I'm a lousy faker. That doesn't stop me from thinking I'm clever, though. Take today, for instance. After church, as my friend Jill edged her car onto Capital Parkway, I "remembered" that both of my children were working at Ideal Grocery.
"Wanna stop by and see them?" she asks, because that's what a good friend does, even if she knows she's being used.
"Huh. Well, I suppose we could. I do need some peppers." (Really, that's what I said. Appalling, I know. But you can't make this stuff up.)
We pull into the parking lot and I can't get out of her car quick enough. And there, just beyond the greeting cards and Easter candy, are my children. These two humans--Eric and Allison Holt--have been a part of my life for the past 21 and 18 years, respectively. You'd think I'd get used to them, then.
And yet, . . .
All I have to do is walk through those doors and catch a secret glimpse of them talking with each other around the cash register, and I get all gooey inside. I stand there for a moment, half discovered, wearing my truth--a heavy, warm love sitting atop my shoulders--like a handmade scarf that hugs me.
I can't for the life of me remember the fake grocery list I'd just uttered in the car, not now, with my children by my side.
What's a woman to do but shamelessly lie and position and inch her way into these lives whose anchors are loosening themselves a bit more each day?
Oh, but I do want them to fly, these two children--adults, really--who are kind and funny and hard-working. I want them to circle the earth and soak in all of its beauty. I want their hearts to burst and their brains to swell with images and knowledge and friends and things that they could never have conjured up inside our house.
They need to leave. And yet they still need Mark and me, too.
Like human Spirographs, they circle and dance and circumscribe their way into and out of our lives. And me? I tell lies that put me in their paths, where I happily glimpse their full and happy lives, warming myself in the glow.
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