Livin' The Dream

My cousins have all married really great guys. I want to clone Jeff, Craig and Kyle, throw them in a blender and then remove their collective belief in the Mormon Church because doing this would create my perfect man - even though they will all argue that it is precisely their beliefs that make them so great. Yeah whatever.

Sara, Jeff and Hurricane Gabriel lived all over the place for years due to Jeff's being in the Navy where he was a pilot, something he had dreamed of being his entire life. And not just a pilot of any old airplanes - we're talking jets. Any red blooded American kid would give a year's lunch money to grow up and fly jets. And Jeff actually did it. He worked hard, sacrificed, dragged his family from Shits-ville to Timbuktu and he did it. And then his eyes turned on him. Some specific detail about his lack of one hundred percent perfect eyesight suddenly banned him from the thing he had been working towards since, like, forever. So he went to London to have whatever the exact slicing, cutting, scraping, lasering and cauterizing miracle eye surgery was that he needed to have. The family prayed and waited. Jeff held his breath - desperate for the news that his professional (and emotional) life wasn't going to be shattered after all. No such luck. Still not perfect. Still banned from flying. Game over, thanks for playing.

He left the Navy and they moved to Cedar City, Utah to be near the rest of the super cool siblings and spouses. Sara and Jeff joined forces with Corinne and Craig in the owning and running of Once Upon A Shelf - a very cute and successful store that sells all things needed to thoroughly beautify your home and make it smell like pie. Don't get me wrong, it's a darling store. And they have a wonderful life filled with love, laughter, family, and a never-to-be-unappreciated source of income. But it ain't flyin' jets.

Last Thanksgiving we were all around the table and the subject of Jeff's former glory was brought up. He smiled his usual infectious smile and joked it off. But underneath the humor and stoicism I was hit by something all too familiar I saw in his eyes - the probably no longer ulcerated but none-the-less still throbbing raw pain of living with that damn gaping hole once filled with something vital that has been forever lost.

"Jeff," I said sweetly, "Welcome to the island of broken dreams."

The room erupted into laughter. Because everyone there knew exactly what I was talking about. I had amazing dreams for myself when I was younger. But I fell down the rabbit hole and got lost for twenty years. I finally crawled out on my crippled and bloody hands and knees and taught myself to walk again. Then I re-learned to skip and have now finally broken into a full blown run. But not a day goes by that I don't feel that dull, aching pain of dreams lost and broken. And it sucks.

The day after Thanksgiving, my mom and I stopped by the store to check it out and to say goodbye. Jeff, my forever hero, was behind the counter tying a lovely lavender bow atop a cellophane bag of potpourri he had just carefully measured and filled. He looked at me and with a twinkle in his eye and the world's best grin on his face he said, with sarcastic pride, "Livin' the dream." And I totally got it.

I thought of him many times last week while staring at those freakin' bottles of water and kept hearing his smiling voice saying, "Livin' the dream," over and over. It made me laugh and it kept me sane. Sort of. But it was hard and it was painful because my life's not nearly where I always wanted it to be by now. I am not nearly where I would have and could have been by now if it weren't for blah, blah, blah... But here's the thing that saves me every time. Jeff may never fly jets again and I am far too old now to ever be on Broadway kicking up to my ears - I haven't even been on stage for years and am obviously no closer now to having that Academy Award than when I was a fetus - but I am here. I am finally alive, I am fiercely determined and that will make all the difference. There are a million things I can still do and do incredibly well. And it's time to get off my sad little ass and do them.

So Jeff, we can visit our Island of Broken Dreams whenever we need to because it's fall down funny. But then we must always pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and fly on our jet skis to another island - the Island of New and Revised Dreams. Because there's more than one way to Live the Dream. We ain't done and life ain't over. Not by a long shot.