As we know it

        First

My grandmother stands at the kitchen sink, running her soapy hands over the same chipped dish she has been washing for the last twenty minutes. Her mind is elsewhere: her dark brown eyes gaze out the window above the sink, but she does not notice the trees or grass or birds outside.

                  Her brown hair is impeccably styled in the short bob that is popular at the time. With her dark skin, hair and eyes, she looks exactly like her own mother and grandmother.

But she is not my grandmother yet.

She is 22 years old, and she waits impatiently for news about the man she loves.

She has fallen in love with a young man sent to fight in Europe. This solider will someday be my grandfather.

But he is not my grandfather yet.

It is 1944 and the war in Europe has just ended, but fighting continues. The boy she fell in love with was ripped from her just as she expected a proposal. He was sent from their safe town into an unknown and hostile world to fight a war neither of them fully understood.

When he returns, he will return as a man, not a boy. But at least he will return.

                  They have written to each other as frequently as possible over the last two years. She takes comfort in the knowledge that he will arrive soon, unharmed.

“One of the lucky ones,” he wrote.

Still, she is more nervous about their reunion than she’d like to admit. He should be knocking on her door in the next hour or two.

                  She dries her hands and checks her reflection in the window glass, then fastidiously reapplies her red lipstick. She nervously smoothes the front of her best dress and fidgets with the golden sand dollar necklace at her throat. My grandmother is not a patient woman. She thought she knew what her life would look like: marry the handsome, confident boy she met in high school. They would have a few kids and settle down somewhere close. That’s all she wanted--certainly that wasn’t too much to ask. But God or fate or destiny had other plans: instead of becoming a doting wife, she was stuck living at home, working as a sales girl in a local boutique. The children she wanted were still a distant dream.

It was not his fault—the government’s draft was to blame. Still, she could not help but feel some resentment that her simple wishes for life had been put on hold. She hadn’t asked for fame or riches—just a simple life.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings.

It’s him, finally. The boy, now man. Her soldier.

                  She rushes to the door and flings it open and he is standing there. His eyes shine down on her. He smiles and pulls her out of the doorway and into his arms.

Second

My mother sits quietly on a faded yellow couch with her hands tucked neatly on her lap. Her long hair falls past her shoulders in straight brown sheets that caress the small of her back. The necklace at her throat, a golden sand dollar, shines brightly against her tanned skin. She is the spitting image of her mother.

                  But she is not my mother yet.

                  She is 22 years old, and she is in love.

The man she loves is six years her senior, and he will someday be my father.

                  But he is not my father yet.

I am a distant dream. For now, my mother has other things on her mind. It is 1976, and the world is an uncertain place. The Vietnam War has officially ended, but global unrest continues. The US is sinking deep into the “malaise days” of a recession, and the overall mood is grim in the States.

                  My mother has managed to find a job working at a local hotel. At this hotel, she met a bartender. Someday, she will marry this bartender, and they will become my parents.

                  But they are not my parents yet.

My mother is a planner. She sits on the ugly yellow couch of her parent’s home and envisions the simple future she has always wanted.

                  She wants to marry the bartender. She wants to raise children in the same small town she has known all her life. That is all.

                  My mother never went to college. My mother never learned another language or lived alone in a city or even smoked a joint. But she was content. 

My mother lifts a graceful hand to smooth a strand of long brown hair that has fallen out of place. Today, she is waiting patiently for the bartender to come pick her up at her parent’s house in his 1964 baby-blue Plymouth Valiant. They have been on a few dates, and he has managed to charm her in ways few men could.

                  My mother is a perfectionist. She lifts her dark eyes to the large clock above the door and gives a small sigh. He’s late, per usual. That is a problem: my mother is meticulously time-conscious and considers lateness a character flaw that may have to be corrected in this man.

                  More minutes pass, and my mother, in her annoyance, begins to wonder why she would have chosen this man above the others that attempted to court her. The bartender is so different from anyone she’s met at home: he’s from a poor coal region hours away. He cracks outlandish jokes and says the weirdest things—but he makes her laugh. He’s a bit of a hippie who plays guitar and drives too fast and can strike up easy conversation with anyone.

                  Her parents were unsure about him, but she wasn’t. My mother could see, for all of his oddities, that this out-of-towner would fit well into her life. As different as they were, they both wanted the same things. She was compelled by him in ways she couldn’t explain to anyone, not even herself.

                  Finally, the doorbell rings, and she jumps up to greet the man at the door. As they climb into his blue beater, my future father throws my future mother his typical flirtatious, smirking smile, and she returns it as they drive away.

Third

I shiver slightly as the breeze which rustles the leaves of the trees around me passes over my body. The early winter sun shines on my exposed skin, 

                  I slide the sand dollar along its tangled chain at my neck, and decide to take it off altogether. The morning breeze stirs my already rumpled hair, but I don’t mind—its bushiness is impossible to smooth. I lift my eyes to the sky and they are immediately scorched by the intense country morning sun.

                  I hear my mother calling me, and I turn to see her and my grandmother waiting in the doorway, ready to leave for the day’s shopping trip. They look so similar, standing there in the doorframe. Same plump bodies encased in tanned skin.

                  I look nothing like either of these women. With my light hair and green eyes, I stand out in a family full of brunettes with dark eyes. When I found their senior pictures buried in dusty boxes, I compared them to my own portrait. The only similarity between us is the golden sand dollar necklace tied around each of our necks. You’d never know I was the third generation of these wanting and waiting women.

It is 2012, and I am restless.

                  This lane, leading to a farmhouse atop a hill, has become my place of reflection and solace. The towering trees shelter me from the noise of the road and the curious eyes in the houses across the street. Every morning and night I walk here to think, to dream, and to wait.

                  I am 22, and I have been abroad. I have learned another language and I have danced under flashing lights to foreign music.

A year later, I lived in the biggest city in the world, alone.

                  Both women cannot understand why I would ever want to leave the comfortable town they were each born in and created their own families. At my age, my mother and grandmother had fallen in love with the men they would marry. They planned to stay at home, contented to care for their children.

But I want none of that.

As I walk the lane through the trees, my "future husband" seems like a unicorn: probably great, but entirely mythical. 

And I cannot dream of having children while I still feel like a child myself.

Instead, I wait for adventure. I wait to feel alive again in the way that only a new experience can bring me to life.

For now, however, my mother and her mother are waiting for me. Waiting for the black sheep with blonde hair. 

But I am not so different from them. we all want, and we all wait.