{"id":430,"date":"2018-03-16T20:42:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T20:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=430"},"modified":"2018-03-16T20:45:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T20:45:36","slug":"story-of-the-month-open-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"Story of the Month: Open House"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The house sat at the top of a steep hill.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019d stopped in front of it to catch my breath.\u00a0 <\/span>I had been walking for some time, lured outdoors by the perfect weather.\u00a0 <\/span>It was mid-October, and only the night before there\u2019d been a hard frost, but in the morning, the sun\u2019s heat was stronger than it had been in weeks, an imitation of summer rather than the true robust season that had passed, but a gift nevertheless, an unexpected and undeserved gift, which is the best kind.\u00a0 <\/span>There was a little plastic flag stuck in the lawn of the house on the hill.\u00a0 <\/span>Next to the flag was a sign: Open House.\u00a0 <\/span>It was, in all fairness, an invitation of sorts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The front door was ajar.\u00a0 The sunlight was picking out glints of mica in the concrete walkway.\u00a0 <\/span>On impulse, I went up the walk.\u00a0 <\/span>It wasn\u2019t at all a risky thing to do.\u00a0 <\/span>Or so it seemed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most times when I\u2019m hit with an impulse, I get to thinking right away about consequences.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s that impulse when you\u2019re driving and you wonder what it would be like to give the steering wheel a quick turn so as to slam your car into the cement pilings of an overpass.\u00a0 <\/span>The consequences there are pretty obvious, and so you stay obediently in your lane.\u00a0 <\/span>For a less dramatic example, take shopping.\u00a0 <\/span>What if you choose an item as a gift, and in another store somewhere the absolutely perfect thing is sitting alluringly on a shelf, maybe even cheaper?\u00a0 <\/span>I annoy myself with such shilly-shallying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had never gone to an Open House before.\u00a0 <\/span>I wondered if I\u2019d be greeted by an eager realtor who\u2019d follow me from room to room, as unwelcome as the salesgirls who come tapping sweetly on the changing room door just at the moment you are standing clad only in cotton panties with stretched-out leg openings.\u00a0 <\/span>I wanted to wander through the premises alone.\u00a0 <\/span>I wouldn\u2019t open any drawers, but I could legitimately open closets, couldn\u2019t I?\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There was<\/i> a realtor, but, miraculously, he left me to my own devices.\u00a0 <\/span>I think he had a hot prospect in the dining room.\u00a0 <\/span>That was a possibility I hadn\u2019t anticipated, that there\u2019d be other people inspecting the house, though why I hadn\u2019t I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 <\/span>After all, the Open House hadn\u2019t been set up solely for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

The house was quite nice, though a little too traditional for my tastes.\u00a0 <\/span>It was a real grown-up\u2019s house, with more than one couch, a well-stocked kitchen, and years of bric-a-brac, books, lamps.\u00a0 <\/span>Things matched.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had never lived in a grown-up house, not counting my childhood home.\u00a0 <\/span>For a long time I moved often, and my surroundings bore the stamp of impermanence.\u00a0 <\/span>As I slowed down, stayed put for years at a time, I acquired more things, but not the knack for combining them.\u00a0 <\/span>I had no plan, no over-arching design principle.\u00a0 <\/span>I had liked my homes.\u00a0 <\/span>They were comfortable.\u00a0 <\/span>But they never quite came together.\u00a0 <\/span>It was as if I had delayed too late the tasks of homemaking, as if I were in a domestic menopause and could now never produce a well-appointed house.\u00a0 <\/span>I could never seem to fill the refrigerator or the food cupboards.\u00a0 <\/span>Ingredients were always missing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The back bedroom upstairs in the Open House was done up in pink, not my favorite color, but I liked the room anyway, better than any other in the house.\u00a0 <\/span>I liked it so well, in fact, that I decided to call it dusky rose rather than pink.\u00a0 <\/span>The small space was cluttered and crowded, but friendly, if I can use that word.\u00a0 <\/span>I even sat down on the bed to test its bounce, so congenial did the room feel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bedroom window looked out onto the back yard, and I spied a dark-haired man at the far end seated in an Adirondack chair beneath a large shade tree.\u00a0 <\/span>I assumed he was the owner of the house, who\u2019d discreetly removed himself from the crass assessments going on inside.\u00a0 <\/span>He was resting his forearms on the wide arms of the chair, and I noticed smoke curling up from his right hand.\u00a0 <\/span>From a cigarette, I guessed, though I watched him for a good five minutes, and he never once took a drag or flicked an ash.\u00a0 <\/span>I couldn\u2019t see his face in any detail, but I imagined, by his stillness, that his eyes had a faraway cast, as if he were staring out to sea. \u00a0 <\/span>A breeze stirred the branches above him, and he was dappled with tiny, dancing shadows that softened his immobility and made it counterfeit.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When I went downstairs again, the dining room was still occupied by the realtor and his target, so I slipped past and into the study, which was furnished with a huge sofa and two fat chairs, all in wine red leather, and rows and rows of books on tall mahogany shelves.\u00a0 <\/span>There were flecks of yellow in the maroon-and-brown Persian rug, and the French doors to the back yard admitted some sunlight, but these touches weren\u2019t enough.\u00a0 <\/span>The room reminded me of raw liver.\u00a0 <\/span>Even a bouquet of white calla lilies in a lacquered black vase didn\u2019t lighten the place.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe that\u2019s why I noticed the photograph in its silver frame so soon.\u00a0 <\/span>My eyes were searching for brightness.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult now to recall exactly what I felt the first moment I saw the photograph.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember I picked it up and turned it over, hoping to find something written on the back.\u00a0 <\/span>A name, a date.\u00a0 <\/span>There was nothing.\u00a0 <\/span>I sat down in one of the chairs and laid the framed photo face down on my lap.\u00a0 <\/span>It was heavy.\u00a0 <\/span>Solid silver is.<\/span><\/p>\n

