Sliding Doors

Do any of you remember the movie "Sliding Doors?" It came out sometime in 1998, starring Gwenyth Paltrow and some cutie Scottish guy. I was living in Glasgow at the time, and remember viewing it with some friends who I no longer know.

I love that movie - sure it is kinda cheesy and silly - but the basic premise of the film is how one person's life can change in a split second - the story of two paths a woman's life takes if she 1) hurries and makes the train before it departs from the station or 2) doesn't quite make it in time.

I admit, sometimes I play that 'what if' game. Not that I want my life to change, but I wonder who I would be, or where I would be if I had made different choices. Had I decided to push for my phd, would I have returned to Scotland to complete it? Would I have ever found love? Would I have slowed down enough to realize the burning desire to have children that was deep within me (that I honestly never knew existed until I met the right man?)

This weekend was a good reminder that I made the right choices. A very dear friend from college was in town (well, sort of in town - we met her at the Isle of Palms.) She flew down for the weekend to hear a band play. To hear a band play. She is currently an attorney, working for a big important firm in New York, living in her own apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Her life is fast paced, exciting, and she travels internationally. She is able to get on a plane and scoot down the coast for a weekend, with no worries about hauling around pack-and-plays, diapers, or sippy cups.

Listening to her talk about her life, I felt a tiny twinge of envy - I wanted that life; about a million years ago. Back when we were all DG sisters living in our sorority section (because Whitman was so tiny we didn't have sorority houses), we fanatasized about our lives to come. She and I talked for hours about our careers and the exciting places they would take us.

She went on to do the things she said she would. She became that powerful attorney. She has that apartment in Manhattan. She has that jet set life. You go girl!

At the end of the weekend visit, as we were driving home on boring I-26, I turned around to look at A, who was absorbed in watching Cinderella and absently twirling her hair while grinning as the mice fixed Cinderelly's dress, and at J who was stuffing his face full of Pringles and getting more crumbs in his carseat than anywhere else - and then to D, who was concentrating on the road in front of him, like any good, strong, husband/daddy should, and I was content. I realized at that moment that I chose this life - this life full of diapers and sippy cups and crumbs - and I love it.

I'm happy and so very blessed that I get to come home to these three beautiful souls each and every day. So yes, it was good to see my dear friend, to see her vibrant life, to see her successes, and to realize my own.