Page 19 of Regretting Youu

Clara takes a seat next to me at the kitchen table and then selects a purple Sharpie. Before she starts writing, she looks over stuff we’ve put on it over the years. She runs her fingers over something she wrote on my board when she was eleven. I hope my mom gets pregnant this year. She even cut out a tiny picture of a rattle and pasted it next to her wish.

“Still not too late to make me a big sister,” she says. “You’re only thirty-four.”

“Not happening.”

She laughs. I look over the board, searching for one of the goals I wrote for myself last year. I find the picture I pasted of a flower garden in the top left of the board because it was my goal to uproot the bushes in the backyard and replant them with flowers. I met that goal in the spring.

I find the other goal I had, and I frown when I read it. Find something to fill all the empty corners.

I’m sure Clara thought I was being literal when I wrote it last year. I didn’t actually want to fill every corner in my house with something. My goal was more of an internal one. Even last year, I’d been feeling unfulfilled. I’m proud of my husband and proud of my daughter, but when I look at myself and my life separate from theirs, there’s very little I can find to be proud of. I just feel like I’m full of all this untapped potential. Sometimes my chest feels hollow, as if I’ve lived a life with nothing significant enough to fill it. My heart is full, but that’s the only part of me that feels any weight.

Clara begins to write her goal for me, so I lean toward her and read it. Accept that your daughter wants to be an actress. She snaps the cap back on the Sharpie and puts it in the package.

Her goal makes me feel guilty. It’s not like I don’t want her to follow her dreams. I just want her to be realistic. “What are you going to do with an unusable degree if the acting thing doesn’t work out for you?”

Clara shrugs. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” She pulls her leg up onto the chair and rests her chin on her knee. “What about you? What did you want to be when you were my age?”

I stare at my board, wondering if I can even answer that question. I can’t. “I had no idea. I didn’t have any special talents. I wasn’t extremely smart in any one particular subject.”

“Were you passionate about anything like I am about acting?”

I think about her question for a moment, but nothing comes to mind. “I liked hanging out with my friends and not thinking about the future. I assumed I’d figure it out in college.”

Clara nods at the board. “I think that should be this year’s goal. You need to figure out what you’re passionate about. Because it can’t be being a housewife.”

“It could,” I say. “Some people are perfectly fulfilled in that role.” I used to be. I’m just not anymore.

Clara takes another sip of her soda. I write down her suggestion. Find my passion.

Clara may not want to know this, but she reminds me of myself at her age. Confident. Thought I knew everything. If I had to describe her in one word, it would be assured. I used to be assured, but now I’m just . . . I don’t even know. If I had to describe myself with one word based on my behavior today, it would be whiny.

“When you think of me, what one word comes to mind?”

“Mother,” she instantly says. “Housewife. Overprotective.” She laughs at that last one.

“I’m serious. What one word would you use to describe my personality?”

Clara tilts her head and stares at me for several long seconds. Then, in a very honest and serious tone, she says, “Predictable.”

My mouth falls open in offense. “Predictable?”

“I mean . . . not in a bad way.”

Can predictable sum a person up in a good way? I can’t think of a single person in the world who’d want to be summed up as predictable.

“Maybe I meant dependable,” Clara says. She leans forward and hugs me. “Night, Mom. Happy birthday.”

“Good night.”

Clara goes to her bedroom, unknowingly leaving me in a pile of hurt feelings.

I don’t think she was trying to be mean, but predictable is not something I wanted to hear. Because it’s everything I know I am and everything I feared I would grow up to be.