Patterns

I confess to being a hopeless romantic, unwilling to give up on dreams or not make a wish on a falling star. It's a part of me that is rarely satisfied but I keep on hoping. I want the Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr moment from "An Affair to To Remember" when he sees the painting and realizes that she's paralyzed - he closes his eyes in self recrimination as he thinks of how he's treated her and then they each wipe away each other's tears and the New York skyline appears over her shoulder while the familiar theme reaches it's finale. Unrealistic and staged as it may be, it's still a heart wrenching moment in movie magic, a moment filled with hope and possibility and it brings me to tears every time I watch it.

In real life, the skyline is more gray than blue and life is more ordinary than magical. I am one of millions of working people struggling to work and survive and find time to smell the roses before life runs out. Days often run into one another in this parade of time, often they are so alike that it becomes hard to tell the difference without a calendar. There is no fortune to be found, no celebrity, no 15 minutes of fame - there is just the ordinary repetition of working, sleeping, eating, caring for animals or children or elderly parents or each other. We climb the everyday mountains one step at a time and no one notices. The movie magic eludes us, remaining so close but always just out of reach. Seasons slip away then return, love comes and then goes, leaves turn then die then grow back green again, reminding us that in patterns there is always the chance to break free, to take a different road or make a different choice. There will always be another crossroad, another bargain to be made, another intersection to stand at and consider which direction to take.

If there is a grand design of living, it is not for us to know. So I choose my patterns, one third movie magic and two thirds reality, and I live somewhere between them.