The Sunday List of Dreams Read Online Free PDF

changed.
             
    My own bathroom.
    One lesbian daughter so I do not have to worry about boys ever again.
    Make that two lesbian daughters.
    A trip to New York City.
    A convertible the color of Paul Newman’s eyes in
The Hustler.
    A place to be alone where no one can find me.
    At least one of my daughters to be my friend, my real friend, someday.
             
    Sometimes, when the house was a crowded maze of kids and friends, Connie would spend an hour in her bedroom and write only one item for the list. Sometimes she would doze off and wake up hours later to realize that no one had died, the house had not burnt down, the fish were still biting and her daughters were figuring out how to live one moment, and another one and the one after that, without her. There were weeks when she could not retreat into the bedroom and work on her list—work schedules, kid schedules, exhaustion, a vacation, or someone was ill. And there was the period of time before, during, and after the divorce when the tone of the list changed to reflect loss, yearning and a sweet desire for simplicity.
             
    One day without yelling.
    A maid.
    Someone else to drive the two girls who do not have driver’s licenses to the three thousand places they need to be every single damn week.
    Just one daughter telling me that she has decided to remain a virgin and dedicate her life to saving orphans, the sick, lame, and poor of the world.
    Someone to say “sorry”—so I don’t have to.
             
    O’Brien smiles while Connie tells her this part of the list story because she remembers each one of the dreams. She remembers because Connie would talk incessantly about what she wanted, how she was counting the days until the divorce was finalized, as if something magical would happen at the very moment the judge ruled that the marriage had been irrevocably broken, pounded the gavel and sent the newly divorced couple on their separate ways. Nurse Nixon, she also recalls without saying so, was exhausted during those months. Exhausted from the idea of change, from facilitating it, from managing the girls and work and the trembling and frightened heart of a husband who had grown accustomed to a life that was guided by the lifting of a single finger, his occasional presence, and the automatic depositing of his check into the family bank account.
    And then the list really changed. It became wilder and bolder as the many arms of possibility showed themselves to Connie, as they often do to every woman once the grown babies begin flying away, life descends into a hum of predictability, and the edge of the horizon seems so much closer than it ever has before.
    Connie smiles while she talks about this part of her Sunday list. She fills their glasses with more wine, places her elbows on the table, props up her head and goes away, her upper body moving as if she is indeed swaying to the orchestra trapped inside of her dining room walls.
             
    Rafting the Colorado.
    Having a real love affair with any man. To love, to feel lust again—to dance until dawn, to wake up in someone’s arms, to want so bad that my vagina aches. To smell like sex when I go out in public, to glow in the dark, to unearth all the passion so deep inside of me that it may require a very long expedition to uncover it again.
    Not giving a shit about the 15 pounds that will apparently never go away.
    Voice lessons. I want to take voice lessons.
    Early retirement.
    Driving up the northern coast of California in that damn blue convertible.
    Connecting with all the people I let slip away.
    A spa weekend. Oh my gawd—make it a spa month.
    That one daughter to be my friend. I still want that.
    New patterns. Change. Lots of change.
             
    Connie Nixon is breathless when she finishes. Her face is the real horizon, Frannie thinks, adorned with gorgeous laugh lines, freckles from all those years in the sun, and something fierce and yet