My heart was pounding hard, but eventually it slowed to almost normal.\u00a0 <\/span>I just sat there and waited.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew I had to wait.\u00a0 <\/span>There are situations in life where you expect to wait, like in the doctor\u2019s office or in a downtown cafeteria at lunchtime, situations where you know impatience and complaining won\u2019t get you anywhere.\u00a0 <\/span>Just because a certain situation is new to you doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t recognize quickly enough that what you\u2019ve got to do is wait.\u00a0 <\/span>Even if you don\u2019t know what it is you\u2019re waiting for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose, by rights, I should have been more agitated.\u00a0 <\/span>I mean, it\u2019s not every day that you walk into a stranger\u2019s house\u2014by chance\u2014and find a picture of yourself in a solid silver frame in a place of honor in a liver-colored study.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost immediately, I decided there was an explanation, which, I guess, was a kind of automatic self-defense, like when some horrible thing happens and a person completely forgets it or pushes it down so deeply that it can\u2019t rise up even in dreams.\u00a0 <\/span>But my picture in a stranger\u2019s house wasn\u2019t a horrible thing, only very weird, both its being there and my finding it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If I could have looked at the photo with complete disinterest, I\u2019d have said it was a flattering likeness.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t usually look good in photographs, or, at least, I never like how I look.\u00a0 <\/span>But I liked the picture in the silver frame.\u00a0 <\/span>The hair was different — longer, like I wore it years ago, and pulled to one side with an old-fashioned comb like my mother used to use, but which I never had.\u00a0 <\/span>The dress wasn\u2019t one I\u2019d have chosen, though it was a pretty dress, crisp and simple, maybe linen.\u00a0 <\/span>The word \u201cfrock\u201d came to mind.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought maybe it was a style I ought to seek out, it looked so well on me in the picture.\u00a0 <\/span>On her, that is.\u00a0 <\/span>Because how could it be me, really?\u00a0 <\/span>Even though it was my body, with its boyish angles, and my straight, classical nose that I\u2019m vain about, and my smile — the smile, that is, that I always wear when being photographed, kind of forced, like I\u2019m cooperating just to get the ordeal over with.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It turned out I didn\u2019t have to wait long.\u00a0 <\/span>After only a few minutes, he came in, having left the Adirondack chair and the animating shade of the breeze-rustled tree.\u00a0 <\/span>He had an empty iced tea glass in his hand.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe he had come in for a refill.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe he\u2019d assumed everyone had gone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought he might be Italian or Mexican.\u00a0 <\/span>He looked like he\u2019d been roasted from the inside out, like there might still be heat coming from him, and if you could get close enough, you\u2019d feel it.\u00a0 <\/span>His eyes didn\u2019t fit his darkness, though.\u00a0 <\/span>It was as if he had plucked out a cat\u2019s eyes and put them into his head.\u00a0 <\/span>They were a tawny brown, with tiny flecks of dark yellow like spilled curry powder.<\/span><\/p>\n

