The Ache of Heady Wonder
By Cara McLauchlan

Blame it on Gina. After moving into our new home, the calls for her started to come in. As I smartly placed ourselves on the “Do Not Call” List and told each one she no longer had this number, the calls still came. Not just from telemarketers, but from little old ladies, girls with soft Southern accents, and people desperate to know where Gina had gone.

When they heard my voice on the line, you could sense a glimmer of hope, like finding a lost letter. “Gina, is that you?” they would say desperate for it to be true. My sense is one day Gina decided to chuck life as she knew it. She packed up everything she owned and started driving. Thelma and Louise movie-style, she became a lady without boundaries. And she didn’t leave a forwarding number.

Gina reminds me of paths not taken: The truth that I will never be a Rockette, a famous movie star or Nancy Drew. I know it’s ridiculous, but it means acknowledging the reality that life is starting to limit itself. No longer am I the little girl climbing the trees and imagining all the possibilities in my own leafy kingdom.

I call that “the ache.” It’s wondering what it would have been like not to be where you are now. The hunger of something that cannot be named. The part of me that desperately wants to do something ridiculous. Something besides being caught by the neighborhood association for leaving my garage door up. My life feels so orderly—Tuesday is soccer, Wednesday is piano, Thursday is crock pot night, Saturday is suburban dinner party.

Part of me envies Gina a bit. I imagine her driving to Mexico and starting over in some great beach town and working at a local watering hole. The freedom of creating herself new and taking any path she wanted. Not being responsible to family, friends, to anyone except herself. What shocking gall to be able to quit—with only your true desires as a compass.

For me, the ache comes out on Monday morning commutes, waiting in line at grocery stores, as I desperately search the magazine covers for the answer. Yes, I have a good life and am grateful for all the opportunities I have been given. But despite my attempts, the ache remains. It is fed by sad slow songs, piles and deep sighs, and a litany of things no one wants to do but does like tax returns and taking your mom to the cardiologist, again. Is it too much to ask to become a Copa Cabana dancer? I sit at carpool pickup and dream of donning a sequined beautiful costume of ridiculous feather headdresses while teetering on dangerously high-heeled shoes.

As a child I was in the local theatre group and delighted in watching how transforming our plays would be. Night by night, the people would come in, forlorned, weary, bored, and looking at their watches wondering how soon they could go home and watch TV. Like magic, by the end of it they were changed. They had been transported away from their worries and heaviness of life, for a little while. It was only a play, not a trip to Tahiti, yet it was a dose of heady wonder. And we, the performers, were thrilled to give them that fix.

If I had to say what’s missing, it’s that: Heady wonder—giving it, consuming it; the chance to have a day with surprise, delight, magic, charmingness. My days feel so ordinary. Like a simple smooth stone, each day turns over the next creating a long line of stones, heading toward I don’t know where. Perhaps the hardest part of life might be the sheer monotony of it. The day by day grayness of making beds, going to work, making dinner and doing it all over again. All the while dreaming of walking into a magazine cover life sort of existence. Just like the one stone you turn over with a brilliant pearl belly. The unexpected heady wonder of its luminosity in your hands.

I wish I had some brilliantly wise thing to say about how to change it. The ache still remains. I’m wondering if somehow that ache spot is meant to stay there to keep us connected to our Creator. His thumbprint to remind us that there is a part of you that can only be satisfied divinely. The knowing that life here is temporary and the true heady wonder comes only in the next round.