Alternative Destinies

"He came home one night, drunk. And he looked at me and said,'Shut the F--- up,' but I didn't say anything. I just went into my room...we stopped sleeping together long before that. The next morning I woke up and told him, 'If you ever come home like that again, it'll be the last time, because the next morning, you'll find the house empty.'

"I never knew he was a drinker when we first got married." She folded her clothes very carefully. "And years later some fellow I didn't even know asked me why we stayed married. Of course I told him it was for the kids, and he said that he figured that was the reason. I didn't even know him, and so I wondered what all the other people talked about it."  Then she leaned back, and stared off into space.  "I was dating someone else when I met him, and that was the biggest mistake I ever made, leaving that other guy. I saw him one day about two years ago, and he said to me, 'Do you remember me?' and I said, 'Oh yes I do!'  'Course my kids know him but they didn't know we ever dated. Still, I wonder how different my life would have been if I had never broken up with him."

She resumed folding her clothes, and I pondered his words. It's always amazing how people share the most intimate details when we start visiting at our laundromat.  I've heard about lovers, arrests, dead relatives, divorces, and kids.  But this was the first time this particular customer had told me about her drinking spouse, and her thoughts about the "what ifs" of life hit close to home.

You see, every year our boys have to complete a science project, one that is probably for the National Science Project. And every year my eleven-year-old chooses the World's Most Obscure Idea for his project. This year he somehow decided to research and present the concenpts of Ten...or actually, Eleven Dimensions.  And I'm trying to decide how he's going to make it through this project without putting my brain into the last of these dimensions.

In case you haven't ever heard of this concept, let's just say that the zero dimension is a point, the first is a line, then there are two dimensional things. Everyone lives in the third, and the fourth is time. Those are truly the only ones we can understand. The rest are theoretical, but that doesn't stop lots of people from trying to make sense of them. The final is all the alternative possibilities for that first point, leads to the concept of string theory, and some place in between is quantam mechanics.  Understood? If not, let's just say that I'm not sure I do either.

Youngest watched a You Tube video first, then a Nova episode on String Theory, then I showed him some other websites that referred to the various dimensions.  His eyes glazed over by the time we started looking that math that people had developed to explain each dimension, and I encouraged him often to reconsider a new topic. But he's pigheaded like his mother, so I expect soon to have a tri-folded presentation about these theories before the end of next month.  Still, it was the idea that all of us could have alternative lives, that we could have married other people, not married, not graduated from school or chose the priesthood or something else very different from our current lives that intrigued me.  And after listening to this woman today, I had to examine my own ideas on this.

I'm a person that truly loves concrete concepts.  This idea that there's a universe somewhere where I might have a pierced nose is more than I want to accept!  And I can't imagine my life without our sons, nor marrying someone besides The Man Who Puts Up With Me.  All that said, I wonder if there's another Me out there that doesn't struggle with weight problems, or maybe went on to get her Master's degree or even became a famous actress or something.  I know that the possibilities in the tenth dimension are only limited to the size of our imagination. Still, I'd like to imagine a much nicer house, more money, and a housekeeper. The rest of my reality is fine.

I can relate to times in my life when I've made a decision that I later regretted.  No doubt about it, my twenties were wasted on choices I made that were quite bad. But I made the left turn to change my life. And like this woman, I've met up with the Guy I Used to Date. Believe me, I got the better choice with the one I married. Unlike her, my marriage hasn't been a prision sentence, where time dragged mercilessly on. I can't believe it's been eighteen years.

I feel for the woman at the laundromat. It's got to be tough to look back on life and wish you had taken a left instead of a right.  It's tough to be glad your husband is dead, to know you would NEVER marry again because it was a hassle.  My reality is better, even if no one can really understand it except our Youngest Son.