I don’t know what age it is–maybe 34 or 47 or somewhere in between–that we begin to understand on a visceral, urgent level that we have just this one life to live, but there is such a point which is precisely when we find ourselves wanting very badly to quibble with the idea. Where is the suggestion box for such a moment? The office and department and address to which we can send a letter? Like, whose concept was this, to stick us with one body and that strangest amalgamation–the consequences of our own choices and at the mercy of others’–and still to allow us to see and perceive all the lives around us and some far beyond and make our calculated comparisons?

What if I’d been a doctor? What if I’d been born on the Serengeti? What if I’d married later and had adventures young? What if I’d packed up everything and moved to the Caribbean and curated a barefoot life anchored by sand and sun and buoyed by salt? What if I’d lived in the lowlands of Scotland in an ancient stone cottage moored by fog and heather and made friends with the sheep? Do the “what ifs” end? 

I like to think I am, overall, largely, mostly one of the content ones. One who looks around myself with gratitude at the grace and the grime and the magic and mess wryly intertwined and is at ease. I would not change it; I know this is true because I have not. My chicks have all flown the nest except the one planning to go a week from today, but there’s also gravity here and I can see them circling back, again and again, to this life I’ve built brick by brick. I nod in satisfaction. This is my best accomplishment.

But still. Still. Still. The “what if” niggles away. Quieter than it used to be when I was 34 or 47, but there. I wonder if it stays forever? Or only while there’s yet time enough to jump, Quantum Leap style, from one life to another.