The Grass is Always Greener ...

I am a young mother, a mother of three boys. I spend my days waking, feeding, clothing, shouting at and kissing the owies of my kids. I wash, clean, cook and fold laundry in the tiny back room that we call a laundry room. My husband is clean, kind and responsible, if a bit overweight. He leaves our tan suburban two-story house each morning promptly at 7:00 and doesn’t return until the lights are out. He often travels for work and can be gone for weeks. When he’s gone, I pay the bills, take out the trash, drink cheap wine from Trader Joe’s, and wait for him to return. I wear housedresses, aprons and pajamas nearly every day. My feet are comfortably familiar with my bunny slippers. I never put on make-up and my face and hair look dreary and old. I am thirty.
Every week day, after the children have gone to school, I get on the computer and check my email, a note from my husband, an announcement about the school play, and three spam emails offering a variety of sex products. Then I go to my online book group. The members are from all over the world, including Chile, Israel, Scotland, and France. We read a book each month, last month it was A Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, and then we post comments and thoughts on what we read.
My favorite member is Adele. She is Brazilian. She is well-read, worldly and vibrant. She posted a picture of herself standing in a jungle with a monkey on her shoulder, red-black hair spiked like a cactus, khol around her jade green eyes, and an exotic copper medallion hanging from her neck. Her English is impeccable but she is multi-lingual and has worked her entire career in embassies all over the world. She lives in Paris now but has lived in Israel, Mozambique and Laos. She is not married and has no children, except for the young people who camp on the floor of her Paris apartment every spring and summer, returning year after year. She is not as young as she looks.
Her emails are smooth and clean, like reading someone’s dreams. She uses a formal calligraphic font and prints large. She keeps them short but they are full of images of her petite apartment filled with souvenirs from her years abroad, sitting in a sidewalk café watching the rain, taking the metro to her job near the Champs-Élysées, or playing on the beach near her childhood home in northern Brazil. My responses are pedestrian and mournful, how I wish to travel and see the world, how I have only been to Chicago and Saint Paul but that Michigan is a lovely place to live, really. I think about sending her pictures, but decide against it.
Her comments on the book each month are complex, demonstrating how she delves into the hearts of the characters, recognizes symbolism and seeks out the social and political statements in every work of art. I make the usual mundane comments about the use of language or how a particular character speaks to me. Adele, on the other hand, looks deeper, at the rhythm of the words and the musicality of the language. I envy her perspective but do not look at the world with her eyes. I am too worried about homework and chicken nuggets. My life is Kmart and hers is a Turkish market.
So I read the book again, to look for the symbolism, to seek out the social and political statements, to delve into the hearts of the characters. After all it will be hours before the boys get home from school.