He noticed me right off.\u00a0 <\/span>He pulled himself up so short a lock of black hair fell over his forehead.\u00a0 <\/span>He stared a moment or two.\u00a0 <\/span>Then he seemed to catch my composure.\u00a0 <\/span>But maybe with some fear mixed in.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s funny, but fear can calm you down in a way.\u00a0 <\/span>Make you rein in and be alert to all that\u2019s around you. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHello,\u201d he said, as if this kind of thing happened every day.\u00a0 <\/span>Sort of like Mary must have said hello to the angel Gabriel, with precisely the right tone in her voice and right look on her face so the angel would know she knew this was something extraordinary, and so he\u2019d also know she was up to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHello,\u201d I answered.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, there\u2019s one place where the notion of consequences can drop from me like a toy out of the fist of a sleepy baby, and that one place is men.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s not so much that I put the consideration of consequences aside, as that they seem to cease to exist.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t weigh or hold back, even when I know that though a man might bear a tenderness for me, it\u2019s only the adventure he wants.\u00a0 <\/span>Take, for instance, a man who would like to have me, say, in an alley, leaning against a brick wall with my clothing all open to him \u2014 not because he has no respect, but because he just wants to feel like an outlaw for a bit.\u00a0 <\/span>Even a man like that I can accept, if there\u2019s something about him that calls to me.\u00a0 <\/span>It can be as simple as a shrug in his voice or the shape of his shoulder when he reaches for something up high.\u00a0 <\/span>At the Open House, it was those curry flecks in his eyes that did it, that made me want to give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least the benefit of listening to him for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wished I didn\u2019t have the photo on my lap.\u00a0 <\/span>I wished it were still standing by the lilies on the table, which was at my back.\u00a0 <\/span>What a scene that would have been for him\u2014me in the foreground, all innocent in the fat chair, and a little farther behind, the faces at about the same level, me in the photograph.\u00a0 <\/span>It would have been a good movie shot, a telling shot to make the audience gasp.\u00a0 <\/span>But in real life, things are rarely where they should be for maximum effect. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like the house?\u201d he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u00a0 <\/span>Especially the rose room.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He made a little, confused frown, narrowing those eyes and tilting his head ever so slightly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUpstairs in back,\u201d I explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe guest bedroom.\u00a0 <\/span>Of course.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He walked to a coffee table in front of my chair and set his glass down on a coaster.\u00a0 <\/span>Then he sat opposite me in the other fat chair.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a buyer, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d I said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all right.\u00a0 <\/span>One expects browsers.\u00a0 <\/span>Especially on such a lovely day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIndian summer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIndian summer.\u00a0 <\/span>You know, when the autumn chill stops for a few days, and the air is calm and warm.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAh, yes, I know what you mean.\u00a0 <\/span>My grandmother was from Argentina.\u00a0 <\/span>There they call it veranito<\/i>, \u2018little summer\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just couldn\u2019t stay indoors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNor I.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He peered out the French doors.\u00a0 <\/span>I glanced outside, too.\u00a0 <\/span>Long shadows across the lawn showed the afternoon was getting late.\u00a0 <\/span>I needed to leave soon or the last stretch of my walk home would be in the dark.\u00a0 <\/span>That didn\u2019t make me nervous, but I\u2019d come out without a sweater, and I knew it\u2019d get colder as soon as the sun set.\u00a0 <\/span>Indian summer can last for days, but its dry warmth doesn\u2019t extend into the nights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s getting late,\u201d I said, prompting him to return his attention to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

He moved forward to the edge of his seat and stretched his arm across the coffee table to pick up the photo from my lap.\u00a0 <\/span>He did it very carefully, without touching me.\u00a0 <\/span>A neat trick.\u00a0 <\/span>But he did let one heavy border of the frame slide over my thighs.\u00a0 <\/span>Like he was carding wool.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019d think that would make me uneasy, but it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 <\/span>Lots of things men do that should make me uneasy don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

