Summer Dresses

Getting older probably increases the amount of vivid remembering that goes on during one's current days. So here I am -- getting older -- and remembering lots more clearly about a lot of things. I remember the temptations; I remember the sins! But most of all -- I remember all of the details, all of the details of all the decisions, all of the details of all of the big decisions, all of the details of all of the decisions that became big decisions -- that have affected my life to this day. 

There was a time when I asked a serious question -- that became a marriage proposal.  There was a time where I put my hand high on a smooth bare upper back, so that the hand didn't go too far South, and a very fervent embrace didn't become an immediate liaison. There was a time I resisted an insouciant doll face carelessly aimed sidelong with eyes still tracing mine -- so that I didn't fall into those grappling pools. There was a time I kept from instinctively touching those cute blue cotton running shorts -- forever pulling down the shield that only barely kept two humans apart. There was a time when dipping into the icy fall waters of the closer of the Interlochen lakes could not have cooled someone so young. There was a time that staring into the partially clothed  middle of a woman  desired would have been a betrayal -- of this desire, and another as well. There was a time when a teenager rushed into my arms and became my instant unrequited dream in a second. There were many such times -- real and partially imagined, realistic and yet unimaginable in their importance to me.

Often  I did not respond well to an unannounced kiss -- pleading moistly for another,  when I was so tunnelled into something else that I couldn't think. I regret those unfulfilled moments as well. The youngish sister, the playwright, the wouldbe lover.
So many moments; so many decisions; so many wins and losses.