Daydream believing

My house smells like Mexican puke. That is, Mexican food that you puked. I've never smelled vomit that came from a Mexican personally. But if either of those things sound appetizing to you then come on over and eat what's in my crock pot. Dare you, seriously, because growing in that nifty contraption is another Kayla experiment gone awry. I feel like I waste way too much grocery money experimenting, however, I keep repeating these culinary disasters thinking they will be fun stories to tell to my poor children. I just wish it didn't devastate me so much when it happens.

But I can dream of a day when every dish I make is accident free. I am dreaming again.

Paul and I made the decision to wait for a little while to have children. But waiting for pregnancy usually requires control tactics. I went with the pill. However, the first prescription I was given was a little strong for my body and strange things began to happen. I started drooling. Six or seven times a day I drooled on myself. Had I reverted to infant habits? What was I, ten months old? I craved peanut butter and Cafe Rio salad all the time, and I cried. A lot. That was the hardest. The depression I faced seemed insurmountable. Getting out of bed turned my stomach into knots because I knew it meant I had live one more day with those hopeless feelings. My mom told me to go back to the doctor and tell her I needed a different pill, but Kayla is afraid of doctors, so I put it off till November. For six months I walked around with sad, teary eyes and a dark countenance.

And I didn't dream.

I should clarify that. I dreamed at night with great regularity. But I didn't hope much. I rarely looked forward, and I didn't daydream at all. This is quite unusual for me. I've always been a dreamer-- scheming, making plans, picture future events with great detail, imagining I'm someone new who thinks and feels differently then my natural inclinations. I use to lay on my back in the middle of my parents family room and imagine what it'd be like to walk on the ceiling. I use to shower and dream of being tied to the mast of a ship in the middle of a hurricane. I often lost myself in pretend worlds, interacting with pretend people. But that all stopped when I started taking my first once-a-day pill.

But yesterday I was taking a shower and I started to imagine what it would be like to be blind. I closed my eyes, allowing them to roll deep into their sockets as I cultivated a scenario in my head. I could hear a dinner sizzling in a nonstick skillet and children arguing over the piano while a boy asked me about parent teacher conference. I cautiously maneuvered around the stove to find a spoon. I felt for the second drawer down and reached in, feeling the textures of the handles. I could tell some were wooden by the vertical grains and some were a smooth, dispeckled plastic. There was fear inside me, slight, but a real fear of being so close to something as dangerous as a stove without the luxury of seeing it.

Then I was at parent teacher conference standing on a smooth floor in the middle of chaos. Human chatter surrounded me and my boy held on to my arm. I had to be led to his teachers, not being about to find them by voice or feel my way to their faces. I could not tell how they looked at me and I could not see the stares.

The sounds of the school gymnasium faded to silence and I was left to just ponder under the warmth of the shower head. I thought of all the things I couldn't see-- how dark toast gets, dirt under my fingernails, dust on picture frames, pink hamburger turning brown. But those things I might be able to live without. But there were other pictures lost to my blind eyes-- bright, clear mornings, my children's faces, the majesty of the temple, the clear blue of my husbands eyes. I wanted to see those things just one more time.

I reached and felt for my washcloth. I wetted it and pressed the terrycloth to my eyes, wiping off day-old mascara. I wondered how long I'd have to repeat the process until my face was clear. My right eye slowly opened just enough to make out the white of the rag, stained with black smudges and I remembered something important. I'm not really blind. I was so tangled in my daydream, engulfed in an imagination that had become unfamiliar, that I almost forgot how to discern reality. I smiled at that washcloth. It felt nice to dream again.