He held the photo flat on his two palms like a prayer book and looked at it a long time.\u00a0 <\/span>Studied it, you could say.\u00a0 <\/span>The ice cubes in his glass made a little clinking noise as they settled against one another, melting.\u00a0 <\/span>A tiny sound, but enough to make him shift his gaze from the picture to the glass, and then to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife,\u201d he said, tapping the photo with a fingertip.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cCar accident.\u00a0 <\/span>About a year ago.\u00a0 <\/span>I saw her as she was leaving that morning and then never again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The usual response to such information is to say you\u2019re sorry or how awful or some such expression of sympathy, but I felt I ought to resist any tendency to the usual.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought that\u2019s what he\u2019d want.\u00a0 <\/span>At any rate, he didn\u2019t seem surprised or offended by my silence.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, he added on a good chunk of silence of his own, during which he again stared down at the photo.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe resemblance is amazing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThen it\u2019s not just that particular photograph?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He propped the photo on the coffee table.\u00a0 <\/span>Now it was facing me.\u00a0 <\/span>She was facing me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBoth vehicles were completely burned,\u201d he said, returning without preamble to the topic of the accident.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cWe had nothing to bury.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe that\u2019s why, against all reason, I kept expecting her to come home.\u00a0 <\/span>To simply walk in the door some day with a long story.\u00a0 <\/span>Finally, I decided I\u2019d better sell.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo you wouldn\u2019t keep waiting?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo her return wouldn\u2019t feel possible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWould you stay otherwise?\u00a0 <\/span>If you didn\u2019t keep expecting her?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I would.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a good house.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I stood up then and turned my back on him to look out through the French doors again.\u00a0 <\/span>I couldn\u2019t keep acting so natural, or, at least, I thought I shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 <\/span>It worried me a little that it wasn\u2019t all acting, either.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a nice yard.\u00a0 <\/span>A wide swath of grass bordered by beds of autumn flowers and greenery in just the right degree of confusion.\u00a0 <\/span>The hand of man was there, for sure, but so was the disarray of nature, which is, of course, not disarray at all, but rather an order that gives license to the fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve decided to reconsider selling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I felt a pang of pity for the earnest realtor laboring in the dining room.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no need now.\u00a0 <\/span>Wouldn\u2019t you agree?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I turned back into the room, but I didn\u2019t answer him.\u00a0 <\/span>I can enjoy tight, mysterious conversations, but I like to know a little of what I\u2019m letting myself in for.\u00a0 <\/span>In broad strokes, at least.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo need?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause now here you<\/i> are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He leaned back in his chair.\u00a0 <\/span>The leather creaked.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI suppose some might find your likeness to my wife disturbing, but I don\u2019t.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, it settles me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean, it settles you?\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

He took some time before replying.\u00a0 <\/span>That was all right with me.\u00a0 <\/span>I wanted him to dig out the right words.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew somehow that he had thought this over before in some form or other, the way you can think things over deep down beneath logic, beneath awareness even, and that only just now was he realizing that such thinking had happened.\u00a0 <\/span>Now, as he\u2019d said, that I was there.\u00a0 <\/span>I sat down again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean\u2026\u201d he began quietly.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI mean it\u2019s a sort of retrieval.\u00a0 <\/span>The way she left was so sudden.\u00a0 <\/span>There was an unreality to it.\u00a0 <\/span>Her unwashed breakfast things were still in the sink when I got the call from the police.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019d left herself a note on the dresser with a list of errands for the next day.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He was looking at me, but I could tell he was seeing those dishes smeared with egg yolk and toast crumbs, her mug with maybe a small puddle of cold coffee and a lipstick mark, that scribbled list of chores.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always make plans, always think they\u2019re going to go on,\u201d I said. \u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course they do.\u00a0 <\/span>What other way is there to be but that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His eyes, which had darkened, showed that he was back with me in the study.\u00a0 <\/span>Back inside Indian summer, a year away from that phone call, that egg-encrusted plate with the faucet dripping water on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it you imagine you\u2019ve retrieved?\u201d I asked him.\u00a0 <\/span>It was time, I thought, to be a little tough, or to sound so.<\/span><\/p>\n

