The Fantasy We Prefer

Spider webs between the limbs, ancient telegraph lines, the telegraph operators feeling for taps, vibrations, listening for signs of life, of death, a bite to eat, a siesta, a place to meet, mate and spend winter fiesta.

She looks at her daughter texting her friends while sitting in front of the television and computer, one ear to the phone. We have no time to ourselves anymore. We give our time away freely, our friends, our acquaintances throwing their lives into the community money pot, pulling out rumours and helpful hints, looking for the moment to give or get support.

When did we have time to learn new tasks when we were younger? Did we have fewer tasks to learn and took our time? Did we have fewer important details to memorize? Are we just filling in the slow minutes, the empty gaps of our childhood, mother to daughter?

Can her daughter cook any better than she can or her mother did? Her mother had the telephone to while away the time. She had the telephone and the television. Now her daughter has a smartphone, a computer and the television. Is life any better or worse than before?

Distances have gotten shorter. A blogger in a hard-to-pronounce country posting a recipe similar to the one her great-grandmother had written down, passed to her and she had lost in her early marriage years. Passing the recipe to her daughter, a legacy by proxy.

We grow too soon old and too late smart. Her daughter thinks she's wise, able to recall memories of a quieter childhood, where times seemed simpler and decisions easier to make. Simpler times and less affluence, darning socks and mending hand-me-downs, memories her daughter doesn't need to know.

She looks at the online calendar shared by her family and friends. Too many birthdays to remember. Thank goodness for automatic reminders.

She kisses her daughter on the forehead, picks up her crafting material and walks out to the garage.

Time for quilting class tonight. She'd read the instructions emailed to her by the teacher and should be able to pick up the hobby her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had picked up before her. She found some old quilt squares in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and would show them to the class. The teacher said they were going to learn more modern patterns to quilt so they could enter a regional quilting contest. She just wanted something to give her daughter that was hers and hers alone. But quilting's a community effort, something she would decide if she'd learn to appreciate.

She looked up at the spider webs in the corner of the garage. She wondered about the female spider sewing and resewing a new bed and food trap every night, needing no other spider to help. Where is the lesson in that web, timeless and temporary, the past and the future interchangeable? An automatic response. Was she quilting because she wanted to, or following an ancient, innate trait like the spider?

She pulled out her phone and read a message that the teacher was running late. She started the car and drove slowly, looking at the houses and the lives passing by. How many of them are just like her, socially well-connected and loved but looking for something personal to call their own?