I woke up in a really bummed out mood today. I’m excited about a few different
things in life right now, but with big hopes sometimes come big letdowns.
I remember my first huge disappointment in life. I ran out to the driveway and yelled,
“Make it fly, Dad! Make it
fly!” It was 1981, and my father
had just driven home from the car
dealership to our rural Illinois farm house in a Delorean. He looked at me quizzically and said,
“It doesn’t fly, Hon. It drives.”
What??? He had a poster of the car, gull-wing doors up, on his office
wall, so I KNEW it had wings. Why bother having wings if you’re not
going to fly? What kind of twisted
joke is that? My grandmother lived
1,000 miles away, and I had spent many nights fantasizing about being able to
fly to her house any time my little 6 year-old heart desired as soon as Dad had
his plane/car. My face completely
dropped, and I screamed, “But we already have cars that drive!!!!” Then I grabbed my favorite cat and ran
to hide in a horse stall. I don’t
think it was quite the reaction he was hoping for.
Whenever I start going down that deep, dark spiraling abyss,
remembering that loss, it helps to realize that other people all over the world
experience disappointments nearly as heart wrenching. In fact, I just had a tragic conversation with my best
friend. “Heather, I am so
sorry. I totally want to keep
talking, but I really have to go.
I am so stressed out about my finances right now that I got a sitter and
have a 90-minute massage to try to decompress. If I don’t get there at least 10 minutes early, I don’t get
the pre-massage champagne, and without that it’s pretty much useless.” With the
tears welling up in and stinging my eyes, it’s a bit hard to type this, but I
will. She didn’t get there
early. Her GPS went haywire, and
she ended up arriving almost seven minutes late. Do you think she got her bubbly anyway? Nope. No, she didn’t.
Not even a sip.
How does one recover from things like this, you ask? Well, it turns out that the universe
has a wonderful way of correcting its failures. Me, I ended up being the only fourth grader at Keith Country
Day School to drive to the opening night of Back To The Future in a
Delorean. Yeah, there was that
tense moment when I, eyebrows raised in anticipation, turned to Dad in the
theater when they unveiled the flux capacitor. (He just shook his head slowly in response). And when Patricia, horribly
distraught from the massage debacle, called her husband hysterically crying, he
bought her an entire bottle of champagne of MUCH better quality than that of
the free spa bubbly. 
It reminds me of an optimistic tune:
The sun will come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.
Well actually, that’s not really working for me. See, at the call-back auditions for the
7th grade performance of Annie, Patricia and I were neck-in-neck for
the lead. We walked hand-in-hand
to the theater, turned to each other, smiled and said (in unison), “May the
best girl win.” Then Laura D’Augastino
(a lowly 6th grader) sauntered
in right off the bus from outdoor ed,
jumped on the stage, and STOLE OUR PART. No wonder we’re both huge messes now. I change my mind.
Some heartbreaks are beyond repair.
Grey skies are gonna clear up
Put on a happy face
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