The house around us was quiet.\u00a0 <\/span>I guess the realtor had left or was out front having a smoke.\u00a0 <\/span>Faint bird noises came from outside.\u00a0 <\/span>A window or door must have been open somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA chance,\u201d he finally answered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA chance?\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA chance to see her here again, in her place, and then to let her go.\u00a0 <\/span>If you\u2019d give me that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou could stay here.\u00a0 <\/span>For a little while, at least.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>He was talking fast, like a rookie salesman or a little boy defending a losing argument.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cLook on it as a sort of job if you like.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019d be no strings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He picked up the photo again and held it so I could see only the back of it.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe he was worried that looking at it, at her, would work on my nerves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou like the house,\u201d he repeated, a statement this time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not what I\u2019m used to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is<\/i> what I\u2019m<\/i> used to.\u00a0 <\/span>I suppose that goes without saying.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>He smiled.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI find that\u2019s so of much of life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat you get used to it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat it goes without saying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut things should be said anyway, shouldn\u2019t they?\u201d I replied, though I lacked the full conviction of challenge this question warranted.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cSome things,\u201d I added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhich things?\u00a0 <\/span>Why I waited?\u00a0 <\/span>How you\u2019ve come?\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s happened.\u00a0 <\/span>To me, that\u2019s more important than any answers.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was in my twenties, I lived in a small town midway between my parents and a lover.\u00a0 <\/span>I took a lot of bus rides during that time in one direction or the other.\u00a0 <\/span>They were local buses, making innumerable stops in similar out-of-the-way towns.\u00a0 <\/span>Sometimes on those trips, I\u2019d get the urge to leave the bus before my stop, to climb down into an unknown snowscape and hear the packed snow squeak beneath my boots, or, in summer, to step out of the bus\u2019s refrigerated air into the humid heat of some strange place.\u00a0 <\/span>I never considered what I\u2019d do once I had gotten off the bus.\u00a0 <\/span>That blankness in my imagination didn\u2019t trouble me.\u00a0 <\/span>Something would come about somehow, I thought.\u00a0 <\/span>But in the end, I was held in my seat by the perplexity I knew my failure to appear would cause in the people waiting for me.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sitting in the well-appointed study of the Open House, listening to the fanciful notions of the swarthy, cat-eyed widower, I felt like I was on the idling bus in one of those long-ago towns again, sliding tentatively across my seat towards the aisle.\u00a0 <\/span>And now, no one was waiting for me. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut what would I do<\/i> here?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He shrugged.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLive your life,\u201d he said, with no more fanfare than if we\u2019d both reached a <\/span>revolving door at the same time and he\u2019d stepped aside and said \u201cafter you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Live my life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where you live does make a difference, I suppose, but does it always have to be your own decision?\u00a0 <\/span>It isn\u2019t when you\u2019re a kid.\u00a0 <\/span>Does it have to be a decision at all, necessarily?\u00a0 <\/span>What about people who can\u2019t choose, say because they\u2019re poor or bound to certain places because of other decisions they\u2019ve made?\u00a0 <\/span>They still live their lives.\u00a0 <\/span>They can soar, even, if they put themselves to it.\u00a0 <\/span>Like Jimmy Stewart in It\u2019s A Wonderful Life<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some wit once said that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to blush and our need to.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know about that\u2014it seems to me I\u2019ve seen some embarrassed dogs in my time.\u00a0 <\/span>The point is that I<\/i> think the unique thing about humans is not blushing, but our capacity for pondering what-if.<\/span><\/p>\n

More times than not, what-if musings hold us back from actions, or compensate us with daydreams.\u00a0 <\/span>But it could work in the opposite direction.\u00a0 <\/span>What-if could lead us forward, make us leap.\u00a0 <\/span>Like skipping over the dull parts of a book to the anticipated juice.<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes all this so hard to explain is that so little thought went into it.\u00a0 <\/span>So little, that is, of what is commonly referred to as thought.\u00a0 <\/span>Not even much what-if-ing took place.\u00a0 <\/span>It was simply a sort of acceptance.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019ve got to say an unqualified yes to life every once in a while.\u00a0 <\/span>Yes to what life brings you, without reservation or fall-back plans, without trying to foresee all the consequences.\u00a0 <\/span>Like the lilies of the field, I guess.\u00a0 <\/span>That lady or the tiger stuff can really jam you up, you know?<\/span><\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re lucky enough and brave enough, or foolish enough, take your pick, sometimes you can say yes at just the right moment.\u00a0 <\/span>You can treat what\u2019s come to you out of the blue as something you\u2019d intended all along.\u00a0 <\/span>You can trust that there\u2019s a reason, or that a reason will grow, and you can even not care if you ever know what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

I put out my hand.\u00a0 <\/span>He gave me the photo.\u00a0 <\/span>I took it up to the dusky rose bedroom and cleared a space for it on top of my oak bureau.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s still there.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The house sat at the top of a steep hill.\u00a0 I\u2019d stopped in front of it to catch my breath.\u00a0 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-noellesickelswp","post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-allposts","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}