i want to be someone...
BY NANCY ARONIE
I want to be someone who has read The Odyssey
I want to be someone who drinks tea in the afternoon
I want to be someone who meditates for the full 60 minutes
I want to be someone who doesn’t care what people think of her
Doesn’t make sexy faces in the mirrors of restaurant bathrooms
Someone who doesn’t hold in her stomach when she walks past the important people
That stomach that she thinks should be flat held two beautiful babies who grew into two beautiful men
even though one died
I want to be someone whose son, instead of dying went to Dartmouth
and majored in Native American Studies
and got a blurb on his first novel
from Louise Erdrich
I want to be someone whose paper whites bloom in February
I want to be someone who hikes
I want to be someone who hikes!
I want hiking boots
I want to have hiked the Camino Real and have plans to hike the Appalachian Trail.
By myself.
Like Wild
Like Cheryl Strayed.
I want to throw my boot down the canyon
and run out of water
and wear a ripped tshirt
And carry a pack so heavy guys stop and offer to help.
I want to be able to say, No thanks. I’m all set.
I want to be strong because I have been doing 30 pushups and 18 pull ups every day since I stopped lifting the wheelchair onto the bike rack of the Volvo.
I want to grow roses in the summer and orchids in the house.
I want to be someone who can put her garden to bed without help.
I want to be someone who can identify trees by their Latin names.
I want to be someone who enjoys museums,
antiquities,
Ming pottery
first century glass.
All these wants and all these people I am not
make room for the one I am/ the one who
still doesn’t know who fought in the Boer war
but can tell from a mile away
and the sound of your voice
and the look in your eye
that your heart is breaking.