Aged cheese and aged wine.  Grapes and cake.  Sometimes people just need some time and a good way to forget.  There is so much in life, and to think that the majority of the good things are bad is depressing in itself, without some devastation to make it all the blackest of sin to be living.  The question I am thinking of, because I was just thinking about my life in terms of life-changing events, is:  “Is the beginning of the end already too late….  Or is there just more to work with?”  Immediately, I started having berating thoughts:  “What if I was just plain lazy?  What if I always did the easy thing, chose the easy way, and made anything difficult to do something I couldn’t have in my life, even in the sense of the difficult as something to contemplate?”  What if I don’t know how to do anything worth while?  Will I die a horrible death?  Will I suffer until I die the horrible death?  I started on this road of thought because I started comparing my life with, obviously enough, my sister’s life.

She started fast out of the gate….  Always the straight A child, the one who won more than the “Participant” award.  She would win first place, she wuld win the cool prizes with $100 or a new wardrobe, and she had the cool friends, who, for some reason were in Indie bands who played in the bard around town.  She got into the best schools, and had the vest and coolest hobbies.  She could talk on the phone half a school night and still get the straight A’s again.  She could always choose the winners of the year before they were announced on Oscar night.  She used cool words, even the Professors thought were cool.  And, to end off the comparison with her graduation from a Masters Program, she took a two month trip through Europe.

In comparison, I did the things that were less.  How do I come to this conclusion?  Easy….  I do the easy jobs that pay less.  I married a man that drives a Honda instead of an Audi with leather seats that even looks sleek and sporty in grey metallic and four doors.  I have thought about having a big family, with three children and an option to have four or even five…  but I just can’t afford it.  Children require a two-income family.  And on two incomes, if I consider the need of a private school education, my husband and I can only afford to have one of each… a boy and a girl.  And lucky us, it just did happen in this million dollar way….  One for me and one for who I married.

In a sense, when the first child was born, it definitely marked the end of my life in some sort of big way.  Everything I started doing, and that I keep doing, now, is look after the life of my children.  Their schedule comes first, and lucky me, I have a job that is flexible with me to run to the aid of my children when it is necessary.  I was of the generation of feminists who demanded equality with men in every way, but, surprise, when a woman falls in love with a man… the man always comes first.  They are chivalrous because we love them that way, and we let them come first, because they like us this way.

So, I ask again, is the beginning of the end too late….  to have the things that you always wanted?  Or is the compromise…., always necessary?  Will I never have the chance, ever again, to experience the things that I thought I would have the chance to experience…  Sometime?  I don’t have to think about now…  Now, my children know what it is that takes to raise them, already, and I will not disappoint them.  In some way, it is an investment, after 65 I will not work any more, and somehow, I would like a home to live in for as long as possible….  And in this way, I invest in my children.  I am looking at least thirty years into the future.  So, with this mark as the beginning of the end, have I missed out on a life of glamour, the one I envision where I get to fly the world, taking photographs of famous people, famous models, and creating great artistic works that people will hunt for?

All of a sudden my teenaged dream of this life of glamour was replaced, even before I knew it.  I did marry an artist, and in some ways, I live vicariously through him, often, but, even he, doesn’t have the glamorous life I dream about.  It’s a lot of nine to five work.  We are mutually looking at our lives, feeling that it has been replaced with domesticity.  Our children now walk us.  We daily rate what is most important, and yes, our children take top place.  I revel in their victories and cry with them in their sorrows and failures, as does my husband.  We laugh, now in a way we never thought we would laugh.  Laughter used to mean something coll and funny, now, it’s love that comes tumbling out of our mouths. We cherish those moments.

Until we are able to have more time for ourselves, we will continue to sell our souls for the money that keeps our family together, in our home.  So, is it beyond possible to change our lives and have those things we have dreamt of?  Is it too late?  I hope that it isn’t true.  I watch as younger artists gain so much more with half the time that I have.  I watch as young graduates take those enviable jobs that I have secretly wanted, with half the experience I have.  As these opportunities are “taken away” from me, I ask again….  Have I been too lazy and only settled on the easy things?

Let us hope, then, that this is not the truth.  I hate the idea of compromise, but I am not completely sure that I understand the concept of compromise.  I look at the time ahead of me, and I am now beginning to think, “things never really change.”  I consider myself as someone who is born to be an artist.  It matters that I hold onto this part.  It keeps me occupied, and I know that I will be occupied, and I know I will be occupied beyond the years that my children need me.  I would be pleased to be an older artist…  So, is the beginning of the end too late?  I don’t think so.