Missed Connections

It's 4am and I am awake...again...this is the black hour...the hour of depression where all my haunts come to wrench my chest.

The spouse came over tonight for dinner and a movie. Both quite tired, I think we each dozed off periodically. When it was bedtime, I offered for him to stay but he did not. I cried when he left and woke up crying at 4am.

My life is filled with connections that are almost made but never met.

I remember once when my mother was angry and/or depressed at something I do not know. There was an old cardboard box...I think a perfume sample had come in it...anyway, it was very shiny and was quite attractive in my child's eye. In those days, you could get a pound of beads for, like, a quarter. I had some of the round transparent colorful ones that had the diamond cuts in them and they enchanted me. There was no glue so I taped them to the shiny silver box and drew little pictures and messages of love with my little fingers. I remember writing that I was sorry on the box. I placed it by her bed while she was sleeping in the hopes that it would cheer her up when she awoke.

She never mentioned that gift. I think it was a decade later when I had accidentally come across it safely stored away. I was touched that she kept it...but it was too late.