An Unexpected Call (part 1)

Ann couldn’t wait to get to the restaurant to meet her two best friends.  As an international translator, she continuously traveled for her job and had not seen them in months. Between traffic and flight delays, she was frazzled and running a little late, but knew she would be fine once she got there to catch-up with them.   When she arrived, the others were seated and already eating their signature appetizer, buffalo wings, just as they had many times through high school and college, dishing over their life adventures.

As she approached the table, screams let out shocking each of the other patrons, but as they stood up she noticed something more alarming and disturbing.  “You’re pregnant,” Ann said feigning happiness while hugging her friend.

“Yes, I wanted to tell you in person, I have obviously known for a while.” Jolyn glowed as she awkwardly attempted to sit down again in spite of her basketball-like growing belly.

Audra looked as if she was a jiffy pop erupting on the seat with excitement.  “And I’m getting married,” she told Ann and stuck her ring hand in her face.  “Isn’t it exciting?”

She once again faked enthusiasm smiling and sitting at the table in a fog as she half-listened to her two friends exude happiness for two of the longest hours of her life.

Back at her apartment, she began mechanically unpacking as she had thousands of times in the last decade since they graduated.  “What is going on here,” she barked as each piece of clothing flew out of her suitcase at light speed. “I am one with the great job, traveling the world, meeting people who are shaping the universe.  Then why do I feel like the ballerina on top of a music box,” she plopped down on the floor frustrated.  “They are changing, evolving. Where am I going except on another flight to Russia, then Istanbul, then Rome?”

Ann had been racking up tens of thousands of frequent flyer miles with few places on the globe undiscovered.  She even had a special someone, Giles, a French importer who also endlessly traveled for business.  But even though they had been together for several years, they had only racked up a couple months in actual relationship time with a few mini-holidays on the French Riviera and Monaco and a whole week once exploring the islands of Greece.

From the outside it seemed as though her life was enviable, but lately she felt in a rut as if she was going and going, but getting nowhere.  Like a voyeur, she was watching so many people in their day-to-day lives in different cultures and languages, but always through a glass looking in.  She even realized she knew 20 different ways to say family, but didn’t have one idea how to experience it for herself.

“Maybe it is my ticking biological clock,” she wondered and dismissed it arguing with herself. “No, I am an independent millennial woman.  I don’t need a man or children to define me.  I am helping form my generations, even future generations. This is what I always wanted…right?”

She loved Giles and reveled in their life together.  Every time they were together it was fun and frolic.  But lately it just seemed the Facetiming and funny emails, even the sexting was just not enough.  She pulled out the picture of this French villa they stayed at last year.  She had carried it around with her, frequently dreaming of a life where they could settle down, maybe buy a vineyard. She was dropping hints rather clumsily for months and they did talk about a different life. But with her friends moving to the next phase of their lives, she seemed like that ballerina spinning and spinning but never to glide forward.

She was lost in a haze of thought, when her phone rang. “It is just a dream, I guess,” she shrugged putting the picture back in her travel wallet and answering her phone.

Suddenly she put down the phone and sighed in excitement and relief.  It was Giles.  Finally, he proposed, he pulled the trigger!