If Only I Had More Time

I’d mend my Green Bay Packer mittens.

I’d pot the jade plant on the window sill that has roots like the hair of a forgotten doll hanging down in a jar of water.

I’d finish my first short story, “The 12th Street Bridge,” which I’ve framed out, as they say, with all the elements the teacher says I must have but the framing sits like half a house abandoned during a pandemic.

I’d use the new app on my phone to take pictures of all the trip slides I took from my father’s house after he died, hundreds of them of Pike’s Peak which my father so adored that driving away, his head was as if on a swivel to see it one more time.

I’d write my brother a letter. I never hear back but I don’t have to. I know the look on his face, that’s good enough.

I’d finish rereading The Diary of Anne Frank.

I’d study something hard – like the history of the world or why Mars is.

I’d learn the names of the birds that come to my backyard and stop thinking every time I see them that my dad once caught his neighbors’ cats in a pillowcase and drove them out in the country because they bothered his birds, but we don’t have cats so that isn’t something I would need to do.

I’d learn to draw something with the new pack of colored pencils I found in a drawer and send the drawings to my grandsons, maybe I’d write a book for them with illustrations, that is, if only I had more time.

I’d decide to throw out things that are broken that I can’t fix even though I probably could fix them if I tried harder, but the times being what they are, I’m dispensing with non-essential optimism.

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Originally published in 2020