parallel universe

Tonight my mom and I were alone together, which meant drinking wine, and cooking and eating dinner before 8 PM. (My dad is notoriously late for the evening meal, which means it isn't uncommon for my parents to eat dinner starting at 9 PM, so very continental.)

We ate about 30 barbequed garlic shrimp each. They were delicious. I mean, so delicious I felt grateful to be alive and able to taste them.

As I was cooking the shrimp, standing out on the patio, looking at my mother's beautiful garden that she works so hard at, all in the height of its long summer glory, I turned to her and asked, "Did you ever, of all the ways your life could have turned out, imagine that you might have been living in a house like this, with a garden like this?"

To which she replied, "I never wanted a house or kids. I was never going to have either, you know that?"

So I said "Well, I always expected I'd have a family and a house, and I'm sort of thinking, maybe I won't, maybe that's just not how it will go."

And she cheerfully responded, "Yup, I mean, you might just end up a street person for all we know!"