a mere murmur, a tremor

I must make this quick, as Amanda is getting ready to pull the lasagna out of the oven back home at this very moment. I am sitting in the coffee shop, and I wrote an entire blog post, but it somehow didn’t save to the USB drive I had saved it to back home. Curse electronics. So I will reserve that post for another time (maybe tomorrow?) and tell you a story. Today I was standing out on our back porch, admiring the sun setting over the rolling hills visible through the cleft in the trees, and on the deck attached to our neighbor’s house, an engaged couple surveyed their new house. I stood and I watched them, very nonchalantly, and I felt a great twinge of regret—ever so subtle, merely a murmur—tremble through me. I looked back towards the hills and felt the deck beneath my feet, and I thought to myself, “Were I more of a man back in my youth, then things would be different. I would be holding her here, now, and we would be looking at these hills together, beginning our new lives.” I went back inside. I didn’t want to have those thoughts anymore. Regret.