The Unexpected Price Of My Dream Coming True
I had a bill come due this week.
The kind of bill they don’t tell you about.
The price you must pay for a dream coming true.
You could’ve walked right past us and not known what a bittersweet moment was taking place.
A simple visit with my two nephews.
My brother’s boys.
The boys who have been my treasures since the day each was born.
Which happened on the other side of the country.
No matter.
At least four times a year, sometimes more, I got on a plane to share those special moments.
When they were born.
Birthday parties.
Just because.
Wrestling on a San Diego beach with those same nephews about 13 years ago.
These boys only made me want my own kids even more.
A dream I finally gave up on.
It wasn’t going to come true.
Until it did.
Which you have followed, Dear Reader, as it has unfolded in this column.
The single dad with a little girl.
The man I married.
His daughter I adopted.
My Little Sister in the Big Brother Big Sister program who now lives with us.
Somehow, forever-single me woke up one day with a husband and two kids.
The family better than the one I dreamed for myself.
But the cost.
Of a dream coming true,
Means giving up something.
Someone.
For me, it has been those frequent visits across the country to spend time with my nephews.
My new family gets so much of my focus now.
This weekend, I headed West.
Marveling how these little boys have grown into such fine young men.
“I remember the day you born,” I told one. “You looked so much like your dad that I almost dropped you the first time I held you.”
“I remember the first time you put two words together,” I told the other. “You pointed up at the sky on a dark autumn night and announced, ‘crescent moon.’”
My nephews appeared partly fascinated as I pulled out memory after memory.
And, I think they were kind of creeped out.
“How do you know all this stuff?” they wondered as they looked at the aunt they haven’t seen so much the last couple of years.
It was then that I realized.
They don’t remember.
Not the aunt who was there for any moment she could grab.
I’m now the aunt who is married and lives on the other side of the country with cousins they’ve seen only a couple of times.
One of the rare vacations when schedules and school calendars aligned and we could get both families together in one place.
Maybe you can relate.
The price you’ve paid for your own dream coming true.
The price of saying, “Yes!” to a great passion meant to many “no’s” for another great love.
Oh, what you’ve missed.
What I’ve missed.
I long to share more.
To pay up.
So, I will text.
I will follow them on their social media.
I will try to grab more visits in their busy lives.
I will marvel in the fine young men they’ve become.
I will trust I’m in there somewhere.
This is the best debt I can ever pay off.
((Please catch my weekly newspaper column in The Dayton Daily News, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and other Cox Newspapers across the country.))
