Tomorrow Is A New Day

With all the back-and-forth driving we have been doing lately, I've had a lot of time to think. When the girls are not bickering with each other, that is. Mostly on the late evening return drives, when the girls are sleeping peacefully in their seats, and Hubby is listening to the radio on so low that I cannot hear it, my mind drifts and wanders. An hour and a half is lots of time to think. And it is amazing what the mind comes up with.

Certain things I have been told over the years come to mind: My Driver's Ed. teacher telling the class not to drive with your thumbs curled around the steering wheel, because if you lost control of the car and the steering wheel were to jerk around, your thumbs would get caught and possibly snap back and break some hand bones; or my Home Ec. teacher telling us to always think about the colors and textures of a meal you are about to cook, to never have all the same colors or shapes on one plate-- like white, baked chicken with white mashed potatoes and white bread= boring! Better to have white, baked chicken with sliced, steamed, orange carrots and a nice green leafy salad= wow!

Moments from the past weave their way through my mind: riding in Hubby's truck and remembering the first time I rode in it when we were dating and I could smell his cologne, his "new car smell" spray and cigarette smoke. Remembering the jacket he wore that I absolutely hated but loved to smell when he gave me hugs and I would bury my face in his neck, inhaling his scent.

Feeling the baby kick and I am taken back to the present and I start to imagine and wonder about the future and what it holds for me and my family: is the baby inside me a boy or a girl? What kind of name are we going to give this baby? What if it is a boy? How are we going to do room arrangements with 2 bedrooms and 3 girls and 1 boy? I begin to think of when the baby should get here and without a sonogram, I wonder if the due date really is around the 28th of June or maybe it is earlier?

Hubby turns up the radio on a song he likes and I catch the strains of Elton John's "Benny and the Jets" and I am all of a sudden on stage in high school, performing a jazz dance to the same song, every step and move still dances in my head and I watch it as if I am seeing it on TV. The memory of my Jazz dance instructor comes back and even his sweaty brow comes to me, as he would clap his hands and stomp his feet along with the beat to make clear to us deaf students when it was time to dip, leap or fall gracefully to the floor. How we giggled when he showed us the skin-tight black leotards we were to wear for the performance along with spiked hair and heavy theater make-up.

We pull into the drive and the gravel crunches under the tires as we make our way slowly to the house. Pitch black and the stars shine brightly, is that the Little Dipper or the Big one? The interior light comes on and eyes blink-blink, adjusting to the sudden glare. "Come on girls, we're home. Time to wake up and go to bed." They fumble with their seat belts and climb clumsily out of the car, sleep still has a hold on them. They walk into the house, one by one, changing into jammies and crawling into cold beds. "Good night, my loves, tomorrow is a new day," I say, kissing them and tucking them in under their blankets.