​Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,

or at least my version of Manderley. Before I became this chapter of myself. Before my baggage had meaning and could not be sloughed off with my mood. It was barred to me too, my Manderley, this place that I used to live in when we met. When we would barely sleep because spending every second together was too exciting. I found you, at last. I knew with the way you looked at me that you found me too. We would sleep next to each other, our arms and our bodies intertwined. I used to feel your heartbeat when I lay my head on your chest and could always tell exactly when you fell asleep.

I love the early morning time when the light slants in through the kitchen windows, the sun beginning to rise. Outside I can hear life beginning to move. Birds, the breeze in the trees. Car horns and the cars themselves speeding by on the highway in the relative darkness, the passengers inside on their way to work. Or maybe home, wrapping up a long night.

I sip my coffee and close my eyes, feeling the warmth rush through my bones. It feels like the time I had a kidney infection and the hospital gave me morphine, my entire body turning cold from the inside out. I picture the caffeine beginning to work as my babies continue to sleep upstairs.

I looked at their faces before I came down. Perfect, doll-like faces, with beautiful tiny upturned noses and little mouths open as they exhale soft baby breaths. What do they dream about? Last night our oldest baby came into our room twice, saying she was scared and had a bad dream about dinosaurs. I hugged her tight to my body, her legs getting longer as they hung towards the floor, her arms wrapped around my neck. I whispered “you’re safe my girl” in her ear as I lay her back down on her purple sheets. The night light emitting a moon and a ceiling of stars over our heads as it played ocean noises.

Everything feels new and fresh and open in these hours before reality and life begin to come into the periphery. Who am I, I wonder as the shadows from the rising sun begin to shift and create shapes on the walls behind me.

You’re already on your way in to work. You shower in darkness every morning to wake yourself up before putting on a collared shirt. You kissed me goodbye as we prepared to spend the next 10 hours of our lives apart. Putting our energy, our brainpower, ourselves into something else as our babies learn and grow with their grandparents instead of us. The early evening plodding walk back into the house, depleted, we attempt to shake it off for dinner, bedtime, the routine. Who are we when the world stops giving us the parts to play. The roles to take in and learn how to perfect. Did we write these characters or did someone else do it for us. Expectations and worry beginning to etch on our faces. When we laugh together, all four of us, I want to bottle it. Take it out later and smell it. Hear it. Drinking the wild and free, delicious taste of a moment in time.

I think about a different life, I think about time itself, as I hold my now warm coffee mug to my lips and look out at the backyard. Planning for the future.