had her car too. They went
off gaily into the night, sisters of the storm, warrior queens undaunted by the
perils of nature.

We were happy to see snow in New
England, when it very well might be no more than a distant memory here some day
soon. We all knew that when the baby in Siri’s belly was old enough to vote,
she would be calling us to account for her options.

*
    
*
    
*

The baby came, right on schedule, and
Siri named her Hope, after Tom’s grandmother. It seemed like the right choice.
She was what we all needed, and everyone started to spoil her from the day she
was born. We were all completely nuts about her. Including Henry and Gupta, who
brought her into the office with them in her cradle every afternoon while Siri
worked in the shop. Occasionally we would hear her hoarse little goat-like cry
come echoing down the front stairs, then the sound of two grown men singing “Itsy
Bitsy Spider” in sprightly tones. Siri would check her breasts, then run
upstairs to nurse the baby, and be back in a few minutes. Gupta said he didn’t
even mind changing Hope’s diaper, so Henry generously allowed his friend to be
in charge of that.